Dabi (propping His Feet Up On The Table): If Hes Out, I Win!

Dabi (propping his feet up on the table): If he’s out, I win!

Mustard: Ok, maybe playing ‘whose family was most dysfunctional’ wasn’t the best idea we’ve had. Shigaraki's been crying in the bathroom for an hour. We can’t get him out....

I didn’t get you wrong, that was mostly me gushing over the realisticly slow writing of a charcter arc, because I am so used to seeing arcs that are just magically resolved and everything is learned in a minute and this is more grounded of a way an actual human being would react to: too much news at the same time and inconsistent information on top of being involved in the whole society.

Which is also as you said probably the last issue to be resolved, because it takes a lot of time to unlearn all that you were told is true and good, even though it isn’t.

Yeah the image of Deku alongside Hawks is strange, considering their points are very contridicting. With Deku legit wanting to save EVERYONE and Hakws deciding who is worth saving and who isn’t and specifically killing when his version of “saving” isn’t wanted.

To me it seems strange that Deku would work with Hawks if he had seen the video evidence. BUT the hero comission probaly did their very best to get rid of the twice kill video asap. Because even right now it would be off if Deku would be working with a guy who pulled a sword through a man, while he was both running away and with his back to him.

So I’d say he probably knows that Hawks “had” to kill someone from the bs from the official panel, but not what actually happend.

But I do think killing is not on Hawks agenda now, because that would lead to bad press for him and the comission and is more reseved to the LoV, specifically Dabi (and in theory Tomura, who’d definitly kill him for Twice) when it comes to that point, so he can justify it in front of the world again.

Okay but really, this here? This seems like such a weird development for Izuku considering the new direction his character is headed.

And I’m mostly not even talking about Endeavor this time; because as troublesome as it is that heroes keep helping him instead of holding him accountable for any of the things he’s done, we’ve no reason to think he’d do anything that bad right now besides maybe not go along with Deku’s villain saving plan. Plus they have already worked together before so this isn’t surprising.

No; I’m talking about Deku, who is trying to reason with/save notorious villain Shigaraki and specifically not kill him, working with notorious villain killer Hawks, a man who in all possibility (and if he has his quirk back by then) would go for the kill against Shigaraki without hesitation.

(Or possibly worse, threaten Shigaraki’s life to surrender and go to jail for life & then immediately going for the kill when he refuses; thus allowing his fans to claim “see, he doesn’t want to be saved so he needs to die” as though not responding to threats against your life is equivalent to not wanting to better yourself.)

That’s just seems like supremely bad planning on his part, and really highlights to me how he still doesn’t really seem to think heroes and the society they represent can do any wrong. I guess in retrospect that major character flaw of his, the toxic hero worship, hasn’t really been addressed at all yet, has it?

I think Stephanie Meyer is just really good at writing horror scenarios, interesting side characters and amazing backgrounds and would be great at self inserts, but then she just goes and makes the self insert a blank main character that is stuck in a love whatever shape with some weird age gaps thrown into it.       

Whenever I read her books as a teenager my overthinking brain just filled in all the blanks when it got to her main characters being bland, I just imagined them as beeing like I was with opinions and interests. And I always enjoyed all the worldbuilding she had in the Host and the other vampires aside from Edward with those fantastic background stories that sounded so interesting.

And as a teen I didn’t realize how bad the age gaps were, just because I felt so adult as a teen, that I figured it’s cool for a 26 year old guy to be hot for a 17 year old girl. If I see a 17 year old now I think: that’s a kid. But I guess the appeal as a teenager to have an older guy into you because he sees how adult you are, when everyone in the real world doesn’t is there and psychologically understandable. But it just does not hold up to me nowadays. If I wanted to read a self insert, I’d go and read a self insert not read Bella Swan making terrible life decisions and being cool with child grooming werewolfs or Melanie flashing Wanda with makeout sessions of her way too old boyfriend, that only doesn’t sleep with her because they don’t have birth control.                        

That dis-arm-ing discussion

Just a quick reminder of what actually happend in TFATWS Episde 4 before you jump to conclusions. The following thing happend:

-Ayo and Bucky made a deal, Bucky has 8 hours until they have to hand over Zemo, they both agreed to said deal. -Walker invites himself over and demands Zemo. He’s willing to talk about it and puts the shield down. -Right then one of the Dora Milaje throws a spear towards Walker, who they have no buisness with in the first place and that could have killed Walker. -Ayo rightfully demands Zemo back. -Walker demands they disarm and talk about this, Sam a little more sensible interveens. -Walker starts the whole discussion about who’s jurisdiction this is and Ayo says the Dora Milaje have jurisdiction whereever they are. -Walker with his very offputting way does this ment to be friendly hand to shoulder move and is still talking about having a rough start when Ayo attacks him. And not just slightly push him back or take his hand of, she straight up attacks him and throws him around. -The fight between Walker, Hoskins and the Dora Milaje starts and the other 3 do not inverveen at the beginning. -Bucky only gets involved after Sam asks him to and then he uses his vibranium arm to stop the spear that Ayo was about to put into Walker. She either tried to kill or seriously injure him in a fight she started with him. -Bucky uses his flesh arm to stop Ayo from attacking him and asks her to talk about this.

-Hoskins gets his ass beaten by the DM and Sam only gets in after one of them tries to spear Hoskins and Sam not once attacks the DM, only defends himself against her attacks.

-Zemo being smart uses this to get away.

-One DM traps Walker and stops him from fighting.

-Bucky and Ayos fight consists only of him blocking with his vibranium arm against her vibranium weapon and using no super strenght to attack her. And then she disables his arm. My thoughts about it are under the cut:

-The eascalation did come from Ayo and the DM, who attacked Walker twice! He was being an ass as usual, but it did not deserve such a strong attack and definitly not the first speer throw at the beginning, when they only came to take Zemo and had nothing to do with Walker whatsoever (they didn’t even know that Walker wanted Zemo too).

-Also they tried to either kill or seriously injure both Walker and Hoskins (who only got involved after they attacked Walker). -All of them are not in their actual countries jurisdiction, which Walker already saw in Episode 2, but apperently no one told the Dora Milaje.

-Walker is still an ass, who acts like he’s in charage and thinks that people should listen to him, which does not help any situation he’s in.

-Buckys arm can be used as a weapon to attack people, but aside from being very hard to destroy we have seen no evidence that it is stronger than his flesh arm.

-Not telling Bucky about the arm is understandable to a degree, but it shows nonetheless that they have no trust in him about this information.

-There are a lot of practical reasons for the arm to be detachable, but if that was the sole reason it was detachable they could have just told him.

-The fact that Bucky did not know about it just shows that they did install it as a failswitch to stop him if needs be. -This happend AFTER they broke his coding. So either they weren’t sure it worked, were afraid someone might control him again with something else (but then who stops any other person from being mind conrolled with super powers) or they simply do not trust Bucky himself. -Bucky definitly thinks that they do not trust him and that Ayo, who he has a history with does not trust him, because she disabled the arm.

- Bucky has a history of not having control over his body, which Ayo knew very well about. The history of those two is literally Ayo training with Bucky to break his control, meaning he trusts her with complete control over his body. And Ayo took control over his body in a moment where it was not necessairy whatsoever.

-Ayo was the one that told Bucky he was free and she was the one that showed he technically wasn’t by controlling part of his body when she could.

-Bucky did not use his arm as a weapon in this fight even once, he only used it as a defense against the vibranium spears, so Ayo had to reason to disarm him like that. Once the Walker situation was handled (a situation Ayo escalated) she could have just stopped attacking and Bucky would have stopped, he did not want to fight her.

-Ayo literally had no reason to disarm him in this situation. There is no discussion necessairy about taking his weapon away because he never used it as one against her in the first place. -He didn’t even use his super strenght against her, he made it clear he did not want to fight her and she kept attacking.

I thinks it’s way more of a work in progress to get there for Deku, because he grew up with the system, was part of the system and his number 1 hero All Might did not have the personal issues of the system the way the current no 1-3 have (abuse children, kill their antagonists, try to suffocate people etc.)

So right now he is in the stage where he sees that no empathy for.villains isn’t the right way to go, so he’s starting to get behind that and learing that villains are humans too and that they have motives.

And I think that could lead to him discovering the issues of hero society and how the top 3 are wrong in what they are doing, but for him to do a complete 180 right now would be too early for a realistic character development.

Endevour is as you mentioned not the number 1 issue for Deku, because the information from Shoto is far less grave than the one from Dabi and he still didn’t get the full on backstory the readers got and only what Dabi said there and maybe the video (if Deku watched it). And to really get to the point of just believing everything the guy who attacked multiple of your friends and classmates, helped to abduct one and recently tried to kill your friend/ his little brother in front of you it would take more time.

And Shoto himself is too deep in to see himself as a victim, so that might play into what he told Deku and why Deku does believe in Endevour wanting to better himself.

We don’t know right now what he thinks of Hawks, but we also don’t know if he has seen the video of Twice murder. And they have no history together so he might just still see him as the number 2 hero.

That leaves Best Jeanist who he also had little interaction with, the most recent one where he helped them survive and I am not sure if Deku might have just thought that he’d only suffocate Spinner and Tomura long enough for them to pass out (ignoring long term physical damage right now) or if he was contious at that point.

But for none of them we know for certain that he saw them at their worst or heard them say things show this. We as the readers can see their issues, but Deku doesn’t neccessairy have the same.

Thinking about it, I really dig the fact that his want to be a hero has such a bad side for him (like most of the world) failing to see the issues the hero society has.

And that is something he will have to work through to get there with a ton of bad realisation of the fact that Stain’s stand on heros is not that wrong. The first interaction between them was through Ida, Deku’s friend and ended with Stain saving Deku, so there is a step stone to build on but everything he learned in UA after that contridicts this by showing time and again how society views heros, which lead to how Deku views heros.

Considering “saving people” is deeply linked to: if society wasn’t this flawed and bad we would not need to save so many people it is a matter of time for him to be confronted with it but this panel seems to show that he is not there yet and still has a lot to learn before he can save anyone. (Yes I am quoting ATLA, it worked too well with Aang breaking the wheel of just more death and all).

Also this is not even a actual translation yet and the full chapter isn’t out, so maybe there is some twist to it, we shall see.

Okay but really, this here? This seems like such a weird development for Izuku considering the new direction his character is headed.

And I’m mostly not even talking about Endeavor this time; because as troublesome as it is that heroes keep helping him instead of holding him accountable for any of the things he’s done, we’ve no reason to think he’d do anything that bad right now besides maybe not go along with Deku’s villain saving plan. Plus they have already worked together before so this isn’t surprising.

No; I’m talking about Deku, who is trying to reason with/save notorious villain Shigaraki and specifically not kill him, working with notorious villain killer Hawks, a man who in all possibility (and if he has his quirk back by then) would go for the kill against Shigaraki without hesitation.

(Or possibly worse, threaten Shigaraki’s life to surrender and go to jail for life & then immediately going for the kill when he refuses; thus allowing his fans to claim “see, he doesn’t want to be saved so he needs to die” as though not responding to threats against your life is equivalent to not wanting to better yourself.)

That’s just seems like supremely bad planning on his part, and really highlights to me how he still doesn’t really seem to think heroes and the society they represent can do any wrong. I guess in retrospect that major character flaw of his, the toxic hero worship, hasn’t really been addressed at all yet, has it?

I think a big part of this is also the fact that Zemo isn’t a villain to the world, he is specifically a villain to the avengers, supersoldiert and pretty much any sign of people seeing themselves as superior and acting on it.

If we’d encounter someone like Zemo in the real world he wouldn’t be a threat to us.

Meet Thanos, he might kill you, he might kill half the population of your planet, snap your parents, your dog and your best friend. Meet Mysterio who’d sacrifice you for his goals if you are unlucky to be in the wrong place. Ultron wanted to destory mankind, Ego wanted to take over planets, Hela Asgard both with gigantic casulaties.

Zemo? Zemo wanted the Avengers gone and killed a King for it.

Specfically the last part is very understanding, considering how many people we see cheering on the death of any other member of the 1% recently.

zemo in the latest ep was so good. like. the quiet '>:3' energy he has is really funny (the part where walker locked him up screamed 'kinky :) but alright :) i'll allow it :)') , and the way he just??? lay there??? with an ice pack??? after getting knocked tf out is so hilarious and melodramatic to me.

also ik that some ppl took the 'baa baa black sheep' scene to be kind of creepy and they're not wrong per se, but zemo was a father! his main motivation for destroying the avengers was his family! man's just rustee with children. also 'my associate' being a fucking eight year old is fucking hilarious. zemo is absolutely the type of person to sit one of those tiny plastic chairs at a child's tea party and take it very seriously, absolutely throwing in some gossip from the toys to make the kid laugh. 'yes ms bear, your tea is quite delicious. but how could mr crocodile say that about your cookies? it's not like he's any better than you at baking, not after that incident with his wife.'

also,,, we haven't seen that memorial scene from the trailer yet,,,, Owie,,,,,,

YES YES YES EXACTLY

also can i just say that i love ALL of the little details shown with zemo here… like not only the visual ones (him w a cookie around his finger, necklace, etc) but also his behavioural details ?? like for one i’m in LOVE with his head tilt and how, when sam calls him out on it, he has this realization moment that he even has a tic like that in the first place and that he uses it when he’s trying to manipulate/taunt … and he immediately stops with the head tilt. did u also notice how zemo’s tapping his fingers in one of the scenes where he’s handcuffed? it’s nothing big but i find it kinda cute 😭

i also really like how, even though his emotions and expressions are very hard to put into context and even figure out – you can practically SEE him thinking. thinking and studying and understanding and analyzing situations and other people. and in one of the scenes where zemo is talking to the little girl, he gets this blank look in his eyes. as i said before, it’s hard to really understand his little behaviours and expressions, but to me it looks like he’s getting kind of “out of it” and maybe remembering his son.

anyway … i love zemo so much and that memorial scene is gonna kill me