MAJOR BNHA 423 SPOILERS

rei todoroki is such a difficult character to talk about because I think people have legitimate reasons to be…some level of uncomfortable with her, but at the same time most people who bring that up don’t do so with anywhere near enough nuance or empathy for a woman with an abusive husband, and lots of them outright victim blame her (as I posted about before, people straight up blame her for being raped) and don’t see the way horikoshi is treating her lately as a problem. 

watching the responses to her these last few chapters…………the misogyny and people’s inability to care about a battered woman made my stomach churn. people have become so quick to jump on her before questioning the writing at all. 

I wish she was written with more care and actual thoughtful, complex characterization–I think her relationship with shouto sorely needs to have actual work put into writing it because what she did to him was pretty awful and traumatizing even if there were obviously extenuating circumstances. shouto doesn’t blame her, but with ten years of distance between them after the incident to stew in their feelings and suffer alone there’s a lot to explore when they reunite. and I think healing from trauma your mother caused because of your mutual abuser is much more worth exploring than putting all kinds of screentime into forcing him to build a better relationship with his dad, but a lot of what seems like obvious baggage he carries from his relationship with his mother has never been unpacked. 

same goes for her relationship with touya. I’d be interested in exploring his anger towards her more but we’re probably not going to get that, because these days she’s only relevant when she can be used to make endeavor look better (and before that as an accessory to shouto’s character). the way touya reacted to both his parents was very different despite resentment that built towards both(desire to please endeavor mixed with resentment over being tossed aside vs. what seems like complete dismissal of his mother), and I think that’s worth looking at. also I think, with what you can extrapolate from her relationship with her parents and then the way endeavor abused her, her inability to help touya is partially learned helplessness(on top of the fact that…there’s only so much she could do when she was being abused the way she was). 

AND I get that they’re not major characters the way shouto and now touya are but it’d be nice to get more on what natsuo and fuyumi think of her, too, especially since they’re the only ones who visited her for ten whole years! they saw a stage of her life everyone else missed entirely, have maintained a closeness with her no one else has. 

yayayyayaya bday bb !!!!!!

in days before tragedy hits

Otaku bfs go on a shopping date 💍🎮

Dabi lives in a dirty ass old car except he keeps it parked behind a 7/11 because he can't drive

I tried to like “copy” @crabbng ’s style because I love her art so much but then like I ended up doing like Idk? A mashup??? Idk I’m sorry I guess you can call this a tribute to her art? I love you Jacki. That’s all.

i would be more tolerant of hawks or feel like #hottakes about him had some value if there was any interest in discussing him as a marginalized person buying into the system, for power, stability, and whatever misguided belief that the system does good. a child in poverty with abusive parents becoming a person who would do anything in order to never be disempowered nor poor again. a child who was saved by the hero system convincing himself that because he got out anyone can get out, especially anyone who is (like himself as a child) morally blameless and willing to try hard to win the approval of his superiors.

if only there was any talk about dabi and twice being, in hawks' view, morally inadequate and not appropriately grateful towards the establishment (nor, in dabi's case, his own abuser), because his assessment is informed by his own contrasting experience. he needs to perform those mental gymnastics to justify his own place within hero society, to justify his own deserving nature by creating a category of people, within his mind, who are undeserving. if only those people who resemble him would change, if only they would work harder, if only they would come around to his way of thinking, they could replicate his success and earn a place within hero society.

there are plenty of marginalized people who've somehow "made it" and are more than happy to use their own marginalizations to support the status quo. "i'm a poc and if i achieved this so can you." "i'm mentally ill but i did this, so what's your excuse?" "i'm a survivor and i think she's lying." we recognize that these people exist and are still marginalized with all the social precarity that that entails; however, they do harm to people who are even more vulnerable than themselves who share their marginalizations. talking about this means analyzing the positionality of a fandom-favored attractive skinny guy and the power he wields though, so it's more appealing to throw him into the trauma olympics to be bnha's one true victim or whatever.

My full piece for @bnhaslumberpartyzine !!

Shop reopens next week so you can still get yourself copy of this lovely zine 💖💖💖

I cannot get behind the dabi chain smoker agenda

Every time AFO says anything to taunt Endeavor I just

Credit where it’s due, I guess