#mob posting 100

[dykeyaoi]

I feel like a lot of fanon tends to miss what seem to be three pretty crucial things about Teru, and it's weird because they are easy to miss, but they're also so important that without them he's very superficial. it's part of why he gets so yassified almost every time he's adapted (see: manga into anime into fancontent)

one is that this kid is smart. on my first watch of his debut arc I assumed he was psychically cheating to be one of Black Vinegar's top students. now though I don't think so: firstly, I'll admit, because he doesn't actually seem to have a way to do that except blackmailing other kids for answers or something; but secondly because throughout the series he's just good at figuring stuff out. he picks up complicated psychic techniques more quickly and frequently than anyone else, including Mob. he was the one who almost beat Shimazaki. he figured out that Psycho Helmet was Dimple from the fact that he was a spirit who knew Teru's name, not a lot of info to go on. he draws conclusions in the somewhat haphazard but very clever way a detective does.

two, he's motivated so much by anger. this one's something of a hot take but it's so there to me that I can't leave it out if I'm Teruposting. before meeting Mob yeah he thought he was special and important for having powers but he was also extremely lonely and subconsciously mad at everyone else for not having them. he's the only one who has to deal with Claw he's the only one who has to live alone because his powers make it dangerous for his parents, he's the only one strong enough to be the shadow leader. he'll do it because he's the Protagonist but god he's gonna be pissed the whole time. it's not what he wants (we only get to see what he wants later with Mob and Reigen and everyone else) but it's all he has for a long time. seventh division shows the intersection between I Should Be Satisfied Now Teru and I'm Better Than These Guys Teru very nicely

last and kind of most important is his thing for Mob. I absolutely believe ONE wrote Teru to be queer and he definitely had or has a crush on Shigeo, but I also think that at least part of said crush is him misconstruing his adoration and the pedestal he's put his friend on. until after the Confession Arc, the two of them getting together would be really tricky and probably not good. Mob still feels bad about what he did at Black Vinegar for most of the rest of season one, and the only reason Teru changed in the first place was because of the cavernous gap in power between the two of them. until he declares Shigeo his rival and realizes that he has faults and any destruction he causes isn't perfectly righteous, Teru can't love him.

there's as much to his character as there is to the other main characters, and I get the easy appeal of the flattened version of him but when he's flanderized into this sparkly gayboy who's also sad sometimes, it makes me sad.

[dykeyaoi]

president how about we Big Cleanup your bedroom.

[dykeyaoi]

something that's very interesting to me is that in almost any iteration of MP100 (but in this case specifically ageswap versus canon), certain characters (in this case whoever end up being the adults) have to fail miserably in their lives before they can even begin to interact with other characters within the story.

in canon, Serizawa has to grow up as a shut-in and not have any confidence in himself or his powers and get picked up by Claw as a result. Mogami has to spiral into being a horrible person and become the reason for his mom's death and become a shell of an evil spirit. Reigen has to grow up without friends and build up his persona and boister his fake confidence and become distant from his family and be a fraud. none of them could meet the kids and go through everything in the story that fixes them if they didn't fail in the things that they most wanted to overcome first.

in an ageswap AU, Teru has to never meet Mob and grow up thinking he's better than other people and never need anyone to actually like him because he lives alone and can just make them anyway. Mob has to suppress his powers and have no one to tell him things that he'll realize are wrong and not have a mentor and not do well in school and not rely on anyone because he's scared of what he'll do to them if he does. Ritsu has to be scared of his brother and they have to grow apart because they end up being wildly different and eventually he switches honorifics to Onii-san and kind of dreads talking to Shige because they both failed.

in canon, you watch Mob have every person who cares about him be taken away and his falling apart at the seams when they are-- expected, as he's the kid. but you also watch Reigen realize that he doesn't have anyone because he won't let people get close. you see Serizawa lose control when his umbrella is taken away because the president gave it to him and he needs that because god knows people aren't so constant!

in an ageswap AU, you can fix Reigen and Serizawa and even Mogami and Toichiro if you're really intent on it. in an ageswap you can have Teru meet Mob through business but you can also bring a shy, kind of self-doubting Tome to Spirits & Such because she hears a rumor about telepathy. she still wears aliens on her socks but finds the smallest incessant shame in it because her club got torn down as soon as it was made clear that she was the only one who cared about them. you can have Mob spot a grown-up, successful Tsubomi in the streets and freeze up and be too nervous to say hi to her. you can see Shou the struggling single father of a kid he doesn't know how to handle.

the adults all have to fail at first because the point of Mob Psycho is that you have to let the other people in your life change you. you have to let them in because feedback with a sample size of oneself is not enough to judge and base one's thoughts & actions on. they're the kind of characters that cannot exist without each other because they make one another into who they are.

[dykeyaoi]

most impactful-- NOT best! most *hard-hitting*-- MP100 Arc

7th Division

Mogami

Separation

World Domination

Divine Tree

Alien

Confession

Other (LOL, Teru, Big Cleanup, etc in tags)

Voting ended onMar 28, 2023

[dykeyaoi]

ngl guys I think Ritsu is a little preppier than we give him credit for

[dykeyaoi]

so there's that part in the second stageplay where Dimple's actor is playing Okakura-sensei and he goes off-script for a solid four minutes refusing to leave stage and poor Kamuro does such a good job staying in-character while Ritsu and the girls are all giggling and Ritsu has to turn away from the audience cos he's not supPOSED to be giggling and then we get this phenomenal shot that I love

then Okakura-sensei twists Ritsu's arm around to give him the recorder prop instead of just slipping it to Kamuro like I think he's supposed to. and then you can tell that Kamuro's actor is still pissed for the next couple scenes in the show because even if this is closing night that was a *little* much

[dykeyaoi]

I love love thinking about auras and psychics-- to what extent do we think they're hereditary? it seems common knowledge to little Mob that Ritsu will someday get powers too. when he does, the Kageyamas' colors are almost the same, they just emphasize different ones. their textures are different but I think that's all personality-based. we can look at Teru and Toichiro for some pretty potent examples of that.

I want to believe that color can change short- or long-term depending on what happens in your life because if you look at Claw, the VAST majority of those guys have red and/or purple in theirs, which are apparently the Evil Colors. but what my brain does with Serizawa and maybe the show does too is make him a LOT more purple-- the Less Evil color-- after he starts working at S&S. Ritsu's aura typically has more blue in it than Mob's, but if he's really stressed out, more purple seeps in. because he knows his brother would be powerful enough to handle the situation? because he wants to protect Shige? Shou's aura is much more red when he's with his dad during the Confession Arc than when he's emotionally fighting him in the Seventh Division & physically fighting him in World Domination. when a character's REALLY emotional, the range of their color expands-- see: Mob 100 % (adds green and red), Shou fighting Toichiro with his charge bomb (goes much heavier on and a little farther to the yellow side than usual), Ritsu 100% (adds red and green). so if color is circumstantial as well as familial, it'd make sense that texture is solely personality-based.

but how are psychics themselves inherited? do Mom & Dad Kageyama have latent abilities? is Teru's family super strong? it wouldn't make a ton of sense for him to think he's so special if his parent(s) were as powerful as he was. why the hell is Mob SO cracked when Ritsu is the weakest of the main four kids (though this could be an issue with the fact that he hasn't had his powers available for very long)? why was Shige able to reach ???% even before suppressing his emotions? Mogami and Teru and Mob, probably Shou too, have been able to use their powers since birth. what determines whether you can do that, or have to have them awakened?

Teru is infamous for his tendency to pick up psychic techniques like pebbles from a creek. he makes the air whips and telekinetic explosion his own after only seeing each once. but he never seems to get the hang of Shimazaki's teleportation. some ESPers like the Awakening Lab kids can only use one or two techniques because they're not super powerful, but Minegishi & Matsuo don't exactly seem to have any aces up their sleeves either. is that by choice? are their powers simply of another category that no one (except Mob and spirits) can figure them out?

we've only ever seen Shige and Toichiro share their powers with non-ESPers. my guess is that you have to be insanely strong to do that, with enough psychics to spare that your own body/mind don't even care that they're missing. what I'm interested in is the fact that Mob didn't do it on purpose, and that he seemingly gave EVERYTHING to Reigen. that part has to be more trust than anything, right? I have so many questions but it's the most fun thing in the world to speculate.

[dykeyaoi]

most likely to listen to Weezer?

Mob

Ritsu

Teru

Shou

Tome

Tsubomi

Ichi/Emi/another kid (in tags)

Voting ended onMar 25, 2023