#catsinthecradle

#AugiTropicsReports No. 15: the first time I ever saw Ugly Kid Joe perform live on stage! Come and enjoy the vibe at Planet Rockstock 2025 in Porthcawl, South Wales, UK!

🎤 Whitfield Crane

🎸 Klaus Eichstadt

Kakashi and Aizawa parallels

My favorite being that they both fit the "tired reluctant mentor figure" vibes and yet they both willingly chose to mentor these kids and are actually big softies. They brought this upon themselves. It's just their luck they got saddled with problem children protagonists

I feel like Kakashi is four steps behind but definitely on the same path as Aizawa.

Kakashi is at: “Haha, look at those idiots doing stupid things” ….. “Oh crap those are my idiots!”

Whereas Aizawa see’s his idiots, acknowledges his idiots, and proceeds to watch said idiots doing those stupid things.

Kakashi is more laid back but quick to step in. Like he hasn’t quite figured out how to let the kids figure themselves out. Compared to Aizawa’s sheer exhaustion but knowledge of when to step in. When to let them learn through consequences and when to protect them from their mistakes.

I think they’d get along at the neighborhood bbq.

There are so many boop asks from you! 🤣🤣🤣 Absolutely made my day.

Here, a Corgi for your trouble:

Favorite characters? Favorite arcs? Favorite teams? Etc

Favorite character(s)

How can you not love them all? Hinata has crazy happy Labrador energy. Daichi has the exhausted father of a team of teenage boys vibe going for him (bless him he’s a saint). I’m also very partial to Bokuto - he reminds me of my puppy - and Tendo. They’ve both got crazy eyes and I love an unpredictable idiot. However… Kuroo is my walking problem and I love him very much. He’s got the “dad that swings his kids around by the ankle” energy. So probably at the end of the day I’ll choose Kuroo as my favorite. But I’m holding Bokuto and Daichi close to my chest.

Favorite arc(s)

I adore the Summer Training Camp arc. It’s really nice to see Tsukishima and Hinata learn from Kuroo and Bokuto. Plus the whole Tsukishima character development is really well done and really seeing the entire team grow and learn through their failures while the others help them through it. You don’t see a lot media depicting rivals being kind and helping each other to better themselves. It’s refreshing to see. Also I like seeing Kuroo lose braincells within close proximity to Bokuto. Fantastic dynamic.

Favorite team(s)

As far as team and individual dynamics go, Nekoma. If we want to talk symbolism and development, definitely Karasuno.

I really like the balance of the entire series. There are stakes. There are things to lose and things to gain. And it puts you on the edge of your seat during games and moments of self discovery. But at the same time we can just sit back and remember, it’s just a game. It’s not like JJK or BNHA where failure means the world ends. It’s a game and our characters can get back up and try again. I personally find it very hard to balance a story like that. To keep readers/viewers interested without constantly upping the pressure.

Phfffftttt! What could possibly be giving you that urge? No idea whatsoever. 🤷‍♀️

gives you permission to rant

The brain sure do be rotting.

Ok. So I caught up on episodes today and I'm planning on a cursory reading of the manga over the next two days that I have off work so I will likely come back to this to actually rant in the next few days.

That being said, based on my anime watching and my surface knowledge of the yet non-animated story I am still utterly floored by the Todoroki family as a whole. Mainly of course Shoto, Toya, and Enji but the other three are just as important. I have a lot to say about the relationship between the three but again, I want to read source material before I really shape my thoughts into something concrete. Suffice to say for now that Enji is the parent I wish I had, Shoto is like looking in a mirror and Toya is a little boy that never got a chance to heal his broken heart. I want to hug them all.

I also have a Bakugo character analysis stirring in me but again, I must go through some source material before I label any opinions as concrete. But I think he's very lonely. It's hard to live up to the expectations placed upon you and even harder when the one placing those expectations is yourself. It's very lonely being the best and being the one expected to always have the answers. To always be leading the charge. To always have it together. To be the one who doesn't break under pressure. I think he's lived his whole life expecting himself to be perfect and failure means the "Extras" will have no one to take care of them.

Like I said, I'll probably have many more thoughts as I work through the manga so I'll probably just be coming back here to rant about them. Stay tuned for that.

And finally:

HELLO

I am in need of ideas, and you always have good and interesting takes

What're you're favorite kinds of character development and just characters in general?

Oh ho! An interesting one. I had to wait for the weekend so I actually had time to sit down and think cohesively.

Favorite types of characters and their development? For me it's kind of subjective. There's no denying I tend to go for the damaged ones. The ones that suffer and choose not to process their pain in a healthy manner. I think the best all encompassing way to describe my favorite is: "consistent and nonlinear".

Deathy, what the hell does that mean? I'm glad you asked. Let's get into it a bit.

Consistency is so so important to me when considering a character's overall creation and development. I think a trap a lot of people fall into when trying to avoid stagnation in their characters is that they equate development with change.

They are not the same thing.

Did you know a bonsai tree is not a specific type of tree? The name actually refers to the way the tree is grown. Bon means pot and sai means tree. Bonsai can be loosely translated to tree in a pot. We carefully prune and wire the tree to keep it the size and shape we want; we set them up in special little ceramics and put them out on displays but a tree is still a tree no matter how it's grown.

Our characters are the same way. They are still fundamentally human. They are still the same person they always were. Another way to look at it is to look at a bed of sediment. Notice the layers. Each layer brings something new, perhaps fossils or even just a large deposit that changes the shape of the next layer. But somewhere, deep down everything is affected by that base layer. It may not seem that way by looking at just the last few layers but the whole slab is always affected by the beginning. The very start of everything. Our characters (and humans in general) are the same. They start somewhere and it always affects them, no matter how different they become.

Let's look at a character:

Sorry, we're using a character I'm pretty sure you don't know but it's the only one I can think of where I don't have to pull out a physical sourcebook and do four hours of cross checking on because I do not want to get up right now. So we're using John 117 from Halo.

John 117 is known as the savior of humanity. He's the face of the UNSC's Spartan supersoldier program and he'sore than earned every single award and distinction he's been given. He is a leader and the soldier of all time. He follows orders, even when those orders aren't the best choice when seen from the ground and he protects his people no matter what.

Chronologically speaking when we first meet little baby John he's a schoolyard bully. When he first meets Halsey he's playing king of the hill with the other boys and he's winning... violently. Deathy, how does a schoolyard bully turn into the face of the military? Well, through the power of childhood indoctrination, a spartan upbringing, and genetic experimentation you too could become a walking tank and the savior of humanity. And now as we roll out the Spartan IVs you can even sign up instead of being kidnapped as a child......

But back to the character study... it's more than that. As a child John is asked what his goal is. He says, quite simply: to win. This is the first layer in John's character sediment. He wants to win above all else. This is and has always been his goal. And to do that he has to "beat" his training sergeant. He has to "win" the challenges set out for him. There's a great moment when all of the kids are told to run an obstacle course. Chief Mendez says the last one to ring the bell gets no dinner. John of course wants to win so he does. He's the first to ring the bell. But in doing so he leaves his teammates, Kelly and Sam, behind and they don't end up finishing until very last. By the end of the exercise John is told that because his team finished last they all three receive no dinner. The next time when they're told to run the course again John helps his teammates and they receive dinner that night. This is our next layer in the sediment.

John's goal never changed. That little boy who wanted desperately to win didn't suddenly value his team over the goal, in fact he went through a few moments of anger and resentment towards them. He simply reevaluated what winning meant. Instead of "getting there first", winning turned into "getting the whole team there". He's still focused on winning but winning changed.

And years later a classic exchange that every Halo fan knows: "Master Chief, what are you doing?" Replied with: "Sir... Finishing this fight." It's a great exchange between Lord Hood and John that shows us that once again, John wants to win. His goal is to win. But winning doesn't necessarily mean getting there first. And it doesn't in this case necessarily mean getting the whole team there. It means finishing the battle. No matter the cost, just finishing it. Death isn't a concern if that's what wins the day. That's what the win is. This is a moment we step back and look at the whole sediment bed and we can see the layers having built up over John's years, including that he's learned to adapt and prioritize on top of still desiring that win.

All of this to say that John stays the same. At the end of the day he's still that little boy playing king of the hill and wanting nothing more than to be the man that comes out in top. The character doesn't change. The world and his response to it is what changes. I love that kind of consistency in a character's development.

Nonlinear is just a fun way to say complicated I suppose. It's not the perfect word to use but I can't think of another one that conveys what I'm trying to say. It's the way a character twists and shapes the world around them to fit their desires and their needs. The way some are willing to truly twist thoughts, actions or even people around, sometimes quite cruelly in order to justify their actions and their goals. Their journey becomes nonlinear as they reevaluate and work around blocks in their paths. It's the way John changes his ideal of what a win is depending on the situation. It's how Anakin's love for Padme becomes so dangerous. He never once stopped loving her. But it became obsessive and the frustration at his perceived lack of empathy towards his love morphed it into a thing he could not control. It's a very human thing to do.

And I think that's my own personal secret to character development. Making them human. Making them believable. No one is perfect. No one is faultless. No one knows exactly how the world around them works. Every person sees the world around them in a different light. People are affected by the world around them but they are very rarely fundamentally changed by it. A timid person that experiences abuse may shut down because of fear and self preservation while a naturally confident person experiencing the same thing may also shut down but out of resentment and anger. It looks the same on the outside but it's very different on the inside and it will affect how they act. I think it's important to consider what drives people to do things on a level deeper than "oh this person has ADHD so they're going to be hyperactive". Hyperactivity isn't always running around and bouncing off walls. Sometimes, the person worked hard to control that sort of reaction and instead taught themselves to channel the hyperactivity into obsessive fixation on a task or pass time. They still have ADHD and they still have bouts of extreme hyperactivity, it just manifests differently due to experiences and an ability to redistribute the energy. Give your characters that kind of humanity. Make them layered and complicated and full of contradictions that only make sense to them and their twisted little minds. Give them convictions and desires and ideals. A clingy character that wants nothing more than to find a place where they are loved is probably a very insecure person. But one that shrugs off love and refuses to accept it is also very likely to be an extremely insecure person that is desperate to be loved as well. It just manifests differently.