Yeah, Zuko Alone Is Still One Of The Very Best, If Not The Best, Episodes Of Avatar. The Shocking And

remember: the ‘holy’ white doves are just white rock doves, aka the common pigeon!

Ukraine today. This is what russia calls a “denazification and peacekeeping operation”

y'know, it genuinely breaks my heart when i see how some writers treat their readers - and i think we, as a fanfiction community, don't talk enough about it

barking orders at readers, treating reblogs and feedback as some kind of currency they are obligated to pay for interacting with our work, having meltdowns because a text didn't do as well as suspected, calling people out for not requesting in the right and correct way™ - i see it around way too often

on our way to remind everyone that writers are people, not content spitting machines, we forget too easily that readers also are people, not tools to stroke our ego or a source of free and easy serotonin

The First Murder of Twice/Jin Bubaigawara

one of the more heatedly debated topics in the My Hero Academia Fandom, Is the death of the mentally ill villain Twice/Jin Bubaigawara, at the hands of pro hero Hawks/Keigo Takami.

The debate is a facinating view of how each individual reader interprets justice, morality, when and when not killing should be allowed by law officers, should it be avoided at all costs? or should there be times where it is allowed?

On one side of the argument, is the fact that Twice WAS running off to help his comrades, and his briefly surviving clone did murder a pro hero to accomplish this goal.

on the other hand, there is the fact that Hawks stabbed a man who was running away from him, and sought to speciffically kill him, rather than knock unconcious, or capture. Further, his motivation was very speciffically, that he regarded twice as too powerfull to live, and simply a threat that was too massive to be allowed to exist in this world on the wrong side of the law.

There has been much and more debate about this topic, but i am not actually here to discuss the morality of Twice’s actual death.

Rather i wish to take a look at the first time Hawks tried to kill Twice, and show just how unheroic Hawks was while doing it.

The confrotation between Hawks and Twice begins as The number 2 hero ambushes him during the beginnng of the war arc, easily subduing the man he deems the biggest threat on the villains side.

after getting Twice into a position where he is in complete control, Hawks decides to lay it all out on the table. essentially, he’s monologuing for his audience because his ultimate goal at this moment is to convert his enemy into his ally, to make him switch sides. and that begins by laying out just how screwed Twice is.

What is very interesting here, is that Hawks flat out says he’s going to capture Twice and hand him over to the authorities. which is absolutely the right thing to do. That is his job, and i dont think anyone would argue othervise. capturing criminals alive and then bring them to justice, is what law enforcement should idealy be about, and it is most certainly the ideal of hero work within the context of MHA.

That however, comes with a price tag.

Hawks is willing to capture Twice, and even help him out on the path of becoming a law abiding citizen… if he’s willing to ideologically change, and turn to the same path as Hawks did.

what i dont want to do in this post is to debate the reasons for WHY hawks reacts this way(as that would require a full character post on him in his entierty). What i want to discuss, is the complete flip Hawks does once it become’s clear that Twice isnt going to join his side.

the very first thing he does Twice makes it clear he’s not going to cooperate the way hawks wants to, he immediatly turns this mission from capture, to kill, as his very first act is to slice off Twice’s arm, something that would at best have maimed him for life if it hadnt been for twice’s great strides in his abilities in the previous villain arc. this ability to replace lost limbs isnt something Hawks would be familiar with, given its the first time in the series both Jin, and the audience gets to see it.

the point here, is that the moment twice makes it clear where Hawks can shove it, he ditches all ideas of capturing him alive, and relatively unharmed, and switches straight to Lethal force.

and the worst part of it all is that at any point, Hawks could have ended this non lethally by knocking Twice out.

in the brief time where hawks and Endeavour teamed up, there was a very brief scene where a very minor villain tried to get revenge on his ex-company. 

the scene is very, very brief, and Hawks deals with it in one panel, knocking the guy in question out withouth even focusing on him.

This scene at the time was there both establish Hawk’s strength and quirk, and to act as a funny gag. in hindsight however, this very silly scene has a much more darker purpose. its there to showcase that Hawke is completely capable of knocking out people in one single blow to the back.

He could have done to Twice what he did to this random villain at any point during their confrontation, and he simply doesnt. 

he decides, after realising that Twice isnt going to become a hero no matter what, that he has to die.

after violently making mincemeat of twice’s first assault, Hawks gives Twice one more chance to yield, and come to the other side.

and when predictably, twice tells him to fuck off, he decides to end it, but while doing so, he uses some really interesting language. and this little detail is a very interesting one i never really noticed before i made this article. Hawks actually tapes this next part. he makes sure to record it, presumably for legal use. and what does he focus on in this next part, which he knows might one day be used in court?

he speciffically, makes sure to mention how villains like Twice refuse to get knocked out, to make it seem like he had no choice but to do what he’s about to do.

and without video to contradict him, who’s to say that he wasnt? he is free to spin this little encouter any way he wants. twice is after all resisting, so who’s to say hawke was in a position to knock him out?

The readers however, was shown that scene in the previous arc for a reason. to showcase that this is all bullshit on Hawks part.

Hawks is completely capable of knocking out Twice non lethaly here, and frankly speaking, he could, and should have ended this the moment he had him surrounded by his telekenetic feathers at the start of this match.

he beats him to the ground and prepares to murder him in cold blood, all while making sure to speciffically talk into the mic about how this battle has reached a point where one of them has to die, when it clearly has not.

even disregarding that hawks is capable of knocking twice out at any time in this battle, at this point, hawks doesnt even need any of that. 

Twice is beaten. he is bested. he is helpless, and not capable of posing any threat to hawks anymore. he IS resisting, but he is about as much danger to Hawks at this point as a small child with a set of bow and arrows made of twigs and twine is to a knight in plated steel.

there is NOTHING Twice can do here to escape his predicimant, or beat hawks.

which is really what makes what Hawks is doing here so chilling. as he has him on the ground, and Twice prepares his final pointless struggle, Hawks brings down the sword, fully preparing to murder him.

this is flat out murder. and not a murder in the heat of the moment either. this is a planned, and calculated one, where he prepped the legal justification he would need for it. Hawks prepared a freaking script to make the situation look much more dire for him than it actually were to justify killing twice.

For me, this scene is far, FAR more important than the actual killing that happened shortly afterwards. because this is the moment that shows that there is nothing noble, or heroic about the way Hawks killed twice. he had every single opportunity to avoid it, and end it quickly, but he decided on his own, that if Twice wasnt going to dance to his script, he HAD to die.

he decided that HE was the arbitrator of life and death, that he had both the right and the duty, to be both jury, judge, and executioner. 

i dont know about you, but i really dont think anyone could argue that his attempt to kill Twice as he laid on the ground could in any way be called self defence, or saving anyone.

To me, its just a murder, perpetrated by an officer of the law, who went out of his way to make sure that this would not fuck him over if it ever ended up in a court.

Sudden wave of an immense love for humanity has hit me once again…

A new mode of production arises out of the newly networked masses.

words from starpeace

i still can’t believe tumblr as a whole did not come out in full support for ukraine when russia invaded or anytime since like????

- ukrainians are a vulnerable population that have been frequently invaded/subjugated by russia for centuries

- ukrainians have now been fighting in full force for over two years just for the right to exist

- russia’s genocide of ukrainians is well-documented and established at this point: deporting children en mass to be adopted by russians and go through russification; deporting adults en mass and moving russians in to take their place; sweeping through towns and killing indiscriminately; etc.

like? you would think ukraine’s struggle would speak to people on this website who are so obsessed with freedom fighters and standing up in the face of tyranny

except so many people on this hellsite have a communism-boner for stalin/russia that i guess none of the rest matters

here's all three of them

Octavia’s song was so good and hit so close to home. I honestly have zero clue how we’re meant to feel bad for Stolas and think she’s in the wrong. She’s NOT.

It was so POWERFUL. It’s so incredibly difficult to cut a neglectful family member out of your life, or at least I imagine it is. I’ve considered it before various times for my own personal reasons. And while the idea of it is scary because of course you love them, you also need to do what’s best for you.

You can tell she’s really struggling to put her foot down because it’s a VERY difficult and mature decision to make, especially at her age. But I can’t help but feel proud of her for it. (Yes, I know she’s not real, shut up)

I can’t believe we’re somehow supposed to believe she’s making the wrong decision. It’s clear she’s thought about this a lot, and we’ve seen her give him multiple chances just for him to do it again. She feels as though she has no choice, and that’s a very reasonable way to feel.