Caitlyn's Objectives for Zaun are Vague and Terrible.
"Locate Jinx."
Plenty of people have already talked about this one, but there's a clear "and" missing to this statement. Caitlyn isn't going to just find Jinx say mission accomplished and go back to Piltover. She's left her intentions for Jinx ambiguous to her superiors (Ambessa) and subordinates alike, which leaves room for the situation to escalate.
"Dismantle shimmer."
I cannot overstate how bad of an idea it is. It seems simple in excution. Secure the refineries, detain Singed and other chemists that manufacture it, and destroy any existing supplies. But everything else that comes with it will turn the situation even worse.
I'm not even talking about the fact that Caitlyn is suggesting everyone in Zaun addicted to shimmer immediately go cold turkey without warning, preparation, or their consent. It's that fact that she's essentially destroying the only form of healthcare infrastructure that exists in Zaun.
For all the bad shimmer can do, it's still an effective medicine when used right. It's not a coincidence that once Silco took over and introduced shimmer there's suddenly people with visible disabilities and prosthetics on screen existing in Zaun. They exist because shimmer makes it possible. Even 5 out the 6 chembarons, the richest and most powerful people in Zaun, are disabled or use mobility aids. Chembarons like Smeech quite obviously use shimmer (his eyes are pink in every scene including his character sheet) to manage his prosthetics, he's had all four limbs replaced.
How many people live like Silco, with a chronic illness (probably a dangerous infection because Zaun is Piltover's human/industrial wastepit) that needs to be treated daily? How many people are practically dead and buried if the enforcers manage to destroy all remaining shimmer?
"Neutralize any agents still loyal to Silco."
What does that even mean? What does being loyal to Silco mean when he's dead? They're getting rid of all infrastructure related to shimmer production. The only thing that remains of Silco that anyone can be loyal to is the belief he left behind (and maybe Jinx but that's complicated).
Above all else (except Jinx), Silco wanted an independent Zaun. Will That's his whole thing, and shimmer was just the mechanism to make it happen. Will anyone who agrees that Zaun should be independent be considered a Silco loyalist? If so, then Caitlyn's mission isn't just about finding Jinx and getting shimmer off the streets, this is about crushing an independence movement AGAIN.
How will she characterize Silco's loyalists? Is she talking about chembarons that worked with Silco? Former members of his gang? People who worked in Silco's factories and liked the paycheck? Silco was the defacto leader of Zaun, most if not all figures in Zaun with influence were essentially complicit in his agenda.
Is there any real difference between anti-Piltovan sentiment and pro-Zaunite independence at this point?
Recently, I found out my kid's art teacher insinuated to him that he should get a surgery to remove his sweat glands.
Let me make this clear: I'm not looking for guidance. I have emailed the vice principal, the counselor, the teacher, and my kid's at-school therapist. This has been going on for, like, a week and a half now and involves questionable grading practices, along with this unprofessional comment.
Anyway, she apparently made the surgery comment earlier in the year and this revelation came around when he was complaining/worrying about having a failing grade in her class.
Now, my kid loves art. It's a passion, so it's super weird he'd be failing. I understand not having an A, because sometimes assignments don't hit right. But literally he was at a 56%, partly due to this teacher misplacing work he did.
However, he has become increasingly upset about his art class and was even wanting to skip the day she had this class. The teacher misplaced his work multiple times, resulting in him having to redo it all the time, but also he felt he wasn't being graded fairly. (Specifically on a collage he did, which he - and other classmates - felt he did really good on, but she gave him an 85%.)
I was looking into his grades online, trying to see if I could help him or make sure he got specific stuff done, when I noticed the seeming classroom average of a lot of the assignments is below 50%.
For an art class.
Literally, one of the assignments as the classroom average is at ~27%.
Art doesn't have to be, like, "easy A" material, but I think it should be extremely difficult to fail a high school art class.
I asked for the rubric and instruction for the assignments from the teacher, but - honestly - I think such low scores show an issue with the teacher versus the students. (There's also other things going on in the class, like the teacher not keeping other students out from under the desks.)
The "universal" rubric was really vague.
Reviewing what the teacher expected and the instructions for one assignment, I can say she didn't specify expectations very concisely. At least, not in what my kid had accessible to him, which is a paper detailing the instructions and scant Google Classroom explanation.
I've shared what I was presented with a parent group on Facebook, because I don't want other kids to be hurt by this.
This segues into my next point:
I am prepared to be seen as an over-protective parent, as a bitch, as a "Karen." BUT I can't help but wonder...
How many of us in the U.S. were failed because parents or guardians didn't/couldn't advocate for us?
I respect teachers, I fight for them to have better wages and benefits. There's a lot of fucked up shit happening in the world and teachers do get the shit-end of the stick most times.
But my kid would have had an F in a subject he adores - an F to follow him on his report card - and a potentially a perpetual bad taste about art, because of this teacher had I not stepped in.
And I don't want any kid who is legitimately trying - who the teacher might have some sort of bias against, whether it's body odor or something else - to fail art and lose their passion for art.
The Tomura volume redraws resembles the atmosphere during Toga's final moments. They're dying, but at least they're leaving after getting some semblance of "peace" in their final moments
I still hate that they died, (I will always hate this decision), but at least they died without as many regrets - supposedly. There’s just something about Tomura and Toga getting preventable but “peaceful” deaths that will forever unsettle me.
However, with these updated Tomura panels in the volume, I kinda hope it means that Dabi will get something new in the last hellish Todoroki chapter.
Because if not, this will be the last time we see Dabi before he dies in the timeskip:
I hate it. I used to think it was """fine""" because at least his fate was vague in the final chapter, but knowing that he does die ruins this scene more for me. I don't want to think that Tomura and Toga got these """peaceful""" deaths, while Dabi is instead forced to live out his remaining time inside a prison coffin so Endeavor can feel better about himself
So, I do hope that Dabi gets something new too. Maybe a flashback or imagery of him with his family or the League, or just SOMETHING to show that he also found that "moment of peace" like Tomura and Toga did before they left.
Otherwise Dabi really did get the worst death in my opinion. It's probably for the best that he did die in the end (knowing how this series is), but it's still upsetting for me
yet another reason nobody in the League should've died, ough ..
((I've always been a Curly defender, he literally couldn't do anything, thank you, Mod, for adding him 😌🙏))
"Hey! hahah, curly here, uh no, you cant sorry, also we're departuring, so we're gonna need a moment to answer stuff, so se yall in some hours!!"
Hey! the mod here, im glad you like that curly is here, bu i will be honest, im not a curly defender, i donr believe he is as bad as jimmy but he is defnitely not morally corect either, he couldn't do anything but he could show insatisfaction. and he didn't do that. Instead, he said he would help jimmy with what happened. I still haven't played how fish are made, but some people have said that curly sounds like he is obsessed with something in it, and I've seen some people say it's jimmy, which i dont doubt. Either way, i love both characters alot curly is my fav, but it's important to have the notion that curly isn't a saint he is mostly a morally grey character. To be honest, every single mouthwash character aint a fully good human being. That's one of the many things that makes me love them so much. anyway, im ranting.thank you for your question and for enjoying the blog
Welcome to the plot twist in which every Uchiha became some kind of werewolf.
What...?
I'm glad you ask. Well, every supernatural monster is rooted in flaws of the human nature. For example, vampires are a representation of lies, how the suck the life out of people silently in the dark, and how they die only when they come to the light (the truth comes to light).
Werewolves are a representation of violence, of what happens when emotions are let to run wild and without rational restrain, like this ridiculous idea that "the Uchiha feel so deeply that they turn to hatred".
Yeah, I don't like it. My opinion on this under the cut.
It's fine if you want your story to have a group of people that has a specific unchangeable flaw. I mean, there are a lot of stories about vampires and werewolves... But including that in the narrative needs some bases, foreshadow if you will. And of course some kind of thematic alignment with the rest of the story. This is something that should have been set when the Uchiha clan is introduced, or at least shortly after, definitely not in chapter 619 of 700.
Is Tobirama an unreliable narrator here? Of course he is. BUT this is meant as an info dump for the readers. It's not questioned in any way, even by Sasuke.
Edit: I messed up here, the curse is actually introduced in chapter 462. Just wanted to fix that detail.
End of the edit.
In a Doylist analisys, there was a need to justify Konoha's orders for the massacre. And it's obvious that a coup d'etat wasn't enough, something like that should have been resolved through negotiations. Because why lose a powerful clan that should have been an asset for the Leaf's village? These guys sealed the Kyubi in Naruto to make him a weapon after all.
There is also the "plothole" of why Konoha pushed the Uchiha clan to think of throwing a coup in the first place. Why did they feared that the Uchihas were behind the Kyubi's attack? Why did they marginalized the clan, both from power structures as physically by moving them to the outskirts of the village? Why did they have surveillance on them?
The answer is pretty simple: Konoha's system is rotten. But the author didn't engage in that conflict, didn't want to. So he made the curse of hatred to justify all of these events.
Beside the twisted pro-system message this entails, my biggest issue is conceptual (at the end of the day it's just fiction).
The initial concept was imo very interesting:
The cycle of hate is something mentioned throughout Naruto's story. The idea that people can't get along because they hurt each other and rather seek revenge than forgiveness. They choose violence over peace and that creates more violence. They are paranoid so they train like crazy to become stronger and in the process they create emotionless monsters. Even worst, they have created a whole economy around it. How do you stop all that and reach peace?
However, the most important element in that concept is that every person is responsible for choosing either violence or peace. They are free, to a certain extend.
Except that suddenly, the Uchihas are not only unable to choose but unable to be responsible for that choice because they are cursed.
Suddenly, they are not free, they are predestined to hate.
And the worst part is that the curse of hatred justifies (narratively) all the injustice suffered by the Uchiha clan.
Also, it's framed as "tell, don't show". For all that we can read in the manga there are not Uchihas destroying Konoha, except for Obito and Madara. But even if I were to exaggerate this and say: out of 4 known Uchihas (Sasuke, Itachi, Obito, and Madara), 1 avoided the curse completely (Itachi), and 2 of them overcame it (Sasuke and Obito). So, in this small (and inconclusive and completely ridiculous) sample, 25% of the Uchihas were destined to transform with the full moon (ironic that the moon is also a symbol related to the Uchihas). I'm talking nonsense, ik, ik, yet that's kind of my point. That without "evidence" these people are judged as cursed and doomed. Which only reinforce the idea that Konoha's leaders were corrupted and just trying to manipulate the narrative with this curse BS.
Mind you, this had a lot of potential to develop. The problem is that it just don't fits in the story. Because the story is about this kid called Naruto that doesn't want to be alone and his belief is that if he becomes the Hokage he won't be alone but a respected shinobi. So becoming the Hokage should be something positive. Not associated with people who don't care about having their own citizens killed. In consequence, Kishi had to swept the Uchihas under the rug.
And I'll say it again, if Kishi intended to make Konoha the unquestionable "good guys", and the Uchiha clan not completely evil at the same time, he really went too far with the massacre (narratively speaking). At the end, all impact, all emotional build up, is lost in a non-committal resolution (if you can even call that a resolution), because what about Sasuke? He get imprisoned, his dream of changing the world abandoned, not even the truth about the massacre gets revealed. He's swept under the rug.
My theory is that Naruto failed as a protagonist (I'll get to that analysis soon, I promise). He shouldn't have sided with Konoha, he should've sided with Sasuke. It's a fantastic conflict: Naruto finally gets some recognition after defeating Pain, and he questions his misbelief about needing to become Hokage, he questions the decision of making Danzo the Hokage, he finds out the truth about the massacre, and for a moment he questions everything, finally, he grabs this forehead protector crosses it out and leaves Konoha to find Sasuke. He doesn't want to destroy Konoha, but he wants to change it and he wants to have his friend at his side to do it because he finally understands all that Sasuke has suffered. They can fight about the methods of how to achieve this, but they want the same thing.
So much potential... instead there's the curse of hatred.
“Gabriel Agreste” (the episode only some talk about)
So, I know nobody asked for this, but I’m still going to talk about it, (also because I don’t really have anyone else to do it, and mi niece doesn’t count cause she’s four and wants to be Chat Noir), so “Ephemeral”, everyone is really exited about this episode, so after rewatching the chapters for the 4th season in order I noticed something. Like the plot for “Gabriel Agreste”, and it’s possible someone else has already talked about this but, let me rant, cause I need to. More under the cut.
Okay, so I think that episode will be about Gabriel investigating, obviously he has left Natalie to do most of the work, but I think that at this point they had figured out that Ladubug’s ‘charms’ are what’s preventing repeated akumatizations, he has probably akumatized Marinette’s grandmother and also her father again, cause they didn’t had any charms by this season, but this might not be the one thing they’re actually focusing (I also think he has been actively trying to akumatize Marinette, but something or other gets in the way always, an that’s suspicious), or something else just pops out when they’re checking the videos.
Like, the sudden prescense of Adrien around the place, maybe he finds his way to the bakery and talks with Marinette, and checking on his schedule, they notice Adrien was supposed to be at any of his extracurricular activities. This prompts them to look into other instances, where Adrien wasn’t supposed to be around if he was at some of the Akumas events.
So, what I think, is that in this episode where Gabriel start suspecting that Adrien is Chat Noir, but he still has to prove the theory of the charms first and for that he needs one, so maybe he will use as an excuse some of Adrien’s absences for special classes or practices, and get hismelf akumatized again, maybe he will use Nino or be there in a moment where this friend he doesn’t approve of is near to have enough reasons to be ‘vulnerable to akumatization’.
Cue to worried and sad Adrien, cause he fears for his freedom and friends, and also his father’s wrath since he started going to school has had him in constant doubt about him doing the right thing or not, by making his own choices and decisions (but I think that’s material for a different ocasion).
And maybe the collector will show up again, but briefly, this episode is not really one for a villian, but for Gabriel to gather information, so the akuma will show up in a moment where Adrien is scheduled to be at an event/ class/ practice, and will try to prevent Ladybug from calling other heroes (or capture them) until Chat Noir shows up, is then that they actually defeat the akuma and Ladybug offers him the expected ‘charm’ that will ‘prevent him from being akumatized again’.
Just then he will pretend to need to contact his son to tell him he’s okay, it all depends on Chat Noir’s reaction to that, or maybe out of scene he tries to call him, however it is, Adrien remains a suspect but a stong one. So let’s say it takes him many episodes to figure out the charms, but that’s my prediction for the Gabriel Agreste episode.
Now, Ephemeral is just the confirmation of everything they had been researching, I don’t know but I think this could be another ‘same day episode’ thing, just with Adrien perspective (like Truth and Lies), cause we must remeber Adrien was sad that day, and even though briefly Gabriel tried to talk to him. So in the trailer Adrien seems dazed, somehow, so I’m going to say he either cried for some time or had a nap (or both) and when he noticed his father he tried to go after him to finally tell him a bit of what happened.
And we get to the scene where he notices he goes down to the ‘creepy basement’, he doesn’t follow right away, maybe talking with Plagg about it, so later that day, he goes there and finds out the truth, and hey, ShadowMoth is there and tries to convince Adrien of joining him, he even detransforms and shows him the miraculous, overwhelmed Adrien gets akumatized, and as usual ShadowMoth asks for the Ladybug and Black Cat miraculous, half expecting to have Adrien just transform and help or hand out the miraculous... which he ends up doing! ...And I think, by the end of the episode Adrien will give up his miraculous, feeling like he betrayed everyone.
How we get to ShadowNoir and Ephemeral going after Marinette and finding out her identity? I don’t know. Will Bunix show up to save the day? Probably... This rant was about the Gabriel Agreste chapter, which I think is an important episode and what I think leads to the base of Ephemeral later. Maybe this is a two parter with a different name or Kuro Neko is just a way to convince Adrien to take his place back as Chat Noir. I love and hate this show at the same time.
So thank you for reading, I’m not usually one to do this, I mostly read everyone elses thoughts, but rewatching the season led me to this, also I think that episode is also part of the reason Chat Noir is left out in some of the episodes after this. It’s all Gabriel’s fault!!! (Oh, he has been guilty all along, I almost forgot!)
