No, he was trying to cut off his pinkie finger as an apology.
The running joke of the manga is that he used to be a high-ranking yakuza enforcer who’s having trouble adapting to civilian life. Hence her shocked face when she saw the decorations and the creepy way he sang “Happy Birthday”; it’s a traditional birthday celebration for your oyabun, not your wife.
oh my god, i just realized, this means he sees her
AS THE BOSS IN THE RELATIONSHIP
He see’s her as his direct boss, but the group’s head is the Women’s Association Chairwoman:
I take for granted that some things should go without saying because I’m Fandom Old and some people haven’t seen the things I have. So for those who are unfamiliar with this stance-
Put it away. Don’t come back. Don’t think about it again. If it’s really bothering you, inform them that they need to tag that kind of material. That’s what the tagging system is for.
And especially, I can’t believe I’m saying this- especially do not attempt to report them to the copyright holder. At best, it’s a waste of time.
At worst?
IP holders have a really tenuous relationship with their fandom. I can guarantee you that they are aware of what a headcanon is and I assure you that they are aware of some of the worst. They try their best to ignore the worst ones. It is, in general, not worth it to laser-focus in on a single private person’s non-profit projects in relation to your brand.
But let’s say you get what you want- you alert the copyright holders of the offending person and you get their work scrubbed from the Internet. You won!
You have not only opened a can of worms, but you have crashed into the front window of a tackle shop.
There is now precedent for the IP holder to investigate further. And please understand that the author of a series is not always the IP holder. Sometimes its the production company that has the final word on what is libel and you may not agree with the production company. So your fluffy queer coffee shop AU may in fact be in danger as well.
I know it sounds far-fetched, but I’m telling you that every generation of fandom has a story about their favorite author filing a C&D and threatening to sue twelve-year-olds for copyright infringement, or a corporation deciding that they didn’t like certain content.
Do not give them that inch. I don’t care how awful the headcanon is. It is not worth it.
If a fanwork upsets you, then find one that does not upset you and put all your energy into supporting the one that you like. And speaking from a realm of experience- a writer is so much more likely to quit writing if they receive no encouragement. Filing a C&D will only fill them with spite, and they will continue writing if for no other reason than to piss you off.
Win-win: support an artist you like and avoid a spite-write.
Please don’t take us back to the 90′s and early 00′s. Those were dark days.
okay, let’s talk a little about foil character in writing. foil characters are characters who commonly display opposite traits to another character they are closely tied with. it’s a common misconception that foil characters are always the rival to the character they foil and that they have to be opposite in every way–neither of these are true. it’s actually fairly common for a foil character to be set up as the character’s best friend and contrast only the traits the author wants to highlight in that character. i like talking about foil characters a lot because i feel as though they are very good in narratives when written correctly.
like i said in that one ask, mic and aizawa read like foils to each other to me. or more, mic is a foil to aizawa, since aizawa is far more of a main character than he is.
let’s start here–there was a post going around about how hizashi and aizawa’s hero names are pretty much opposites of each other, with erasing something being the opposite of presenting something and a headphone being the opposite of a microphone. that’s a good place to start, because those names are:
1. something that defines them, their careers, an who they are as people
2. fundamental to their relationship and their interconnectedness as characters, given that mic gave aizawa the hero name that he’s kept for 15 years and counting and the name that he operates his entire career under. mic essentially gave him part of his identity, and the name itself is pretty much the opposite of mic’s.
going a bit further, aizawa is characterized as not caring about appearances, introverted, and relying far more on technique than words when fighting/acting. mic is the opposite in every way, with his characterization being primarily very extroverted, obviously putting care in his appearance (i will never forgive him for That Hair), spending most of his career in the public eye, and literally using words to speak. mic is characterized as a person who pretty much never stops talking, while aizawa is much quieter and seems to pick and choose more when to speak. similarly, mic is much more visible about his emotions, whereas i think aizawa would rather die than admit he actually has feelings. mic is always moving, whereas aizawa relies a lot on stealth and being still. mic has neverending energy, aizawa can often be seen in the background asleep or just generally very lethargic. i could go on, but you get the point here for the most part.
also, their designs are opposite of each other, too. i realize that both mic and aizawa wear all black, but you cannot tell me that the thing that sticks out with mic’s design isn’t his hair. it is literally the first thing people notice. the fucking cockatoo hair. and it’s bright fucking yellow. the closest to the opposite of black you can get without going for white. because of this, people assign bright yellow and bright colors as mic’s coloring, whereas with aizawa, everything is just black. dude literally does not wear any color (unless you count his goggles, in which case, bright yellow. literally the same color as mic.). going a step forward, mic obviously puts care into his appearance and has that weird 80′s aesthetic where all he wears is tight leather. meanwhile, we have aizawa, who wears a baggy enough jumpsuit that he could probably just wear a garbage bag instead and no one would be able to tell the difference. mic, who seems to meticulously care for his appearance, if that hair and weird mustache says anything, and aizawa, who looks like he hasn’t had a haircut or seen a razor in 14 years.
then we get to the whole style thing. mic lives his life in the spotlight. dude is a radio (and also television, maybe?) star who is well known, the head of a department, and a well-known pro hero. aizawa, on the other hand, very specifically stays out of the spotlight and works in the underground and acts like he is in actual, physical pain every time he has to talk to the press. with their fighting styles, aizawa is far more passive and would be categorized as either a support or a defense hero, since his quirk is purely non-physical. his gimmick is stealth. however, mic is completely offensive. even in the final exams, mic didn’t even chase the kids down. he literally just stood at the entrance and screamed, while aizawa has to get the drop on his opponents to attack them and usually has to be the first to attack.
speaking of quirks, i made a post a while ago about this, but mic’s quirk absolutely does not have many counters. the best thing mic has to a counter is aizawa’s erasure. mic is insanely powerful and knows how to control his quirk and would’ve easily won the final exam battle had it not been for his fear of bugs. i mean, when aizawa got hurt at usj, he easily leveled a bunch of villains with a single attack. countering mic’s quirk is very hard since he has so much control over it, and really the only counter he has in canon is aizawa right now. which, is pretty significant when you consider that these two are pretty interconnected.
so yeah, i do really think mic is a foil to aizawa. mic usually doesn’t show up by himself in the manga or the anime–aizawa is usually somewhere to be found either directly or indirectly in the scenes he’s in. mic is used to highlight a lot of aizawa’s quiet nature, especially since these are the first two veteran teachers we see in the series–aizawa, who’s quiet and strict, and mic, who’s loud and pretty friendly. i think mic is set up to be his foil and i hope their relationship is expanded upon more in the future, since i personally think it’s one that’s important to aizawa’s character.
I wish that ao3 had an option to filter warnings (and tbh certain authors) out like I will never ever want to read it and just seeing it puts me off so much that often I end up closing my browser because that content upsets me so much lmao
There is a way to do this but I can’t recall how to do it. it’s something you type into the box for “other filters” or something, I don’t remember. who knows??
It’s not a great option, and I don’t know if you can sort out authors that way, but it’s better than nothing if someone can reblog this with how to do it!
Alrighty friends! It takes some specificity, but you can do this. Let me show you how!
So I started with going to the Sherlock (TV) section of Ao3. On the right we find this lovely section! ((I know I’m going over things you already probably know, but I figure this post may go to new Ao3 users, so bear with me.))
Underneath this, I chose sort by Kudos, because that’s a quick way to find most popular fics, for the sake of this demonstration.
With those filters on, we end up with this being our first two results:
As you can see, we have Nature and Nurture by earlgreytea68, and The Internet Is Not Just For Porn by cyerus. So what if I am utterly sick of seeing earlgreytea68 on my list? Let’s pretend I’ve read all their fics, or that I just don’t like her, or whatever. I want this author out. I go to this section on the right:
In “Search within results” I type earlgreytea68 into the bar, with a minus sign in front. This gives me the following page, upon hitting the sort and filter button:
There goes earlgreytea68! But now I’ve decided that Crack is just not my thing, I’m sick of that, too, for heaven’s sake, I want something reasonable in my gay slash fanfiction about detectives that solve crimes about glowing dogs and irish megalomaniacs. Heaven forbid this get ridiculous.
Well, then I add this to my search:
Which gets rid of everything with that tag. My results are now:
Performance in a Leading Role is now my first result!
You can do this as many times as you want; the biggest problem I have is trying to filter out multi-worded tags. For example, “Secret Relationship” is hard to filter. Better to go with authors you dislike or with words like “DubCon”.
I hope this helps! Also remember that googling site:archiveofourown.org and then adding search terms will mean google searches Ao3 for you, and sometimes that works far better.
Good luck!
An excellent in-depth guide! Thank you!!
omg changed my whole ao3 rarepair game
An excellent guide to filtering on AO3!
You can filter out phrases by enclosing them in quotes. For example, if ABO and Hydra Trash Party are not your things, try:
-“alpha/beta/omega dynamics” -”hydra trash party”
I have more advice!
Say, you’re in your random fandom- I went with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since I’ve been reading Iron Man stuff recently. Tony Stark is awesome.
But anyway, you’re on the page, and you see that there are 174,774 works! That is way too many for a casual afternoon’s browsing.
And you see that the first one is Peter Parker/Tony Stark and that is not your jam. It doesn’t work for you, or it squicks you, whatever. Wouldn’t life be easier if you could browse without seeing that pairing (or whatever pairing you don’t like)? You can!
First, click on that pairing tag(You may want to open this in another tab, actually.):
and it’ll take you to the page for that pairing tag. Click this button:
and then look at the address bar! The actual page is unimportant. Copy the numbers located here:
and go back to the original search page! Down on the side, in the same place you can get rid of other tags, type -relationship_ids:”the number you just copied”
Then hit ‘sort and filter’ annnd… magic!
The fics with that pairing are gone! You can also do multiple pairings, get rid of any tags you don’t like, and sort it by date or length or kudos, or whatever.
Enjoy.
I’d just like to add that these sorts of search modifiers ALSO WORK IN GOOGLE AND MOST RESEARCH DATABASES.
Remember that time Gandhi punched a man into the stratosphere? Or when Nelson Mandela dropped the atom bomb? While such events might make for a good game of Civilization VI, the societal and cultural implications would be rather bleak.
That’s the world of Boku no Hero Academia. A world where peace is assured, not by treaties and accords, but by the threat of overwhelming force. The threat of All Might bearing down upon you with all his might.
The surface level problem with this arrangement is not so much an issue for the majority of law-abiding citizens. At least, it wouldn’t be if not for the way this society pushes people toward villainy (which I wrote about here).
The deeper issue here, is the idolization of violence.
Pictured above are 4 of the top 10 ranked heroes in Japan. There are 2 others, but they don’t support my claim, and the remaining 4 are unknown.
All Might – OFA: punches so hard the sheer pressure changes the weather Endeavour – Hell Flame: kills it with fire Ryukyu – Dragon Form: claws, fangs, probably eats livestock whole Edgeshot – Foldabody: makes body thin as a razor, punches at speed of sound
Ignore the Shigarakis and All For Ones of the world, they are few and far between. Consider the more innocuous criminal, like a shoplifter. What strategies would any of these heroes employ in that case? Step 1, offer chance to surrender. Step 2, murder? These heroes do not have a non-lethal option.
And that’s a real problem. Not just for these heroes, but for the society that elevated them to the top 10, rankings which account for popularity more than anything else.
Every child dreams of being All Might. Everyone looks up to this incredible powerhouse. The term “Hero” was meant to mean “one who saves others,” but has twisted to mean only “one who fights villains.” This perverse understanding of what makes a hero pervades society at an institutional level.
Take it from Aizawa, the UA entrance exam is illogical and harmful, stemming from society’s fascination with brute strength. To get in to the UA Hero course, you need a combat-capable quirk. This system precludes people like Shinso or Aizawa from gaining admission, people who posses some of the greatest and most useful quirks any hero could ask for.
But the exam never asks, “What’s your true potential?” It begs but two simple questions, “How many villains can you beat up? How many people can you save (from villains)?” And the results end up looking like this:
That’s right, Lord Explosion Murder is the star of this year’s class. Bakugou’s quirk and personality are only useful for trying to kill things. Maybe he just needs a better role model. Who does he look up to? Oh, right, it’s All Might.
All Might is a defacto demi-god of this world. Outside of villainous circles, you won’t find anyone who doesn’t idolize him. But what good is that idolization? If someone like Bakugou genuinely believes himself to be following in All Might’s footsteps.
Well, maybe this is an isolated problem. All Might is UA’s celebrity alumni, of course they’ll try to keep up that image. But the other hero schools can’t all be like that, and the hero licensing program is bound to be–
Oh, nope. It’s all violence, all the time. Neat.
Granted, the provisional license exam does have a rescue phase, but almost everyone passed that. The part intended to cull 95% of the applicants is combat-based. Are there even enough villains in the world to justify being this focused on combat?
As tragic as it is, the elevation of violent heroes is only half the problem,
Because this is a zero-sum scenario: if brutality rises to the top, then utility is pushed to the bottom.
Non-violent heroes simply do not have a clear path to success. I’m using Shinso as an example again, because there are so few like him that manage to rise to the point of being mentioned in the story. The realm of heroism is all but institutionally sealed off for them.
Society wants heroes who fight villains. That is what their purpose has become. And anyone who can’t conform to that mold gets pushed out. Maybe Stain was on to something; heroes have deviated from their original purpose, they now exist only for the spectacle of the fight.
All Might’s position as the Symbol of Peace does not extol heroism, but rather violence in heroism’s name.
Though I find myself concerned that Damian would be seen as appropriate for this. If he’s not overtly sexualised, then fair enough, but they have a lot less leeway with him than the others IMHO.
I’m still trying to figure out if Jason’s white streak is still canon or not.
Jason has a rather unusual metagene power; his hair is sensitive to drama in the narrative. If it would be more visually striking to have the streak, it will appear for as long as required, then it will fade away… or vice versa, no-one’s sure any more.
(Personally I’d always have left it in. it’s a nice quick visual distinction between him and Bruce or Dick, the grown up members of the Batclan, otherwise they do run the risk of being very same-y looking (Jason is close to Dick in general looks, and close to Bruce in build)
I was wondering when this statue was going to be released. Exciting times! I hope they make some X-Folks in the same vein. I need some to go with my Kotobukiya
ladies.
Sorta surprised they’re making Damian. I thought the sexy poses would be reserved for the adult characters…
There is currently a content creator blackout in my fandom, and seeing all those posts about art theft brought back some memories.
(Go and read @hchano‘s brilliant post, by the way. I’d have replied to it but then my reply turned into a novella.)
The art theft stories resonate with me, you have no idea.
You know, if someone was to check my ‘rules’ pages right now, they’d see this:
Fanart: I don’t care about reposts, don’t worry if you spot my drawings somewhere else
Now, it might look like I’m super chill about this. That I’m not ‘whining’ like those artists who ‘care too much, it’s just drawings’.
The truth is I don’t care because I haven’t posted an artwork I gave a fuck about since 2011. I do not want to bother with that. It’s thankless. It’s an endless source of stress and discouragement. Why would I spend effort and time when I know the end result is that I’ll be – for lack of a better term – pissed on by entitled jackasses and by thieves?
Story time.
I used to run a flash minigames website. It didn’t have much content, since I had to draw it all myself, and figure out how actionscript worked, and so on. Still, I put ads on that website, and not only did it pay for itself, it brought me a tiny bit of income too! For my own content that I had made myself, just imagine! I planned to make that little site grow and grow until it could support me and drag me out of the hell that is unemployment.
It’d see cute stories on Stumbleupon by parents who said their toddler had loved the games. That made me super happy. It was real nice for a while.
And then I got an email from a girl in Israel telling me she had seen my art sold as coloring books in her area.
That was a blow.
I mean, I’m literally an artist by trade. I have a diploma to prove it and all. I’d have loved to get paid for my art, seeing how I couldn’t fucking find a job using those skills that were apparently good enough for commercial use.
But I kept the site up for a little while, as well as my profiles on art websites, though I barely updated them. I’d ignore the thieves that sold IMVU stuff with my art on it. I’d pay no mind to the brats who sold it on Gaia Online, because it was just virtual coin. I tried to ignore the fact that some of my stuff got popular under someone else’s name.
Just drawings, right?
Anyway, my flash games could be stolen. Actually, in the general sense, it was pretty much the goal. There was my website’s logo on them, a direct link. Having them redistributed meant traffic coming back to my site, and advertising income for me.
Can you see where this is going?
Back then, there was a flash game monetization network, called MochiAds. It was cool. It allowed you to insert ads into your games, and a great many flash games websites would import MochiAds’ feed, which made for a fast and widespread distribution of the games. It was a neat service.
Except someone decompiled my games, replaced my logo by theirs, inserted ads inside them and published them as their own.
Within hours, you could google the new names the thief had given to my games, and get 500.0000 results. Accounting for all of my games, that made for millions of reposts, all of them defaced, linking to the thief’s website, monetized by them.
Of course, MochiMedia responded quickly when I reported the theft, but their disabling the ads on those games didn’t remove them from the thousands of independent websites they were posted on.
I never made another flash game.
As a matter of fact, I no longer draw.
I was never in it just for the fun. I wanted the rewards. I wanted to make art my full-time job. Hell, I went to school for that. I wanted the compensation for my effort and time. I wanted my website to grow from the ‘sustains itself’ to ‘sustains me’ size.
And then I realized that people could snap their fingers and steal it all. Make me look like I had plagiarized my own work. Bury me in stolen content.
I learned that, on the internet, there was no point giving your heart and soul to something you can’t nail in place.
And, more than anything, I learned to hate drawing.
But, hey! Look at the bright side! Now that I gave up on drawing, nobody will steal my art anymore!
Isn’t that great? 🙂
shit like this is why i can’t stand it when people say art theft isn’t a big deal, because it is a big deal. it’s emotionally draining.
and guess what, our emotional state is directly tied to our inspiration. so if we feel fucking threatened in the one safe place we go to when emotionally wrecked, chances are we will not want to go there anymore. we will not draw. not because we don’t want to, but because we physically can’t.
And I know I’ve already posted this but I’m just shook of how alike they are…..
Not only psychologically but physically too.
And I know that Aizawa is only 30………. But I just love these two.
They have so much in common and I seriously want Aizawa to become at least his mentor ( Like All might with Midoriya )
let me dream
Tumblr agrees with me.
Alright alright…….. My last clue…
Guess who rub their neck too?
And they have a mutual love of cats? Hah hah. Could be an older sister in the Aizawa family. That would also explain the different surnames. And then he can be weird Uncle Shouta.
I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.
I saw this post about an hour after I saw a post that said, essentially, “There should be a word for that thing where [exactly describes ‘squeeing’].”
I feel like the time has come to produce something like this:
Squee: The noise you make when something is so good that all you can really do is squeak or squeal. A high pitched sound of delight, often accomanied by hugging yourself or others.
Squick: A fic/art/concept/topic that is repellent to you, so you reject association with it and instead retreat to your personal comfortable spaces- all the while remembering that someone else’s comfort is not your own.
YKINMKATO: Also called “kink tomato.” Abbreviation meaning “your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.” Used to explain why you are rejecting art or fic brought to you by someone else. A solid mantra to recall instead of sending flames in people’s comments
Flames: The comment equivalent of anon hate.
AMV: “animated music video” or “anime music video.” Often, this is stylized to fit a specific fandom, such as a “PMV” (pony music video) in my little pony. May also be referred to as a lyricstuck.
Filk: Combination of the words “film” and “folk,” this is a music genre, to which “fan songs” and “fan parody covers” belong. If you don’t really understand what this means, take a quick listen to American Pie, then compare Weird Al Yankovic’s Saga Begins
BNF: Big name fan. You know that one person who is just so fuckign popular in your fandom? Their art is always on your dash, everyone knows their fics? Being spoken to directly by them is basically being noticed by everyone ever’s senpai? That’s what these people are called.
DL:DR; Not unliked the teal deer (tl;dr, or “too long, didn’t read”), DLDR means “don’t like? Don’t read!” It’s a reminder that you are under no obligation, ever, to expose yourself to uncomfortable (or, squicky), or potentially harmful (or, triggering), material. Not ever. If you don’t actively like something? It’s not worth your time. Skip it.
Gen: or “genfic” “genart” etc. Fan works which contain no or very little romantic content. Often these are styled after the canon material, and may be called “episodic” ro “slice of life” in addition.
Lemon: Work containing strong pornographic elements
Lime, or Citrus: Work containing mild or implicit pornographic elements
Sockpuppeting: The surprisingly common scenario of someone making a bunch of fake accounts/sideblogs to send themselves reviews or hate, to try to increase views or drama surrounding a work. The accounts they make are called Sockpuppets.
WAFF: Warm and fluffy feelings. A genre of fic that exists just to be therapeutically sweet. Nowadays, usually just called “fluffy.”
Schmoop: Take WAFF and somehow make it even more syrupy. You’ll know it when you see it.
Whump: Imagine if you will, a hurt-comfort fic. The comfort might be considered WAFF. The hurt? That’s the whump.
Wapanese: When white autors pepper their anime fanfic with random, tonally inappropriate japanese words.
Anthropomorfic: Nowadays we just call these “humanstuck” or “humanized AU.”
Wank: Wildly disproportionate drama that crops up because someone wrote/drew/did something that someone else didn’t like. Seriously, I cannot begin to express the fiascos that have come about from all this. Just… Just go look at this.
Plot bunny: Story ideas that you probably won’t ever actually deal with, but that multiply entirely out of control, creating huge worlds in your head that you’re probably not going to write. But hey! You might! And until then they make great sideblogs/askblogs/tumblr posts.
Casefic: Fanfics that try to create an episode-like feel for procedural and crime dramas, moster of the week shows, etc.
Jossed: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a series, and whoops, turns out we were all very, very wrong.
Kripked: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a show and, hot damn, we fucking called it.
Secret Masters: The people who run the websites/ communities/etc that we all do our fanning on. Less relevant now that we have things like tumblr, but when everyone had to run their own archival and social sites for each fandom, it was more important to pay our respects to the strange and powerful beings that brought us all together and gave us our fannish homes. Think the staff of AO3, for example.
Bashing: When a writer purposefully writes a specific character as a horrible, horrible person so that they can throw them out of the storyline, usually to allow their OTP to get together without trouble. Distinct from fridging in that it doesn’t require the character to die, but rather to be such a screaming harpy that they get rightfully removed from the main characters’ lives for being an abusive hell beast. Generally, a type of character hate. Be wary of people who bash women, queer people, and POC with consistency: they are not safe to be around.
‘Squick’ also has an alternate horrible meaning for Harry Potter fans who were in fandom a while back. Dear god.
Also:
Purple prose: Fic that is excessively flowery and complicated. Basically the “me, an intellectual” meme. If it has the phrase “cerulean orbs” you know it’s purple prose.
Beige prose: The opposite of purple prose. Basically, the plainest (and, if done wrongly, the most boring) type of prose.
R&R: Read & review. Back from when fic comments were called “reviews” and there was no such fucking thing as the kudos button.
*wipes a tear away* I feel so vintage.
Know your history children.
important history lesson
*stares out. breaks fourth wall*
Lemons.
For all you young’uns out there.
Also, I’ve seen people tag a ship-focused fic both M/M and Gen on AO3. Just because it also features friendships doesn’t make it Gen! If the main focus is a romantic relationship, do the Gen readers (which is not me, but they do exist) a favor and don’t tag it Gen.
^^^^^^^ THIS. filters are only useful if things are tagged correctly and i can’t search for non-ship fic when everything is tagged for both ship AND gen 😦
please for the love of god tag responsibly and don’t make people who are looking for non-romance fic suffer
I miss proper gen, and the expectation of it in specific places. I wish that was still a tag that followed specific conventions
I actually had a look at that fandom wank link, and it reminded me of another term that’s gone a bit by the wayside:
TOSsed: when an online community was kicked off a platform for (real or alleged) violations of the Terms of Service. This was not infrequently the result of complaints about queer content specifically.
Never forget why we needed an archive of our own, folks.
In corollary to the “If the drive is romantic don’t tag it gen” thing, if there are romantic relationships but they exist as total background nonsense (example: Character A asks her parents to put together a Princess AND Pirate theme birthday and wacky hi-jinks ensue trying to book a fairy princess actress and a schooner shaped bouncy house on the same day, both parents love each other but wish they’d share details like who ordered the cake) THAT’s gen, not het or slash. Don’t tag it as het or slash, you’ll drive away the pure-gen readers who actually want confetti-canon crisis fics.
A Beautiful Monster 