Imagine Being Kevin Day, Son Of Exy, Born And Bred To Be A Cog In The Well-oiled Machine That Is The

A Moral Scapegoat for who?

All For One is a shit character, he is presented as a massive threat, but we never see him get a win, similar to the dissonance between the All Might we see and the context in universe.

And in the end, he becomes a moral scapegoat... for the heroes.

What is a moral scapegoat?

A moral scapegoat is (usually) a character used to excuse the actions of other characters or a system. Character A may have done XYZ but Character B was the one manipulating them and/ or is so much worse, so we can excuse A's actions. Or helping defeat B acts as pence for their past actions. Etc. And to a degree it makes sense, getting people to believe a character has changed and should now be considered good both by the characters and the audience is hard. So having some bigger bad to blame takes the pressure off the desired character(s).

While the term is typically only brought up negatively, like the use of Mary&Gary Sues, there are good ones. Commander Zhao in Avatar of the Last Airbender is an early moral scapegoat, used to say yeah Prince Zuko may suck, but there are a lot worse out there. My Little Pony Friendship is Magic has a moral scapegoat, right in the pilot, Nightmare Moon for Princess Luna, sure Nightmare came from Luna but it is presented as a curse, something that was cured, fixed. The Hobbit uses Dragon Sickness as a way to both corrupt and excuse King Thorin's actions when they have retaken the mountain; he is not in his right mind, and shouldn't be considered solely responsible for his actions

In certain ways, Pink Diamond (due to the audience learning her arc in reverse, when it has such an effect on the plot of Steven Universe) is a scapegoat for the remaining Diamonds, even though it makes a lot less sense for her to be the scapegoat when considering the actual sequence of events in universe. And while most people don't think Pink/Rose's actions excuse the Diamonds (especially White), she does work with Spinel. Another rocky moral scapegoat is Horad Prime from She-ra & The Princesses of Power, he is the big bad of the show and is meant to be a scapegoat primarily for Horadak who was the previous big bad, and mildly a scapegoat for Catra. The big problems with his sacrificial slaughter is that there isn't enough time to really settle in that this is the true big bad, and both Horadak and Catra's issues were both way more on screen and show up well before we ever hear of Hoard Prime, with them operating separately.

And All For One is a worst example of all of them (that I mentioned)

For starters the more we saw of him the less ultimate intimidating evil he portrayed, nor did we get a satisfying he was actually pretty pathetic. Really trying to have your cake and eat it too. Looking back he's very cartoonishly evil, but lacks the presence, he's boring. I've seen many good portrayals of him in the fandom, but canon is just boring. His background of miscellaneous evil deeds, don't really go into how they were evil, just that Yoichi (& AFO) clearly believes them to be, both come across as very childish to me, seeing the world as black & white.

He lacks the moral complexity of complex villains (like Magneto), meant to be an ambitiously evil man, whose evil for the sack of being evil. But he lacks the presence found in Classic evil Disney characters like Jafar, Clayton, and Ursala. In a way he's like King Magnifico (from Wish, the only recent hated animated Disney movie, that I agree deserves to be shat on), trying to have both but failing to capture either

In the present, he has little involvement on screen, and once he's out of the picture, Shigaraki (& the League) really bloom as villains and characters. The story could have had a slow realization (for Shigaraki, the League and the audience) that he was holding the League back, and that meant either he was nowhere near as competent as he was portrayed, or he wasn't actually helping Shigaraki, setting up for the body suit plan

But my biggest issue is who he's the sacrificial goat for.

And who is he the scapegoat for? The fucking Heroes and their shit-ass society, including the H PSC crap.

The ending reveal that he was behind everything that happened to Tenko, from him being born, his name, the kids he chose to play with, the issues with his quirk, and only having him; fails. It doesn't work! Mainly because of what that scene ignored the walk, and the complicity of the family. It ignored that the family were directly ignoring that Tenko was being abused, trying to placate him after the fact. It ignores that Kotaro Shimura chose to follow his friends advice, over his wife too. It ignores that even though AFO would have killed anyone who tried to help Tenko, no one tried. It also doesn't make sense either, normal kids are shit actors, not to mention Tenko was the one to reach out to them, not the other way around. And with the sheer amount of heroes, and cops, and regular citizens, how was it literally no one tried to help him, it's not AFO.

What else does it ignore, oh yeah, Tenko isn't truly unique in having a tragic backstory. Sure he was planning on taking advantage of the Endeavor's awful legacy plan, but we never see that AFO has done anything before kidnapping Touya. It's implied that he helped stroked Heteromorphic discrimination for his own gain, but that doesn't change that Spinner had pesticides thrown in his face, by 'innocent' civilians, that Shoji was mutilated as a child, for saving a child, by 'innocent' civilians, that the Ordinary Lady was attacked and denied shelter in the middle of an active warzone, by 'innocent' civilians. Himiko's abuse was enabled and furthered by quirk counselling, we don't even get a he was secretly to blame all along for this one. The commission has assassins, ignore. The homeless have to resort to villainy to survive, ignore. Once someone is considered out they are abused by this society until they have to lash out, ignore. The big bad was taken down, so nothing has to be done about these systemic issues, cause the heroes say so

There's a pattern, he was only able to do this, because the society he was in was already doing it.

And AFO being a moral scapegoat could of worked.

IF the Hero Public Safety Commission was similarly a scapegoat.

To begin, AFO should have been the scapegoat for the League, and the villains as a whole. The heroes would instead have the HPSC as their scapegoat.

Hawks should not have been made president of the totally different PSC, not only is he a known murderer, he doesn't regret it, he has never criticized the Commission's (or any other hero's) actions. If he's not going to see the issues, and hypocrisy right in front of him, he shouldn't have any role at all in it, and a very small one if he does recognize them. Giving this to Hawks screams nothing is actually going to be fixed, any changes are going to be for the worse.

Going into the final Deku vs Shigaraki battle, as well as the dreamscape crap, I had hope in this series. I thought that Deku would finally be forced to have the long over reality check of the Villains are right, what are you going to do about it. So instead of hyper-focusing on one tiny moment that with any and I do mean any additional context would show that it's not just this tiny shit moment. Rather than murdering Tomura for not abandoning the League (the same reason Hawks murdered Twice), have Deku convince Tomura that they can make a better society. That Deku's peaceful(ish) method is what's better for the League we have seen he loves.

From there they could have come up with a deal where either (these are simplified) everyone is held accountable for their past actions (as in the villains, Endeavor, Hawks, the Commission, everyone responsible for the sky coffin, etc). Or the clock is restarted, and everyone is hence forth held to the same standard. The villains are around to make sure the actual issues to their problems are dealt with, hint; Himiko's problem wasn't lack of access to quirk counselling. Happy satisfying ending for everyone

mha villains: i love my friends so much that with the power of friendship we will change this world so that everyone can live in peace and not get ridiculed and abused for their differences! and i kill people.

mha heroes: i think youre creepy so stand still while i bash your brains out. i like fighting so much i'll hurt anyone who crosses me. victims of abuse should shut the fuck up about it cause i dont care and neither does anyone else if they know what's good for them. i refuse to change if it means someone else's life might get better, but i'll be out of a job. and i kill people.

work husband

when I attempt to analyze Todoroki Touya's character, I get a distinct feeling Horikoshi's spreadsheet for him before chapter 290 looked like this:

'DABI IS TODOROKI TOUYA (hint at him being Todoroki Touya as much as possible) (make something up for his backstory later)

that's not how you write a secret evil relative subplots. the goal shouldn't be making the reveal as dramatic as possible. especially in the corruption 'break the cutie' type of stories. to make the readers feel for this character, you shouldn't be dedicating your time to teasing them with the possibility of the reveal, you need to also tell the actual damn story.

and Horikoshi just. forgot to do that.

to make the reveal hold any weight and not just serve as a delayed gratification clickbait after years of teasing the readers, you have to establish who the character actually was before they became the villain. if you don't do this, the reveal alone won't do anything to make the audience sympathize with the character, because by that point it will be too late to sway the established opinion with an angsty backstory alone.

Arcane tells a very similar story of the family conflict, but to have the audience be interested in the sisters reunion, to have them feel bad for Jinx despite the horrible acts she commits, you have to first see Powder, the troubled unfortunate and insecure child who loved her sister. only once we are emotionally attached to that innocent and unfairly suffering character, we will start questioning her motives and our emotions once the corruption starts.

if you show the before as a sympathetic character, the after becomes painful not only to the in-universe characters affected by what their once close person had become. if you show the after and hold off the before until after the characters have already reacted to the identity revealing event, your audience will react with 'cool motive, still murder', because they never developed any emotional attachment to said character, no matter how much you make them cry in the flashbacks.

loose reimagining of the family arc under the cut.

and it was so stupid to skip this step because Horikoshi didn't even have to do much. the first point of view we have on the Todoroki family history is Shouto, the youngest sibling who had been isolated from the rest for most of his life. he didn't know much about his siblings, but let him know something! especially with how closely his and Touya's stories are paralleled by design, he should know about Touya the most out of anyone, and Touya is the sibling he should be most curious about.

think about it from Enji and Shouto's pov. Touya was the heir Endeavor created for fulfilling his dream, and after Fuyumi he wasn't planning on having more kids. it was Touya's incompatibility with his own quirk, the eugenics experimentation failure, that is the only reason Natsuo and Shouto even exist. and Shouto is the chosen heir, perfectly fulfilling all conditions demanded by Enji. so he trains him like he wanted to train Touya, but that's not all of it. while Shouto is genetically fit to be a perfect replacement for the role Enji had prepared for Touya, his father had never emotionally connected with him the way he did with Touya. and he made sure Shouto was aware of that, because he talked to Shouto about Touya.

Shouto, who had been miserable because of his father for most of his life, knows that Touya was the older brother who should have been in his place, and he escaped that place. he stopped his training and left the dojo to live a normal life, together with his siblings. and Shouto wanted to have that life more than anything. he begged his father to let him join his siblings, he wistfully observed them through the windows, he imagined what his siblings are like, he asked his mother about them. and the entire time, the sibling he knew the most about was Touya, his eldest brother whom he had to replace as father's training dummy.

there's so much space for depth in there! you can do so much by briefly sharing the intensity of Shouto's complicated feelings, by giving a bare glimpse of his rumination about his siblings. just don't lump them all together into a faceless blob of happy children that unhappy little Shouto wanted to join, because their history is so much deeper than that.

inserting the flashback of Enji talking to Shouto about Touya during the Sports Festival arc would have been the best way to set up the intrigue. just a bare glimpse of Enji using Touya as the example little Shouto was failing to follow, cut to Shouto observing his three siblings through the window.

and that would be enough to connect the initial story threads of the Todoroki family and nudge the readers in the right direction. Iida also has an older brother who is a hero. with that example in mind Shouto not mentioning Touya at all would be suspicious enough to have people start questioning the mysterious older brother's identity, because surely, if the number one hero, who trained Shouto to be the most proficient hero in his class trained his older brother as well he would be a licenced hero already?

then, the lack of said brother's presence in the story starts to become glaring. the simple mention for Enji having trained Touya and telling Shouto how good his brother was with his quirk, separates him from the faceless group of Shouto's civilian siblings who are out there doing their boring civilian stuff and not necessarily needed to be in this story about kids becoming heroes. Touya being dead is a reveal put away for later, but to drive up the intrigue, he needs to be a ghost haunting the narrative. make it inconsistent and confusing, make characters talk about him and omit saying anything outright.

then you can use Natsuo as a red herring by not introducing the siblings by names when they visit Rei together. he's Shouto's older brother, he is weirdly hostile to Endeavor, he lives away from the family. well, this checks out. but wasn't this weirdly anticlimactic?.. also didn't he say he doesn't do well in hot temperatures?

later, during the Todoroki family dinner arc introduce Natsuo by name and confuse the readers even more, because the new brother turned out to not be Touya whom we have been anticipating to meet since Shouto had first talked about his family. make Shouto, who is still adjusting to being able to interact with his siblings, start asking about their childhood. he wants to express that happiness he feels about being together with them, so he wonders out loud if Touya also felt this happy when father allowed him to play with Fuyumi and Natsuo more. his brother and sister's faces turn weirdly grim at that remark. Fuyumi offers some stories from their childhood, trying to lighten the mood. that's the readers first proper glimpse at Touya in the flashbacks. Fuyumi talks about him always being on his computer, how impossible it was to drag him outside to play. Natsuo reminisces how the slightest stretch of intense activity was enough to have him fall to the ground and refuse to get up. Fuyumi talks about the time Touya and herself made 8 years old Natsuo carry both of them. Natsuo proudly reports that he didn't even break his back. the atmosphere in the room is light and comfortable, Shouto listening to their stories with undivided attention, his eyes glistening. after a moment of idle silence, Natsuo glances at him. he tells Shouto how usually it's hard to read his face, because he is so unexpressive. but he remembers when Shouto was little he was a total crybaby, just like Touya was.

with the picture of Touya the child painted and the question about adult Touya up in the air, Enji can join the dinner. Natsuo storms off and Shouto follows him and Enji, not understanding what caused his chill older brother to act like this. Fuyumi attempts to hold him back, to no avail. she doesn't want Shouto to hear what Natsuo has to say to their father. she also is no longer sure that keeping him in the dark is the correct decision. she sighs, 'mother, what should I do?'. she is too young for this.

insert Midoriya into the family dinner if you want your dramatic storytelling, and have him timidly ask Fuyumi why did their older brother not join them for dinner. cut to Shouto hiding behind the door, listening to Natsuo's shouts about Enji abandoning him and Fuyumi, stealing their mom and Shouto from them, ruining Shouto's childhood. 'but you know what you will never be forgiven for, not even in hell?' Natsuo asks, tears streaming down his face. cut to-

'Touya is dead', Fuyumi tells Midoriya, his pleasant smile frozen on his face, eyes growing wide.

cut back to Shouto, hyperventilating behind the palms covering his face. he doesn't even notice sliding down the wall. he barely registers the heavy footsteps of Enji going back in his direction and he can't be bothered to care about his eavesdropping being discovered. his mind is still echoing Natsuo's words on repeat.

'you can play hero all you want, but you know what you really are is a murderer'.

boom. hook, line and sinker. no need to have the characters spell out who thinks what, the '[Natsuo thinks that] Enji killed Touya' was so stupidly unnecessary it turned a mystery drama thriller Todoroki subplot into a Law and Order episode. let the characters speak their minds and reach their own conclusions! when they learn something horrible, don't send the good and righteous character rushing to correct their assumption. let Shouto be actually curious about what happened to the members of his family, let him learn their different perspectives! dont make the Todoroki Touya reveal into a singular event, an award for the readers who have been arguing about it for years. turn it into something that holds weight for the actual characters inside the story, a mystery, an investigation with the reveal being at the finishing line the characters themselves need to reach, not an inescapable event that will happen despite the characters' actions.

letting Dabi interact with the non-Enji Todorokis wouldn't have ruined the mystery, it would have given much more depth the all the characters, defined the actual drama they are going through, given them more individuality by allowing them to have different opinions on the situation instead of joining them into a Frankenstein mindless blob of 'family' taking their collective 'responsibility'.

make Dabi and Shouto's first meeting an uncomfortably long moment of staring, Dabi looking at Shouto with sad condescension, Shouto being visibly confused by the villain's loaded expression. make this about the characters themselves, and not about the readers being smart enough to connect the only villain with a flame quirk to the only family of flame quirk users.

let Natsuo and Dabi meet, make Dabi kill Hood for attacking his brother because his father was too late. make Natsuo question the villain's identity together with the readers, make him and Shouto join their efforts to unfold the mystery of what had happened to their older brother.

the question should never have been 'is Dabi Touya Todoroki?' asked by the author to his readers. it should have been 'what does Dabi being Touya Todoroki mean to the characters associated with him?'. and it should have been answered by the characters themselves.

in light of recent events (bllk manga 282 - 283. im crazy about them) i wanted to post a part of the rinsagi zombie apocalypse au i was writing for bllk halloweek (and didnt finish. oops)

implied major character death, rinsagi typical freakishness, descriptions of a zombie bite wound. also guns

The zombie bites a huge chunk off Isagi's shoulder.

Rin punctures the zombie in the head with a bullet—feeling rage melt into dread, as Isagi crumples on the floor, clutching his bleeding shoulder with a hand. Blood spills all over it, trickling down and pooling at his elbow, a slow and painful drip, and Rin cannot feel his legs when he rushes to Isagi's side.

"I have you," Rin says, even though he can already spot the signs of Isagi losing himself, the hyperventilating, skin growing cold under Rin's touch. The sweat everywhere.

How everyone keeps leaving; Sae, Bachira, and now—

Rin brings his mouth to Isagi’s wound.

Isagi hisses. “What are you doing, you idiot?”

Rin doesn’t hear, doesn’t care. He sucks as much of Isagi’s blood as he can from the wound, almost drinking it, infection on his tongue, and at some point it gets too much, maybe. He spits it out on the sidewalk beside them.

Isagi groans, back arching, either away from Rin’s mouth or into it—and Rin wishes he was, wishes for vastly different circumstances. Wishes that this wound was one he made. “This won’t work, Rin. It’s an infection. Either kill me now, or run—”

“I’m not letting you turn before me,” Rin says, voice hoarse. There’s blood on his lips. There’s blood in his mouth. “You promised you would kill me. You have to be the one to do it.”

“Didn’t you say—you would, too? Kill me?” Isagi says. "You promised."

Rin closes his eyes, breathing heavily. His mouth hovers over Isagi’s wound. Blood and iron and rot. He imagines Isagi Yoichi, with purple veins and discoloured skin, green and grey and black in places that aren’t supposed to be. Eyes white.

An Isagi less alive. An Isagi less interesting. An Isagi reduced to a lump of mindless flesh.

Rin bites his cheek. “I lied. I can’t do it.” I can’t look at you like that.

“Do you realise what you’re asking of me, then? Rin, get up,” and Isagi pulls on Rin’s hair, even if the strength of it is weakened by the bite. “Get up, Rin! You have a life after me. You have a life beyond me. Live it.” Isagi growls.

“No!” and Rin is startled with how much he means it. Isagi must be too. He’s still beautiful: wide-eyed, despite the wound on his shoulder. Looking at him like biting into a cyanide pill, a heart-stopping brain death.

“If you turn, I turn. That’s my new rule. My new promise.” Rin brings his mouth to Isagi’s wound, lapping at it, ignoring the taste of metal on his tongue. Urging everything into his bloodstream. Wants to cauterise the wound with his own tongue. Wants to be burnt by him. These are the things that have made him stronger, before—wanting to have an effect on Isagi, wanting to be affected by Isagi. These are the things that will be his undoing.

There’s a hand in Rin’s hair, gently stroking, and then pulling him up into a kiss. Isagi heaves a heavy sigh, and Rin captures the feeling of life on his lips. Blood and saliva—Isagi licks into his mouth, like trying to clear Rin of the infection. Salvation. Once, Rin had wished for something like this: for someone to save him.

Rin feels Isagi push cold metal into his palm, and then guide his hand to the side of his temple. Isagi’s hands are cold and wet with blood and rotting. It’s hard to swallow.

“Close your eyes,” he hears Isagi whisper. His face is so close, flushed and pale at the same time, and Rin desires to commit it to memory. “It’s like you’re simply teaching me how to aim. Remember?”

The things Rin has seen of zombies—of humans, turning, that moments before it they turn delirious. Manic, even. And Isagi is here, purpling veins, cold sweat, bleeding, and still coherent, if to just tell Rin to kill him.

It's that easy, Rin hears himself say in a memory, revolver in hand—Isagi's, Rin remembers—before it became his. The makeshift target infront of them with a bullet through the head. What Rin means, now: It's that so easy to lose someone.

Maybe Isagi closes his eyes. Rin wouldn't know, because he's closed his too.

The gunshot that follows is the most deafening sound for miles.

oh my god I binge read sea glass garden last night and the third and fourth chapter DESTROYED ME.

I’m omw to reread the entire fic because it was too good and I KNOW that it’s going to be one of the must-reads of this fandom. I’m literally in love with all your characters (your Tsumiki is so freaking interesting she was READY to get at it with Maki✊🏻) especially your description of Megumi’s situation is killing me, my heart is in pieces. No matter how many stories there are depicting the years before his high school time, there will always be too few idc.

I’m pretty sure it’s canonically stated that Megumi went on missions before being enrolled as a student and that he witnessed the death of at least one comrade, all because he had been bought to be a jujutsu sorcerer. Imagine never having the delusion of a future because you signed your life away to ensure your sister would live happily. Your take on the fact that, maybe, at some point of his life, Megumi didn’t wish to be a jujutsu sorcerer anymore destroys me. I never really thought of it, and he probably never imagined a life for himself where he wouldn’t die as a jujutsu sorcerer either. He was downright begging to be left to die in peace because he couldn’t bear it any longer when he shouldn’t have even gone on missions yet at all😭 And even though his current injuries weren’t caused by a mission, I don’t think he’d be so stupid to try to tame the snake unsupervised a few days after Geto’s death. Like c’mon. It’s all the higher ups fault, because it always is. Damn them. I hope they choke on their rotting teeth😤

ANYWAY I GOT LOST ON THE WAY TO ASK YOU A QUESTION JANSJAJANJAHA I ramble way too much

I noticed the updates have been pretty frequent, so do you have an update schedule with pre-written chapters? No because if you don’t I applaude you for being able to write masterpieces in a few days😩

P.S. I was curious about the meaning of the title and I read your other post about it and it’s so beautiful😭 obviously it’s sad but it also speaks of the determination of humans’ will to survive yk? You are genius😫

No update schedule, unfortunately! I don’t have the self control to not post chapters when I have them. I go on hyperfixation-fueled writing binges and writers block crashes of unending despair. It’s a Whole Thing. Updates tend to come in waves with me. It’ll probably be pretty erratic updates until the story ends. Thank you for reading and for your kind words!

You are speaking my ENTIRE LANGUAGE with Megumi. He is, hands down, the most interesting character in the show to me. His backstory and how it intertwines with his philosophy and approach to morality make him just so unendingly interesting to me.

Like, the Fushiguro siblings and specifically Megumi really were doomed by the narrative from the start. Megumi never really lived in a world where he had a future. Like, the past arc takes place during spring of 2006, and his dad had ditched long enough at that point that he straight up forgot megumi's name. Tsumiki's mom had been gone long enough that Megumi thought she and his dad ran off together, so she probably wasn't around after Toji stopped coming. Megumi was born late December of 2002, so he would have been three then. Tsumiki was, at most, five. And because Gojo didn't go to meet them until after Geto's massacre in late summer of 2007, it was just the two of them for at least a year.

Like, the sheer horror of being two very small children taking care of each other, knowing that the money's running out and that your parents probably aren't coming back. They were living in abject poverty, and Megumi was most likely seeing curses during at least part of this (considering he was right at the age for it and he wasn't all that surprised with Gojo rolling up to tell him his dad was from a magic clan) with no idea what they were, because even if Toji explained anything (which i doubt) the chances of Megumi remembering the explanation aren't great. He's seeing horrifying things every day and doesn't have any support past his sister, who can't see the same.

Tsumiki and Megumi faced parentification at a ludicrously young age. We know that Tsumiki most likely took a pretty strong caretaking/maternal role for megumi from an early age, but the fact that baby Megumi's only question when Gojo found him and made his offer was about Tsumiki's happiness suggests that the caretaking wasn't one sided. Making decisions about your future based on the needs of your family is a very adult concern, and it was Megumi's only concern. While Tsumiki was canonically far more open with her affection and care (grumpy baby Megumi refusing to hold hands, you have my whole heart), Megumi definitely loved her deeply already and was modeling his actions with her interests in mind. They must have both been shouldering the load of raising and protecting the other for as long as they can remember. Tsumiki and Megumi were likely barely surviving day to day. They were already shouldering the stresses of grown ups and likely didn't have any of those childish, starry-eyed dreams about what it would be like when they grew up.

Even when Gojo enters the scene, the parentification didn't end. While he does take on a paternal/caretaking role, his intro into their lives very much heralded a time where Megumi became the family's compulsory breadwinner. I won't break down my thoughts on how Gojo probably wasn't the one who came up with the deal of Megumi being collateral for their survival since I already did it in another post, but however it came about, it doesn't change the fact that Megumi knows that he's the one his family's survival hinges on from a stupidly young age.

We know that Megumi was training/working as a jujutsu sorcerer pre-canon. Gojo straight up tells him at age 4 that he's going to need him to work hard, he references the fact that he's been training megumi for a while in season 1, Megumi admits to nobara that he's lost a comrade on a mission before Yuuji (though Yuuji was the first that was his age), and Megumi knows a lot of the people in this world. By the time canon starts, he's been training with Kamo since before Kamo entered school, so for 3-4 years minimum, and Mai knows him as well. Kamo straight up says that Megumi's got more talent than the head of the Zenin clan by his first year, and his Grade 2 status at entrance means he's considered a prodigy. There's also a lot of little scenes that suggest that Megumi's been doing this a while. When Gojo's talking to Yuuji about the detention center fight, he makes a few comments about how Megumi likely understood the reality of the fight and just how bad their odds were better than the other two, suggesting 1) megumi has the experience already to do that and 2) Gojo has witnessed him in the field enough to get a sense of how he evaluates situations. He's been doing this a while.

But the thing is that he's also passively suicidal the entirety of season 1. And that's probably because he spent his entire life believing he was going to die young.

He probably doesn't think of it as being passively suicidal, but he absolutely is. The sacrifice bunt vs Yuuji's homerun in season 1 is SUCH A GOOD MICROCOSM OF HIS CHARACTER.

Yuuji has the blind confidence of a very young god who was never informed that there were other gods that were older and more powerful and will kick his fucking ass. Like, he will be in Sukuna's throne room after the man ripped his heart out and Literally Killed Him and still be like "I will beat your entire ass." No doubt. No hesitation. I simply love him.

Megumi, meanwhile, walks into fights knowing he will find one that he can't win. Yuuji thinks he can beat anyone, but Megumi defaults to the assumption that he can't win in a way that is really suggestive of a very, very deep underlying mental issue.

I don't know if you're anime-only or if you know what the "trump card" gojo refers to during his training scene with Megumi, so I'll confine it to what's already appeared in the anime. Throughout the anime, there's multiple times where it's alluded to the fact that Megumi has some kind of "trump card" where he can take his enemy down with him. Gojo specifically refers to it as "dying to win." Sukuna even recognized to some degree that he was pulling it during their fight and called it "burning through your own life." Whatever it is, it's a sacrifice play. It's taking someone down with him.

And we see throughout the anime multiple times where he almost pulls it. Sukuna is the biggest example, but he likely almost pulled it twice in the fight against Hanami during the Goodwill Event arc. When Hanami first confronts them, Megumi immediately says "Get Inumaki out of here" to Kamo.

And that's fucking weird. Inumaki's a semi-grade one sorcerer, higher than him. He's his very experienced senpai. He's no slouch in a fight. Kamo is older than all of them, has been training his entire life, and is a first grade sorcerer. Out of all of them, Megumi was the baby kohai who should have been leaning on the older students. Instead, he's trying to get them out of the line of fire. He probably saw an immeasurably powerful special grade and decided to pull the same trump card he almost pulled in the fight against Sukuna as soon as Inumaki and Kamo were safe.

Later, when Hanami has Maki by the throat, after he was already hit by her root attack that would kill him if he used cursed energy, he makes the same hand signals he did during the Sukuna fight while thinking about how he's the one who has to make the sacrifice play. He was absolutely killing himself to win.

And that mentality makes so much sense when you consider that Megumi already made the sacrifice play with him and his sister all those years ago.

He's spent his entire life locked into being a sorcerer. It's the collateral keeping himself and his sister alive. He doesn't have a way out. His future employment is collateral for an already-accrued debt; he just doesn't have the option to quit and do something else the way everyone else does. And the thing about being a sorcerer is that the mortality rate is not awe-inspiring, to the point where the Kyoto students canonically tried not to get close to each other because they knew that a decent number of them would be dying young and it would hurt less.

Megumi's not stupid, and he's been doing this for a long time. He's probably been reconciling with his own likely violent death for a long time by the time canon starts, and it really fucking shows with how he approaches fights until the bridge fight. There's something so tragic and sad about that to me. Like, what age was he when he realized this life would probably kill him? When he realized that he would never have a way out?

When you bring in his own morality structure and philosophical approach to life, that entire mindset becomes so fucking interesting. Because Megumi's plainly fucking furious that people did this to him.

Megumi's middle school bullying days is both hilarious and endlessly fascinating in the context of his history. His entire thing is that he hates bad people and believes that we’re born into a fundamentally unjust world. Specifically, he hates people that look at the vulnerable and lack empathy for them, to the point where he ended up going out of his way to beat up every single bully in his middle school an unilaterally enforce peace. He had an entire dramatic speech about how he was doing this because they had hurt others—the worlds based on social construct, "please don't kill me and I won't kill you." They had broken that to make themselves feel strong, and if they did it again in front of him, he'd kill them. All that jazz. And it's really interesting that he never once looks down on the people getting bullied. There's a huge emphasis on strength as tied to value in JJK--Sukuna and Gojo being some of the biggest examples--but Megumi only looks down on a lack of empathy and compassion, not people who are physically weak.

Once that's contextualized with the fact that the person who was supposed to protect him abandoned him and sold him to some very bad people, it becomes a lot more tragic. He's doomed by the narrative and he's self aware of the fact that he's doomed. He spends his entire middle school years kicking the shit out of people who take advantage of people because they can, and I personally think that's because that's exactly what happened to him when he was a kid. There's always a bigger fish, and some pretty fucking big fish have him in a corner. But he's the biggest fish in the pond of his middle school, and he does not put up with people who hurt others just because they can.

He spends his last years before becoming a full time sorcerer acting as the sort of person that never was there for him as a child, and there's something so tragic about that to me. Megumi just reads as someone who's already accepted he's doomed and is so angry he wasn't saved.

Even his name has tinges of tragedy to me. Like, it's the difference between "blessing" and "blessed."

On his face, Megumi seems like he's blessed. He won the genetic lottery. He was born with one of the most powerful techniques in the franchise, the one that the Zenin clan desperately wants. It's rare enough that no one else alive has inherited it. It's suggested that it's the Zenin equivalent to the Six Eyes, and Gojo's the one who's always saying how he alone is blessed by heaven. Even Kamo, who isn't even Zenin, commented during their fight on how much people wanted someone like Maki or Mai to get it instead. I won't comment on manga events, but as it proceeds, it becomes even more obvious just how valuable his technique is considered to be.

But Megumi doesn't seem to particularly care about his technique.

He said at one point that, in middle school, he didn't really want to be a jujutsu sorcerer because he couldn't imagine who he'd want to save (the fact that his first act in the series is to save Yuuji is another discussion entirely that I am so mentally ill about). Megumi spends the series surrounded by people who are extremely impressed by and focused on his technique, but for Megumi? His technique and its value seems to be the thing that trapped him. No one was ever going to let him live in peace, and he was young enough that he had no real way to protect his own interests.

He never got to be a kid who got to dream about what he'd be when he grew up. Other kids got to say they'd be an astronaut, or an actor, or a veterinarian or whatever, and he has known that he would be lucky to not die in wizard school his entire childhood. He is a blessing for other people, for the Zenin who want his technique, for the higher ups who effectively own him until he repays his debt, but he's not blessed. He's just valuable sea glass with collectors circling. He hates his name, and I think he hates what he is as well. He's an extraordinarily strong willed person who hates people who take advantage, but he's spent his entire life with a boot on his neck. that must piss him off.

I think his relationship with jujutsu sorcerer would have potentially been a lot better if it had been a choice for him, but he's someone who intensely values control over himself who has been controlled by the circumstances of his birth his entire life. There are all these tiny ways in the show that he tries to exert control over his own circumstances because he just doesn't have a lot of control over his life and it's just amazing character design.

He's just so tragic to me. I am so mentally unwell over him.

Tsumiki and the fact that she was fully about to fight Maki for a hot minute was a lot harder to settle on, mostly because we just don't get a lot about her. But I actually kind of like those kinds of characters? I get to play more in those sandboxes and have more freedom with the character because I'm just using what's little known about them as a bouncing off point and making shit up for the rest.

And with Tsumiki we just do not have a huge amount because she's in a magic coma when canon starts. What little we have is coming through Megumi, who is a naturally unreliable narrator when it comes to her. Like, in his mind, her primarily defines her as "a good person," and that makes a lot of sense when you consider that this is his big sister who was, effectively, the only source of stability and care he had growing up and is almost completely lost to him by the start of canon. he's the last person i would expect to be an reliable narrator about her.

Fanon (at least what I've seen) seems to have translated what we've seen to her into "kind natured good girl" which I don't entirely agree with? I just don't think those kind of people exist. Like, the one's who are all sunshine and rainbows and kind thoughts all the time. Everyone has negative emotions; it's just a matter of how they deal with them.

Also what little concrete we have on her doesn't necessarily suggest she fits that kind of eternally-caring good girl motif anyway.

There's the big example, where she says she would much rather think about the ones she loves rather than curse anyone. This very notably isn't an idealistic "everyone has good in them" rationalization, but it's more "I have better things to do with my time." Forgiving bad people is a trait that Megumi attributes to her, but he's an unreliable narrator about her, so it may be accurate or it may not be. There's a difference between forgiving someone and taking a policy of non-interference.

It's also suggested that she doesn't actually look down on the absence of forgiveness--she actually comments pretty favorably on it. She says that Megumi's refusal to forgive people is a part of his kindness. This suggests that, even though she goes after him for fighting, it's not some kind of perfectly kind "forgiveness is the right thing to do" rationalization. She recognizes the nuance in Megumi's actions and his anger. The thing she really gets on him for is the fighting itself, not the anger, and fighting 1) has wider impacts on Megumi (physically, mentally, emotionally, on his record, etc) and 2) it's suggested that she gets on him because of these wider impacts. We never actually see her discuss it at all in terms of the people he beats up, and Megumi thinks, in retrospect, that she was picking him to care about the same way that he picks who he saves. Again, he's unreliable, so this may be true and it may not be, but I find her character so interesting if it is true, especially in light of her quote about not cursing people because she'd rather think of her loved ones.

That takes Tsumiki from the kind of "prototypical good girl" character type into the realm of someone who has picked to only care about certain people and approach the rest of the world with polite indifference. She doesn't share Megumi's anger at the world, but she doesn't exactly approach it with starry-eyed idealism either.

A much better example of starry-eyed idealism within JJK is actually Yuuji (pre-Junpei) or Geto (pre-genocidal breakdown) than Tsumiki--and the narrative immediately deconstructs both cases of starry-eyed idealism, suggesting that it doesn't genuinely tie being a "good person" to those approaches to morality.

Both Yuuji and Geto kind of spout like, baby's first philosophy class styles of idealism. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way towards either of them--they're both highly empathetic teenagers who care a lot about the world and people in it who are trapped in a system that is fundamentally hostile. Yuuji has a stance of "even considering killing would affect my soul" and Geto has a stance of "I exist for the sake of protecting those weaker than me," both of which aren't wholly without merit, but both are overly simplistic and lack nuance. Which makes sense, because they're both a teenager's approach to morality. In a safer environment, they could have grown in nuance and had their world views challenged safely. but the system they're both existing in isn't safe and never has been--so Yuuji ends up having to confront his stance on killing when he has to put literal children trapped in inexplicable torment out of their misery, and Geto goes off his rocker entirely.

In contrast, Tsumiki really isn't as idealistic as either of them, from what little we see of her. She never once gets close to their levels of "I want to save everyone" syndrome--it's straight up that she's picked her people to care about and has better things to do with her time than waste it on hate and anger. Contextualizing it within her background, that reads more like a survival strategy than being a sparkly kind perfect good girl.

She was a very young girl who had to shoulder a huge amount of responsibility at a young age. She was stuck in terrible circumstances, living well below the poverty line, with her only support being a brother that was even younger than her. We don't know anything about her mom or bio dad, or how much she knows about/remembers Toji, but it's interesting that Toji's approach to life is the antithesis of Tsumiki's.

Toji was so caught up in his own bitterness towards how he was treated that a big part of why he took Riko's assassination was so he could prove he was stronger than *checks notes* a sixteen year old miracle baby and his repressed boyfriend. In the end, the fact that he was caught up in his bitterness was his downfall, and he said it himself: he normally would have fucked off the second Gojo showed up after the assassination was done. He directly ignored his instincts to prove a monkey like him could take on the pinnacle of jujutsu sorcery, and that's what killed him.

There's not enough in canon to tell us either way if tsumiki had any impressions of the adults in her life, but I honestly really like the idea of her looking at the a life where the adults are neglecting her because they've been consumed by their own anger and hate and purposefully deciding to not let it consume her as well. To discard that kind of stuff, not because she thinks there's good in everyone or that it's horribly wrong to have negative emotions, but because she has the people she loves and she's building a life with them by sheer force of will. She's fleeing the teeth of a beast, not approaching the world through rose-colored glass.

For another thing, we have legitimately two actions that she's canonically taken in the series. One was nail Megumi in the back of the head with a milk carton during a fight, the other was fling her fucking body off a bridge with a homemade bungee chord. Girl's probably not a nun.

I ended up deciding that the core of Tsumiki's character needed to be that had a, for lack of a better word, selfish way of loving people. Not to say that she acts selfishly (if anything, canon shows she's intensely selfless when it comes to the people she loves), but just that she's decided to conserve her efforts and care to center around the people she loves and not care about the whole world and everything in it. In her mind, Megumi's kindness is in part because he's angry on the behalf of other people, which is a trait she doesn't share. She cares about her brother and just straight up doesn't have the time or resources for everyone else. Megumi is her landmine.

There's not enough in canon to contradict this reading of her, which makes her fun to write. So she's a relatively nice and polite girl until her brother's in danger, in which case she's immediately stealing cars and about to throw hands with a girl holding a polearm. She's so fun.

That’s What Makes Us Heroes and Villains

All the way back in the aftermath of the Stain Arc, Dabi and Himiko were the first new recruits introduced for the League of Villains. The three of them together, Shigaraki, Dabi, and Himiko are a trio. Effectively the three main characters of the villain side of the story. They are all three of them, traumatized children who were thrown out by society, and are now fighting back against it. They’ve been pushed out further and further until all three of them came to the same conclusion: Heroes are in the way. 

Dabi: “There are no true Heroes.” 

Shigaraki: “You heroes hurt your own families just to help complete strangers.” 

Toga: “You heroes mess everything up.” 

All three of them are children screaming the same thing at the heroes, trying to get somebody to listen only to be ignored. Shigaraki, Dabi, Himiko were all driven to become villains because of hero society. They became villains because heroes existed in the first place. 

A meta on the villain trio under the cut. 

Keep reading

i am haunted by the character of nakahara chuuya. knowing there was a life before becoming a monster but not remembering it. questioning if you were always like this or you were made into this. trying to find a piece of the self that doesn't crawl to violence. being good despite all the odds. being good despite the self. being good in this twisted way because nobody believes youre capable of that anyway. not recognizing oneself as human but wanting it. violence and pain being the only thing you know. because even knowing that there was something before it doesn't change at all, you are what you are because the thing, the rage, the pain, within you, and thinking that taking this part away from you might just take all of you as well.

since you said it's time to talk numbers, i'd just like to share my estimations re: kevin's time at the nest since i have a timeline of pre-canon events. neil joins the foxes in summer 2006, kevin's birthday is in february. kevin left the nest in december 2005, which would make him 19 at the time, since the second book mentiones he's 20 right before the twins' birthday in november.

neil first met him and riko when neil himself was 10, so kevin was around 12. in the first book it says him and riko wrote the numbers on their faces with markers, tracing them over and over - which would imply their images as the 'sons of exy' was firmly in place and kevin had been there for a while. so based on all that i would guess he was there for at least 9 years in normal time, which would be around 13 years in raven time? something like that. but that's just my calculations :D

omg he left the nest in dec 2005 not 2004 🫢🫢 but yes in that sense if he take it as 9 years at normal time it would be 13.5 years and if we approximate it to him spending 13 years at the nest...guys we've hit another 13 in the nora sakavic universe

Sorry to bother you but I’ve been getting into BSD and Chuuya’s my fave, but I’ve been seeing some contradictory things in fanfic so…

Does Chuuya actually have a god sealed inside him? I thought it was just like his power without limitations and was dubious of those takes, but since eldritch beings can apparently be a thing (and not an ability), I think it could be plausible either way.

Though even if it’s not I can see why people would use that route for some good angst.

This is not a bother at all! This is something I very much like to talk about

if you're really new I do recommend you go read both "Dazai, Chuuya, Fifteen Years Old" and "STORM BRINGER" light novels (but SB especially), not only are they great books with Chuuya as the focal point but they will help answer your question in depth (you can buy the English translations but I can help you find the translation online if that's what you need, just message me again)

The short version is that Arahabaki being an actual god, a separate entity from Chuuya that has a personality/a voice/desires, is a common fanon trope, but not a canon fact. The truth is more complex and much more fun, lore-wise, in my opinion

And now the long version, because I'm passionate about this and this is my excuse to deep dive into it (spoilers for Fifteen)

In Fifteen, Chuuya says this:

Chuuya himself presents "Arahabaki" as nothing more than pure power. No thoughts, no personality, but powerful for sure.

That phrasing in Fifteen created a lot of confusion I think, talking about gods as real but also not:

But I think it's more of a symbolic reference, talking about immense power that seem out of this world. Because in practice, as Chuuya said before, "Arahabaki" is simply raw power, not an entity. You can't pray to it, it can't understand you, it can't perform miracles (which is why he knew the Old Boss couldn't have been brought back by Arahabaki and it was all nonsense from the start)

I'm also putting part of the blame on the anime, where they decided (while not being exactly wrong either, out of context it's weird) to illustrate Chuuya "floating in a bluish-black darkness, surrounded by a transparent seal" and being pulled out by a hand:

like this:

When, if you actually reread that part in the novel with knowledge about Storm Bringer, it's actually this moment that was being referred to:

Which brings us to Storm Bringer! (heavy spoilers I'm serious)

"Project Arahabaki" was the Japanese government's attempt to create an ability weapon from an individual. They wanted to craft a singularity that could be used multiple times, thus granting them access to power that should not be accessible normally. They based their research on what France had discovered through Verlaine. The objective is to create a massive energy output through a self-contradicting ability, for which you need a vessel:

Chuuya is the device. "Arahabaki" is the massive energy. That massive energy can control gravity to the point of being able to create localized black holes! N implied that part of the lab's work for the Arahabaki Project was to modify Chuuya's body to be able to withstand the constant gravity effects on it so he doesn't just die. Chuuya's normal use of his ability doesn't seem to have any drastic effects on him, and his physical resilience (to getting hit, stabbed, poisoned, shot, electrocuted, to going through a black hole) does seem to imply they did succeed at least in part.

And this bit here explains why "Arahabaki" was the chosen name for the project; unexplained phenomena across History that can be linked to an ability going haywire, but were attributed to god-like interventions at the time. So you're a funny little mad scientist, you read research papers from another mad scientist that named their own creation after a mythological monster, and you decide to do the same with your own local folklore.

But!

There's still something to be said about how "Arahabaki" is a singularity, and therefore, has its own set of rules. Chuuya does loose control, Chuuya does regress to a sort of destructive instinct while under Corruption. But "Arahabaki" is still no more than an ability singularity. Here's what is said about Guivre and Arahabaki:

They are both singularity life-forms. They exist because they are singularities; outside of it, they are nothing. The inner workings of abilities are still mysterious, but most of them have a link to their wielder's desires. For example, Atsushi's Tiger is there to protect him, a mirror to his will to live no matter what. Verlaine's Guivre is similar:

Guivre was a beast born out of Verlaine's loneliness and resulting hatred. He felt deeply alone in not feeling/being human, and through Pan's (his "creator") special "programming" of Verlaine's ability, N was able to trigger the true form of his singularity with that flare gun and metal powder, which took the form of Guivre. It's what the hat was supposed to prevent, but Verlaine had already lost it by then.

Chuuya's Arahabaki is probably similar. Its first apparition was when Rimbaud tried to absorb him and use his ability for himself, and any subsequent use is linked to grief and survival. Basically, if they're their own entities, they are still born in a specific context and deeply linked to the original ability user's character. And Arahabaki? Only exists if Chuuya uses his activation phrase to get rid of the limitations put into place to prevent him from exploding:

More about about Corruption: SB is kind enough to give us an explanation on how the nullification process works, right here:

Chuuya's self-contradicting ability makes him able to control gravity through the sheer amount of energy it creates by permanently interacting with itself. It is kept under control through the use of an activation phrase, O grantors of dark disgrace, do not wake me again, which, after being either said or thought by Chuuya, will open his "Gate" (which I'm interpreting as a blocker put in place by the lab so the singularity doesn't just kill him, like those poor people they mentioned existed through History), and by opening it, "free Arahabaki's true power" (aka Corruption). When Dazai uses his ability on him, the base self-contradicting ability is nullified, which cancels out the singularity taking place, which stops Corruption and allows that "Gate" to close again. The red markings are there because they're cool and fun.

To conclude, I'll let Dazai do the honors:

bonus: what does that mean for Chuuya's ability?

bons 2: Perceived timeline of Chuuya's past and what happened to to create confusion around his humanity