#volume 42

2nd to last color spread with our boy!

Have a cup of tea. Grab a blanket and bundle up around your shoulders like a hug. Take a deep breath, at least once.

I'm not doing too well either. Part of me wants to wallow in it and part of me wants to run away and never look back. But yet another part of me wants to make sure I say this so other people are reminded: it's okay to be upset. It's okay to feel betrayed, to be angry. You don't have to beat yourself up for being delusional or foolish or whatever. We were smart, thoughtful, we had amazing creative ideas. We knew the story and characters better than most, dotted all our i's and crossed all our t's, had chapter numbers and panel screenshots ready for any argument. We were right.

One of the major reasons it hurts so much is because of the whiplash. We're not used to cherrypicking and propping up a flimsy source material with headcanons just to keep going, because 99% of the way, we had it made, we were catered to, we had our expectations met and exceeded.

I think I'd be satisfied forever if I only had that handhold. I don't know if I'll ever make sense of that part. And no amount of fan content is going to change the fact that Horikoshi didn't draw that ultimate symbol of their relationship mending and becoming truly close the way they're meant to be. That's always gonna pull at my heart because it seemed so inevitable. Why? why why why...

Alright, deep breath again.

Only time will tell if I'm up for sticking around, but right now I think I've wrapped up too much of myself in this to let it go. Like I need to put it into words in order to process and heal. I need to lovingly pick apart their psyches to teach myself the lessons I wanted to learn from them in suffering as well as joy. I need to solidify my own imagination into a representation that rings true.

All honestly, I don’t mind Izuchako and I used to kind of ship it in the beginning but now I’m neutral after the events of the story

At the end of the day Horikoshi is allowed to write the story however he pleases

I LITERALLY PREDICTED HIS PRO HERO REDESIGN, AND I WAS TWO -- TWO -- POSITIONS OUT WITH HIS HERO BILLBOARD RANKING. I KNEW HE'D DO SO WELL. FUCK. YES.