guys i love that thai gl (fictional) work fields are just so ????
love senior: engineering majors
love senior season 2 special: bakery and i Am Not Sure What This Company that manaowgyoza work at does!
gap the series: sam’s company is marketing? event planning? pr? content creation?????
apple your love the series: kris is an ex aspiring film director assistant(?) and karn is a sports(?) journalist who wants to be an actress and they work together at kris’s brother company that sells technology / business products and uh ?
i am the moon the series: no idea so far but a Company
lucky my love the series: a Company!
unlock your love the series: office setting something??
show me love the series: beauty pageants contestants with meena also working as a singer/musician???? actual englot lore
my marvellous dream is you: dawan is an actor when she wants, kim is an artist stylist designer all at once,
Okay wow! So earlier today I said I was collecting my NSR headcannons and junk from a blog I submitted them to and... WOW! I just finished and my google doc has 51 pages!
I did NOT think I sent in that much stuff! Wowzers. Most of it is literally about 1010 and Neon J too lol! I am a SIMP
I know this is a really vague thing to ask, but do you have any tips for writing Shigaraki? I know Echodrops made a whole meta about fanon Shigaraki vs canon Shigaraki but do you personally have anything in particular you'd want to mention yourself about the portrayal of Shigaraki in fanfics?
(Here’s the link to @echodrops‘s post! It’s really, really good, and helped me figure out Shigaraki a lot in the first place. thank you!)
oooh! Not at all a vague thing, this is a great question. I started all this meta because I wanted to figure out how to write Shigaraki as well. A word of caution tho, because this would be my personal interpretation of Shigaraki, though I’ll try to use as much manga examples as I can. As always, super long post.
Note: images are edited to fit exact quotes to relevant and reasonable sized images, instead of a whole manga page
Here’s some hand man characteristics/traits that I think are overlooked:
Shigaraki Tomura, in his beliefs/values, has a tendency for all-or-nothing thinking, to be extreme in his actions. In all three of his incarnations - the oneshot Tenko, the draft Sazanka, and this current one - a core of the character is 1) finding something flawed/bad/had hurt him somehow 2) completely loathing it 3) vowing to destroy it.
Tenko despised samurai and their warring, and wishes to rid the world of swords. Sazanka is on a quest to kill quirk-users with quirks he deems too dangerous for society. And Shigaraki has decided that the Heroes and justice system is a farce, and is out to destroy it.
Kinda fitting for a guy with his quirk - he either doesn’t destroy something, or destroys it completely. The moment he makes his decision, it’s fast and permanent.
For Shigaraki, murder is murder, destruction is destruction, violence is violence, no matter how you dress it up. That’s why he couldn’t see the difference between him and Stain. That’s why he can’t see that Bakugou, as aggressive and vicious as he is, still wants to be a good guy.
Now this is my take, but I think his mindset is: Because All Might can’t save everyone, he’s a fake, he’s trash; because everyone will say they condemn murder yet go about their lives carefree even though they know logically someone is out there getting killed, morality and justice is an illusion; because justice is so fragile and flimsy, I will expose it and destroy it.
Not in any goodwill or for a better society, mind you. He just hates it.
He also has no illusions about himself or his actions, he knows he’s evil.
Shigaraki is a lot more sarcastic and sardonic than usually portrayed in fanon. He’s very rude and can be foul mouthed, but the real insult comes from his tone and behavior. He condescendingly calls Eraserhead cool. He calls Stain the ‘Great Senpai of scoundrels’. He points out to Overhaul how a wakagashira/underboss like him should be more polite. Just about half of everything he says is dripping with mockery, and he’s very breezy and irreverent. So a bit less ‘I hate you, fuck off’, and more cheek.
Adding to that, if I’m reading my Japanese right, Shigaraki can change how he addresses people depending on the person and situation. His default speech is rude, but he’ll talk somewhat (barely) politely-ish if needed; it’s just it’s very obvious he’s not taking it seriously.
Related, I feel like Shigaraki says a lot of things he doesn’t really believe. He tries out concepts, half-heartedly, on a whim. There’s that infamous speech at USJ about Heroes and Villains both using violence - which does seem to have some semblance to the actual ‘two sides of the same coin’ that even Best Jeanist talks about.
And here’s him considering Stain’s effects on heroes, with gusto, before ditching it.
I know it’s Smash!, but here’s him reciting some sort of pseudo education philosophy he picked up somewhere??? to Kurogiri to get out of exercise.
He’s a total smartass
Of course, this brings up the question, is he genuine in his speech to Bakugou, or to Toga and Twice?
Like Echodrop notes, he can be in a good mood. He can be (seem?) happy, he can smile, he will acknowledge when someone does a good job of something.
Sure, it’s got a manic edge to it, it’s probably not coming from a place of good, fluffy, innocent feelings, but he can laugh, enjoy the moment, be psyched about something.
I really like this scene because he actually giggles a bit. He squeezes Midoriya, and he really does seem excited for a chat.
He’s quick to go back to being default cranky tho. Quick to enjoy, quick to get irked.
Shigaraki is a weirdo and I love him.
My boy is smart. Really, Shigaraki is smarter than he looks. In the Ultra Archive, his profile lists his intelligence as ‘A’, ranking him above most characters, including Midoriya. I get that Deku’s whole thing is being the strategizing main character, but Shigaraki’s just as analytical. Even the Smash! Comic points this out.
His room is filled with books, so either he reads a lot or he hoards them to look smart. I think it’s the former. Well, it’s not mutually exclusive, I should know.
He thinks and reflects and questions. He was super pissed about Stain, but he realized Stain was right and tried to figure out why. He went on a walk to calm down and just ruminate. He sought out Midoriya just to get second opinion. Afterwards, he quickly sees the bigger picture and realizes the issue is systemic and he’s gotta attack the structure. Of course, kinda shaky on the specific details and it’s not endgame long term, but still impressive.
There’s a lot of Villain!Deku fanfics - and I like them a lot! - that turns Deku into the criminal mastermind or makes him the brains behind Shigaraki’s operations. Which is fair, Deku could totally be one! And also a lot of fics where Shigaraki is dismissed, with everything he does being AFO’s machinations. Again, fair. But Canon Shigaraki is AFO’s successor and leads the League for a reason.
This also means, I think, that Shigaraki isn’t as clueless to the fact that All For One is manipulating him. This point is entirely debatable, though. All I have to back this is how Shigaraki wondered if he was lied to in the USJ.
Even tho he’s facepalm crusty boi neet, Shigaraki is still a very dangerous S-ranked villain. I feel like sometimes people forget this.
He’s not that childish. He can be immature, he’s still learning the ropes of being a supervillain, he’s got an irritable and sullen disposition, but he’s not a five-year-old. He’s also not completely unhinged.
When things don’t go his way, his first response usually isn’t to shriek or whine or immediately snap. He’s got a clear head and a good sense of what he can and can’t do. Kurogiri is down, All Might escaped their grasp, but Nomu’s still active? Cool, we got this. It’s only when Nomu gets team-rocket-ed that he panics. Stain stabs him? Doesn’t start a fight right there and then, asks Master for some Nomu, is patient enough to wait until he decides he really can’t stand Stain, then finally gives the go ahead for a rampage.
Shigaraki knew from the start he can’t handle All Might. That’s Nomu’s job. As much as he hates All Might, he doesn’t jump at the chance to kill the hero personally. He’s not ruled by impulse or easy distractions, not really. And he will back down if Kurogiri reasons with him - see accepting Stain as a party member, see letting Toga and Dabi live. And after he got his motivation, he’s been very restraint since.
He doesn’t immediately destroy his things in anger - we only see him destroy only few items pre-mall talk. He decays binoculars, a photo of Deku, maybe a newspaper, all quiet and deliberate. Kurogiri’s bar is intact and clean, despite being the long-time hang out spot of the destructive Shigaraki Tomura. Would he decay a controller after losing a game? Maybe, but also just as likely maybe not.
Shigaraki will complain and bitch and sulk and hold a grudge, tho, yeah. He will lose it after a series of stressors/things gone wrong. He can be moody, cruel and sadistic, bloodthirsty and mayhem-loving. But he’s got himself under control more often than not.
Finally, video games: My biggest pet peeve about portrayal of Shigaraki in fanfics: He’s super obsessed with video games, to the point that he plays them all day long, and he can’t stop using video game slang for everything - or so a lot of the fandom believes.
I’ve pointed out before that we’re more likely to see him reading the newspaper and we’ve never actually seen him use a console ever in manga or anime. True, he likens scenarios to games frequently, but not all the time - the USJ fight was when he did that the most, then in his other appearances only once or twice during the whole scene (Doesn’t want Stain as a ‘party member’, none at all when meeting Dabi or Toga and then at the mall, camp arc has him seeing himself playing a Sim instead of an RPG, calls All Might ‘last boss’ during the raid, then nothing for his next appearances). At least not out loud. As fun as it is to imagine him as a geeky gamer, and he is, but he does more than just that.
I think Shigaraki uses video games and media to create mental scripts for himself to understand/interact with the world, but it serves as a skeleton. He fleshes it out, always adding to that mental model to create a more complex one. He calls his change of strategy as playing a Sim game, but it’s a good analogy that works for him, and we see how layered his plan is - dealing a blow to UA that works whether the Vanguard succeed or not, kidnapping Bakugou and Ragdoll, in order to bring about the media and public criticism of UA/heroes, and had it not been for the raid, something would’ve happen to Bakugou that would’ve demoralized everyone.
He def is grounded in reality enough to know what he’s doing is more than just a game.
And that’s all I got for now! There might be a part two. idk, but I hope this was helpful!
Tonight’s mood: realize how far I’ve come as a writer when I open a WIP from almost two years ago and can’t help but revise the crap out of it because it’s just not good enough to satisfy me anymore
I was just thinking about how different the various parts of Homestuck feel frim each other and how well the music associated with alot of them amplify it. I'd really love to make a playlist out of it. Like. An Act by Act playlist of Homestuck music that tells the story as it happens.
