thanks, and thanks again! @buddyheroes - Tumblr Blog

i would really like in a post-s2 retconning That scene, in which yuri is gravely injured but survives, him recovering and figuring out what his code of justice actually is with the support of a kotetsu and barnaby (who didn't just... go Okay :) thanks when he was in crisis bc that is out of character for both of them) as well as to varying degrees the rest of the hero group

#p #he pretty clearly doesn't have any friends full stop. and being friends with your coworkers is a place to start!#probably does change the dynamic of 'coworkers' if theyre people who have saved your life though lol #anyway! this is largely inspired by a fic i read several years ago where he and nathan are both touching up their makeup #in a bathroom at work and they compliment him and give him some tip and he like thinks about it the rest of the day

OTHER S2C2 THOUGHTS before I go to sleep

i ended up liking subaru :) don't have any more in depth thoughts than that abt him though lol

i do not remember her name rosyck or whatever was overall kind of boring but the 'people with useful powers are treated way differently than other nexts and that exceptionalism is harmful' thing she talked about in the end worked well with the academy eps in both seasons i think. would've done better if there were like any hints of it being her deal before it was outright said lol

i generally think they tried to fit too much Stuff into this season :/

i wanted to see more of audun and wish they had explicitly compared him and kotetsu bc for the like Minute that he gets to speak with clarity i think there's a decent comparison to be made (especially since the last few episodes is all about Yes we're all consciously gonna do some vigilantism lol)

i was expecting aurora to be a villain! wrong on that. i'm curious if she's supposed to look a little bit like yuri's mother bc that popped into my mind during the confrontation on stage

the plot with thomas and ruby felt really glossed over, I was expecting more Stuff to come of it

i said this in tags before but i miss ben :( he was a Big feature of the first season and rising and seemed to be a good friend of kotetsu's and he's just... not there? maybe that means kotetsu is doing worse than he lets on :/ but i still missed him

#p

agoddamn

I thought Lunatic's focus episode was really really good, which is largely why his ultimate fate leaves me so cold.

I felt like the focus ep did a good job of demonstrating how Yuri wasn't being literally haunted by an evil ghost--his hallucinations were a product of his own mind, his guilt and self-loathing. That's why the hallucination disappearing wasn't about forgiving Legend, but Yuri allowing himself to move on.

With both his parents, Yuri is tormented by hatred and love.

He wants Legend to be this evil boogeyman figure; he literally projects Legend as an evil boogeyman figure haunting him into his reality. But the boogeyman take on the situation isn't quite right--he had positive memories with his dad, he craved his father's love and affection, he wanted his father to get better and succeed when he was a boy. Yuri wishes he'd been too cool for it all and hated Legend for the pathetic, cruel man he ended his life as the whole time but he knows he didn't and that's part of why he's so disgusted with himself.

Somewhat similar situation with his mother. She helped enable the abuse and continued to rub salt in the wound after she developed dementia--she kept hurting him, and he wishes he could just stop caring but he can't. His inability to reconcile the suffering he experienced with the love and need for affection he can't stop feeling is what compounds his suffering.

His breakdown in his mother's pool of blood left me with this cathartic rawness. He'd finally been able to let go of his father's toxic identity (a literal legend) and let it stop haunting him, accept that he was only a man. It was like lancing an infected wound, draining the pus--an ugly, painful, necessary experience. It was great.

...and then he just kills himself because it would be too narratively complicated if he survived and the heroes are just like "aight." Fuck. Whatever.

#it took me a minute to actually process the very end and how bad it was bc the leadup was so promising 😑 ugh #yuri

yurissweettooth

I'm... fine... This is............... fine.........💔 (It's actually not fine lol) My longwinded thoughts about TB2's ending under the cut (contains major spoilers, of course)

It isn't even that they killed him... it's how wildly out of character it was for all three of them. I don't really even have the proper words for all of it right now, but if you saw it you probably know exactly what I mean even if I can't articulate it well here.

The way they were talking and smiling (for quite a while, long enough for emergency services to arrive) while Lunatic was left to lie on the ground was absolutely shocking. Official or not, they are heroes and they protect civilians and criminals alike!!! Why would they leave someone so injured unattended? Why did they not stay at his side like they usually do? How did they take their eyes off of him so long that he could sneak off?

Additionally, when they found him, they didn't take many measures to save his life. Have they never seen a suicidal person before? Of course they have, as heroes they likely deal with it often. He was standing precariously looking like he was going to jump, he put a barrier between them and told them to stay away, and yet it took him actually setting himself on fire for Kotetsu to yell "what are you doing!?" and run after him???

Also wtf was up with what they said to him? They didn't try to talk him down or beg him to stop or reason with him. They didn't tell him his life had meaning or that he wasn't deserving of death. They didn't give him the same treatment that was given to Virgil, or Fugan and Mugan, or so many others. They simply said "I didn't agree with everything you did but thanks for the help" and "you were a true hero out there". It almost sounded like they were just accepting his death!!!

And then the way they acted afterwards... they looked like their 3 day old pet goldfish just died, not like a man they knew for YEARS just took his life right before their eyes and they weren't able to stop him. Not like Kotetsu had failed to protect the man he'd spent actual years trying to change and reason with and help. Not like the Judge turned Director they respected and knew to be helpful and reasonable wasn't beaten to a bloody pulp and trying to kill himself. Not like a human being who is deserving of life as all human beings are wasn't just in need while they did nothing to stop it.

But yeah, go out to eat. Smile and laugh, celebrate right after you carelessly and willfully failed to protect someone.Someone you had at least some marginal connection to, no less.

This is a huge slap in the face to Yuri as a character, but it's a full-on assault on Barnaby and Kotetsu. It's actually appalling how out of character and regressive that was.

Additionally, Kotetsu never even remedied his past blunder when having Legend revealed to him. I thought for sure that it would come up again and he'd be able to speak more empathetically and clearly, but no. Yuri's last one on one conversation with Kotetsu, someone he clearly respected and admired at this point, was being told that Kotetsu still respected his father after he abused his and that the power of friendship would have stopped it (how did Kotetsu know whether or not he had friends? Also was his wife not enough? She supported him even when he was beating her, like how much more support and companionship did the guy need?). And of course they didn't know, but this was all on the day his mom died too, yikes!!!!!

I thought the message of this series was about how every life was worth saving and that there were no sins too heavy to be atoned for. Yuri has been having that message drilled into him by Kotetsu since the beginning, even in S1 we can see him start to change. By the Rising you can witness him start to take that to heart and when cour 2 rolls around he's stopped killing entirely and is attempting to live a normal, peaceful life in spite of temptations.

Even after his (quite understandable, frankly) slip up he goes through MORE character development. Though initially he tries to kill again, his mother and father's words take on new meaning to him when he teams up with the heroes. He has the revelation that he has his own autonomy and can follow his own heart. The actions that preceded were of his own will, and he seems to use that knowledge when going into battle alongside Kotetsu and Barnaby. He can be a true hero, he can avoid turning a blind eye to evil. When he fights against Audun, he isn't going for a kill. Let me remind that there have been SO many points in this series where Yuri has asked that the heroes prove their form of justice to him, where he has sat back and observed, where he has even aided them in carrying out their own form of justice. And now he is experiencing it first hand!! He threw himself in front of the heroes and took serious hits to protect them, to protect their form of justice… so why then does he do a 180 at the very end and decide to stick to his own code of justice? The old one? Why does he use his fathers words (which, not even moments before in that episode he used to inspire him to be a hero in a way that wasn’t killing) to justify killing himself??????????

It was incredibly out of character!!! So much of the stuff between those three was in that episode to an insulting level.

I’m not even bitter that he died. If they needed him to die then he can die, but there are so many other ways they could have done this that didn’t feel shallow, rushed, and completely careless. There was something so cold about the way everyone immediately forgot about him and took to smiling and laughing again. He was put through an unimaginable amount of torture porn, lost everything, had a redemption, undid the redemption, died in mental and physical agony, and no one even cared, thus proving how he likely felt: He was not worthy of living or redemption. It’s so antithetical to the spirit of the whole series, as was a LOT of this season.

And this is as someone that LIKED this season. It was messy, there were weird moments and overly convenient plot devices, and it had a serious change of tone compared to S1 and the Rising but I still enjoyed it! I loved the new characters, I loved the suspense, I was so compelled by the story, and I was so invested. For all of those reasons I was able to accept the minor nitpicks, even some of the ooc moments, but that ending… wow, so much came undone then. It was so much build-up just to have so many plotlines ditched and fall flat. And what did we have to show for it all? A fist bump (he couldn’t even hug his crying partner after all they’ve been through together? A fist bump? Really???) and some sequel bait? Lol

In the end, so many of the amazing ideas felt pointless or like they did not resolve. I love that they tried so many things, but I genuinely wonder if they tried TOO many. There was a ton of new characters with forefront plotlines thrown in (several who didn’t even make it cour 2), many major interweaving and ongoing storylines, and an attempt to tackle a huge plot while balancing so many other aspects. It was ambitious, but it felt like a bit much for one season and, in the end, it was rushed.

Other minor issues become more glaring when there is little to no payoff in the end. I’m not sure how this affects my overall view of the season… as of the moment, I still like it. I had a lot of fun and there are many interesting ideas and some pretty solid stuff there. I am the type of person who loves to rewrite stuff I didn’t enjoy or pick up dropped plot threads for fanfiction exploration and there is truly a lot to explore here.

It had been my mentality since the beginning that I would likely view S2 as a separate entity from S1. From the get-go the vibe and tone was different and it was hard for me to reconcile them in my head. I still maintain that mentality now. I like them both, but they are very different in tone, spirit, and heart.

I am just so disappointed in that ending… it’s appalling… Kotetsu, Barnaby, and Yuri all deserved much much better :(

#oh yes to all of this #there were a lot of smaller sloppy/unfulfilled things thru the rest of the season and this is the only Big one but it is p damn egregious

vita-divata

And now I'm happy 😌

#thank you. really didn't feel right for kotetsu to just like. stand there and let him fall #grievously hurt or not THIS guy? who has been established for the past decade as recklessly caring?#yuri #i am gonna think on what ship tag i like for him and kotetsu give me a few days #also... three of them..?

wyrdle

"Papa, like you, I have committed a grievous sin."

(Mini fic under the cut)

death's guiding hand

like butane on my skin

#yuri

kkmek

Thank you for being such a great character

#:(#yuri

i kinda want to see how k&b adjust/what kotetsu does day to day/what their work looks like just practically after that but without yuri in it SOMEWHERE i don't think it'd feel like the same series :(

#p

did the mayor fucking die

#i finally watched cour 2 ✌️#generally really liked it! annoyed that ben wasnt in it like At All #and had.... sort of guessed that yuri's arc would end like that but i still don't like it :/

taigertea

also think a lot about how much the mask and the guise of a persona means to Kotetsu and protects his privacy. like it’s put under this surface level idea that it’s just because Kotetsu’s “old fashioned” but i think not having your real name out there as a hero is really important if you are able to keep it covered up??? like with how high risk being a hero is and with how many criminals are probably out to get you, you don’t want your real name and face just out there for everyone to see. there’s a reason its a thing TM in superhero universes

it’s also really shows the disconnect between Kotetsu’s home life and Barnaby’s. like Kotetsu has a mom, brother, daughter, and now nieces he’d want to protect. but now anyone can look up his full name and history and know his powers. that’s scary. Barnaby doesn’t really have that, which even further emphasizes Barnaby’s loneliness in the series and why he gets so annoyed at Kotetsu for harping about that because he unfortunately might not be able to understand that since he’s gone so long living on his own.

there also might just be a general understanding for Kotetsu on not getting TOO personal with others even if he’s not able to quite articulate to Barnaby exactly why hero identities and personal lives should be secret, like how no one in the heroes group knew he had Kaede except Antonio who explicitly knew Kotetsu before becoming a hero. wonder if there have been any heroes in the past who ended up getting hurt because their identities were found out in the past.

#i imagine there were!!! i hope we get to see more abt the first generation of heroes along w legend stuff in the rest of s2 #kotetsu

hedonisticgene-deactivated20230

Thinking about Fugan and Mugan and how they definitely went "if we have to defeat superheroes to make dad happy we need really cool outfits!!" And then they bring one of their ugly drawings to Brahe all proud of themselves like see dad we want that!! Brahe is choking back tears like "anything for my boys :( dad has to go to another room to make a phonecall" while he definitely locks himself in the bathroom to cry

#:')#mugan & fugan