Tokoyami: wise sage, give me what I need to banish the darkness from my mind
Pharmacist: here’s your antidepressants.
Tokoyami: no curse of mine shall befall you from my dying breath
Pharmacist: thank you
it’s so interesting and puts a different perspective on his story when you consider that kirishima is likely an unreliable narrator. i mean, think about it, his entire character arc is him continuing to believe he’s not strong or skilled enough to be a good hero yet looking from the world around him there are almost no signs of that being true. he scored second place in the entrance exams with considerable points in both villain and rescue, eighth in the quirk apprehension test (when his quirk + the way he uses it is one of his biggest insecurities), was highlighted for his bravery during USJ, made it to round three of the sports festival and held his own in more than one tournament match, does well in training, performs well in the license exam, secures an internship and is immediately hailed as a promising hero-in-training by his mentors and media alike, great handling of his quirk with unbreakable…you see his internal struggles but they never really stop him from moving forward. even in the fight that causes him to “break” he does so well that fatgum stops to say he shouldn’t be underestimated. one of his only failures was final exams and that came down to technique more than his actual abilities
and even more than that, everyone around him sees him as this spirited hardworking likable guy – one of the pillars of the class, proves his clear aspiration with his hero name, has the sort of heroic values that led him to take action in kamino, all the things he’s trying to get himself to be. out of all the characters in bnha, you’d never doubt that he more than deserves to be a UA student. he raises the surface level of his “my quirk’s not heroic” spiel on the bus to USJ and midoriya immediately starts gushing about how cool it is. at the beginning of the iconic “if you refuse to go down that means you’re stupidly strong” scene, his friends are startled that he’s even worrying about that sort of thing because they’ve never seen him as anything other than tough and talented and their equal – and there he was, saying he didn’t think he measured up.
there’s a scene that caught my attention while i was watching the sports festival arc with my friend – near the beginning of the obstacle course, todoroki covers the floor with ice to trap other competitors, and there’s a shot of some of class A evading it while deku talks about how their abilities (both quirks and from training) are on another level. most of the characters in the shot are using their quirks to avoid the ice – ie bakugou blasting himself up, yaomomo using a pole to pole-vault over it – but kirishima’s quirk doesn’t help in that situation. he was in that shot just because his reflexes and physical abilities are so good that he could avoid an attack that big with no warning just by jumping. then two minutes later, it’s dismissed for a joke, but a giant robot falls on him and he gets out completely unharmed. probably not meant to be very significant, but god, he’s so much more skilled than he gives himself credit for.
and that’s why his story is so significant, because he still has room to improve and still has personal issues to tackle, but so much of his growth is moving away from the mentality that he’s weak and his power is useless. internship arc and unbreakable come long after he’s proved himself to be a great hero
kirishima: i don’t have the power, skill, or confidence to become a hero
I started and re-started my answer to this ask half a dozen times. Because it’s a really, really important question, but it’s also a hard question to answer in a useful way. I’m going to do my best.
Nothing is as important as what you believe is true. If I can control what you think, I can control every decision you make. I can control what products you buy, who you vote for, which of your friends you trust—and which of them you distrust; I can choose which social causes you apply yourself to, and how effectively you champion them; to a very great extent I can even decide what you’ll major in in college, who you’ll marry, IF you’ll marry, if you’ll STAY married if the marriage goes bad, what job you’ll go for, how well you’ll do in that job, how you spend your leisure hours, how you treat your children, how you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror, what you’ll eat for dinner, and if you’ll respect yourself in the morning.
EVERY DECISION YOU MAKE is based on what information you’ve accepted. So if I can make you believe what I want you to believe, I own you.
And make no mistake: my best interests are NEVER the same as your best interests. The most you can hope for from ANY source is that their interests and your interests align. If I’m a company, then it’s in my best interest if you buy my product. I am only interested in the quality and safety of my product to the extent that you will not buy it if it’s garbage, or too dangerous. If I’m a newspaper, believe me, my goal is not to make you a more informed citizen of the world. My goal is to sell newspapers.
However, it may be that my reputation is an important part of reaching my goals: and if I feed you misinformation, my reputation may be damaged. And so a degree of trust may be invested in sufficiently reputable sources, since their goal (“to maintain a high reputation”) and your goal (“to learn something”) are aligned. Be VERY CAREFUL when bestowing this kind of trust on a source, and NEVER let them act as your ONLY source. You can never know for sure how important that reputation really is to them, or for what ends they may be willing to compromise it.
“But this information is from a random Tumblr post, not a news corporation, or a professional blog. Nobody’s making money, here. So why would they lie to me?” Attention? Attention’s a big one. Those posts you see going around, full of SHOCKING CLAIMS, usually have tens of thousands of notes. Tens of thousands of people shocked – shocked! – to learn that feeding bread to ducks makes them sick, or that Charlie Chaplin was a Nazi, or that bleach mixed with baking soda can eat through concrete. It doesn’t matter that none of those things are true. It doesn’t even matter if the OP, or all of the people reblogging it, BELIEVE that they’re true. What matters is that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE had in their own interest something that was more important to them than “make sure the things I’m reblogging are accurate.”
Maybe they wanted the prestige of being the first to bring interesting new information to their social group. Maybe they were alarmed by what they read, and they wanted to keep their friends and loved ones safe. Maybe what they read reinforced some bias that they had, and so they disseminated it because they wanted it to be true. Maybe having this surprising intel on their blog made them feel more intelligent, or more socially conscious. There are lots of reasons, because there are lots of people, and every single one of those people had their own best interests.
And none of those interests are yours.
So because what you believe is SO important, and because you are the sole guardian of your own best interests, I think it’s downright reckless to accept any piece of information as fact without asking two questions first:
– Who is telling me this? Do I have reason to trust them? Should I trust them SO MUCH as to let them be the sole arbiter of what I believe on this subject?
– Who benefits if I accept it as the truth? THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. A lot of information masquerades as being in the interests of one thing when really it’s in the interests of something else. Really think about it.
When you choose to believe someone – anyone – about anything, you are giving them power over you. And skepticism is the only thing that protects you from giving that power to people who don’t deserve it.
When you choose to believe someone – anyone – about anything, you are giving them power over you. And skepticism is the only thing that protects you from giving that power to people who don’t deserve it.
And this is why we research outside of tumblr before reblogging posts that claim something as fact, and why we research by looking at more than one source.
Anime Villain Organization™ : Young brooding anti-hero™ …you are extremely talented…more talented than any of the heroes. They don’t recognize it. They hold you back. Don’t you feel disillusioned? Aren’t you losing faith in Good™ and realizing that your life-long goal can only be accomplished through Evil™? We can make it come true. Join us. Young brooding anti-hero™ : …Shit….everything you said is true…I have no choice…to accomplish my goal…I must become Evil™.
Villain Alliance: Young brooding anti-hero™ Kacchan…you are extremely talented…more talented than any of the heroes. They don’t recognize it. They hold you back. Don’t you feel disillusioned? Aren’t you losing faith in Good™ and realizing that your life-long goal can only be accomplished through Evil™?
We can make it come true.
Join us. Kacchan: Interesting offer. Here’s my response: Fuck yourself with a rake. The sharp end. With the spokes. Shove all the spokes up your asshole. All of them at once. As far as they go. Until they’re poking out your throat and you choke on them and die. Then I’ll kill you again. And then I’ll kill you a third time for good measure. And a fourth time because you had the fucking audacity to kidnap me. I’m angsty not evil you fucking shitstain.
A werewolf film written by a woman wouldn’t be as interesting because they know how unrealistic it is to be caught by surprise by something that happens regularly every damn month.
And then there’s that werewolf who goes three full moons without transforming, then transforms one night during a waxing crescent moon.
Now I’m imagining some on the werewolf form of the pill and having to regularly keep up their schedule and one werewolf telling another that they used to have such irregular changes but the pill now makes things so much easier and the other werewolves being like oh man I should talk to my doctor about this.
All i imagined is some poor fucker that’s like “you think you have it bad. I got my first change at 9 and change sporadically every 4 months or so. For 2 weeks. Sometimes it happens randomly so i just gave up.”
Wake up pissed and agitated with a headache and slam some aspirin with no real thought to the matter because it must just be a shit day. Halfway through the day they just “…oh shit that explains so much fuck fuck fuck”
@teland
I don’t usually reblog stuff, but this is just golden.
#these tags come back to my dash every now and then and y’all I am so proud of them you don’t even /know/ #I was so tired that night I almost didn’t even write them but then I was like ‘no for real though we all know how this would go’ #wolves written by people who have actually dealt with these kinds of problems would be faaar more interesting #wolves who were malnourished as children and now don’t always shift when they should because sometimes their bodies can’t support it #wolves who make it to unreasonable ages without their bodies pulling the plug–their first century’s looming on the horizon #and still every month like clockwork they rip and rend and bleed and their grandchildren are terrified this is the future they’ll inherit #wolves who spend a day with their heads in a ghirardelli box trying just to inhale the scent #because they know if they eat the chocolates they’ll be sick but god they want them /so bad/ #wolves who splurge on steak and fresh spinach and glare at anyone who side-eyes them while they shovel it in #they need iron dammit and anyway you have no idea what they’ve gone through these past couple days buddy you wanna stare a little harder? #wolves who get hella irritable vs wolves who become unbearably anxious vs wolves who just wanna stay in bed and cuddle forever #I have so many thoughts about this and maybe I shouldn’t babble about it constantly but fuck it I refuse to let the boring werewolves stand (more tags via @ereborne )
This is priceless
Going to work one day and changing the shift for the new were who’s been around you just long enough.
One month it’s just some body hair and the next month changing so hard it takes two weeks to remember what being human was like
u kno i see all these soulmate fics where todoroki hates having a soulmate and thinks its a distraction/useless/another thing to hurt him and thats valid but like, i’d love to see more fics where having a soulmate is his anchor, yknow? the thread he holds onto throughout his life that keeps him from drowning completely. where’s my desperately hopeful todoroki who starves for somebody to understand him at the most basic level, who clings to the idea of his soulmate like a lifeline, who holds the concept close to his heart and keeps it there. wheres my todoroki who spitefully nurtures this precious thing and refuses to let endeavor stomp it out. theres so much power in embracing the soft and vulnerable parts of yourself and idk i just think my Very Good Boy Todoroki deserves at least one universe where that isnt completely torn from him
just moving along like everyone else 