#HORIKOSHI OPEN UP I NEED TO TALK

[andaniellight]

GODDD the fact that Yoichi had TWO months of being away from his brother. TWO MONTHS OF YOICHI LIVING WITH THIS MAN WHO SAVED HIM FROM THE GRASP OF HIS TOXIC BROTHER. TWO-FUCKING-MONTHS OF THEM THINKING SO DAMN HARD TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET RID OF HIS QUIRK WHILE ALSO TRYING TO AVOID ALL FOR ONE AT ALL COSTS

...Horikoshi. HORIKOSHI.

They fucked without protection didn't they-

#CAUSE HOW THE HELL ELSE COULD YOICHI LOST HIS QUIRK WHEN ALL FOR ONE FOUND HIM??? #THIS IS ONE 'you need to have my DNA in order to obtain my power' MOTHERFUCKING FOR ALL WE ARE TALKING ABOUT #HORIKOSHI OPEN UP I NEED TO TALK #BNHA Spoilers #Boku No Hero Academia spoilers #My Hero Academia #Kudou #Yoichi #chapter 407 and 408 got me wildin #Kudoichi #My Hero Academia spoilers

[sapphic-agent]

Let's Talk About Bakugou's Apology

Jfc, I swear this wasn't meant to be an MHA blog but whatever. Let's get into this.

I wanted to give Bakugou stans the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to think that they would only hype something up if it was groundbreaking. I wanted to believe that Horikoshi was a halfway decent writer and would put actual effort into such a pivotal, revered moment in the series.

I was left sorely disappointed for multiple reasons.

1) A List of Excuses To be completely fair to Bakugou, he does take some accountability which was more than I expected. He does acknowledge that what he did was wrong a few times during his little speech. I have to give him credit for that. However, it's overshadowed by the narrative making sure to stress that it was the people around Bakugou who were at fault for that behavior. Which isn't true because even before he got his quirk, he still treated Izuku like garbage. He gave him the name Deku and acted like he was above everyone way before Izuku was deemed quirkless.

(I'd also like to add that the only thing that literal pre-school teacher said was that Bakugou's quirk could make for a fine hero. He was the one who ran with it and decided that it made him better than everyone and that he would be the best)

There's also the fact that every time he does point out what he did was wrong, there's always some kind of justification behind it. "I did... because I felt..." It undermines what's supposed to be a genuine apology because it's not about Bakugou's feelings, he wasn't the one hurt (more on this later).

2) Timing

So many people have brought this up and they're absolutely right; that was the worst possible time for this to happen. Izuku was injured, starving, and dirty. Not to mention his mental state is practically in shambles. He's been isolating himself for weeks in his attempts to walk a selfless, lonely path. The absolute last thing he needed was this shitty apology.

This was supposed to be an effort for Class 1A to show Izuku that they care about him and to convince him to share his burden and come back to UA with them and rest and heal. Instead that genuine effort is highjacked by Bakugou rambling on about something entirely unrelated. He could have done this during the bath scene or even right after that. Instead, it's shoehorned into Izuku's actual friends trying their best to help him.

Iida's words should have been the final ones. They had enough impact and were way more powerful. There was no reason for Bakugou's apology to be the finishing lines.

3) The Insults

It's wild to me that Bakugou apologized for insulting Izuku... right after purposely insulting Izuku.

This is something that has been detrimental to Bakugou's entire character "redemption". "Oh, he's changing!" Except he's still doing the same shit he's always done. It undermines the entire point of redeeming him.

(I hate to be pro Endeavor in any way, but at least when he decided to change he made the genuine effort to stay that way and didn't relapse into old habits)

Not only did him mocking Izuku do absolutely nothing to change his mind, it's just so shitty to do to someone who's clearly struggling. If you are incapable of showing empathy and kindness at a time like this, shut up and sit down because there's no reason for you to open your mouth. You're not helping, you're only making things worse.

And then he says, "I don't expect this to change things between us." Like bro, that's completely on you. All you have to do is not be a dick and act like your apology actually meant something by refraining from hurling insults at someone who did nothing to deserve it. But even after this apology, he continues to yell at and insult Izuku. Sato and Tokoyami even call him out on this, only it's just played for laughs.

Word to the wise kids, an apology means nothing if just keep repeating your bad behavior.

4) No Autonomy for the Victim

Not once do we get to see what Izuku's thinking. Not once do we ever see things from his point of view.

This moment is entirely about Bakugou. It's only a plot device to develop his character and make him come off better. And Izuku who was the victim gets no attention. He doesn't even get to respond, he just faints by the end of it.

In fact, the closest thing we ever get to an insight into Izuku's feelings is All Might saying that he wouldn't hold what Bakugou did against him. That's such a copout considering a) nothing Izuku did ever indicated he felt that way and b) another person is speaking for him. He doesn't even get to say this himself.

Horikoshi does this consistently. Izuku is never allowed to voice how he feels. We never get to see how things are affecting him. The only time he's ever permitted to show strong emotions is when it's in favor of someone else. You would think that by this point in the story that would be rectified. But no, everything has to be about Bakugou. Not even in his own rescue story can Izuku ever be the center of attention. No, it's all about making Bakugou better.

(Again I hate to be pro Endeavor, but at least Shoto, Fuyumi, and Natsu get to respond to Endeavor's attempts at atonement on their own terms. Natsu is allowed to be angry. Fuyumi gets to make the choice to forgive him. Shoto is allowed to ponder the decision. Both cases are terrible abuse narratives, but at least the Todoroki kids have a say in how they feel and are allowed to express it. Izuku doesn't even get that)

It feels like Izuku isn't even allowed to be a victim in any way, shape, or form. He's just there to prop Bakugou

#anti bakugou katsuki #anti bakugou #bnha critical #mha critical #anti bakugo katsuki #izuku deserves better

[transparentbeardmentality]

People on twitter finally figuring out what @dekacchannn has been saying forever:

Bakugo is connected to OFA.

Yah! He can see All Might's vestige! He has OFA stars in his eyes!!!

....

Now for my interpretation and speculation that I don't see anyone talking about...

Bakugo freaking KNEW he was tapping bits of OFA WAY before the battle. That's why he's not at all surprised to see the AM vestige, and just says "Oh. Right.."

It perfectly explains why at UA again, he is looking so uncomfortable, sweating bullets, explaining his new (saving Izuku unlocked) move to Izuku/Deku. He's not just sweating because that's his thing. He never just sweats in battle like that!

Sweating bullets gets used a lot to convey intense/awkward discomfort. I think he was panicked about breaching the topic of OFA power up! But Izuku totally blanked him... Bakugo didn't really wanna have this confusing conversation to start with (but I believe he was trying to broach it anyway). So when Izuku doesn't respond openly, he drops it immediately.

Like Deku, he withheld important information about how he unlocked it -and what it means- because their relationship feels like a fragile, intense mess. It's way too important for him to jeapordise.

Bakugo was very insecure and afraid here!

And I don't think Bakugo knows what to make of the OFA thing, or do about it. Izuku clearly has no idea, or he'd say something, right? He had an opening, and nothing?

He knows his feelings for Izuku are intense.. Everybody does. But the well goes deeper, or he wouldn't be afraid to talk about something so important, involving feelings he's already revealed.

I totally agree with theories that it's a love connection, not a reminant of a non-manga movie -even if some crossover characters appear. There's no way Horikoshi doesn't want his beloved manga to stand on its own.

And his beloved manga talks about people being in love, what's in their hearts, feeling like dying without their person, overwhelming emotions bending rules, and Deku's control your heart (over Bakugo) plotline.

I also wonder if the reason Bakugo reacted so strongly to Deku holding his hand out to Aoyama is because it was symbolic of Deku lending his strength (and compassion) to him. Bakugo may have worked out that his OFA connection works, because in some way, honorable Deku has had his hand extended to him -for as long as he can remember. Because that's what Deku does. Deku is a saint. And maybe OFA is an extension of that for him.

I think that OFA connection strengthened too, when Bakugo learned how DEEP that part of Deku went for him.

He cannot dismiss Deku's feelings as him being a bleeding heart over every person when Shigaraki is telling him that for Deku, he is 'The' person -and is bent on killing him because of it! That's shocking (also terrifying) information.

Remember Bakugo said he didn't expect the apology to change anything between them, but Shig knowing about 💚Bakugo💚 means he was unmistakeably Deku's closest person, before he even apologised!

Bakugo feels so much for Izuku, but thought he had to start mending things to even be considered a real friend... Especially since Deku has so many friends and close people! He just saw them all pour out their deep affections to bring him home to UA. He does not think he is special.

But Izuku has a secret! (At least from Bakugo, no one else could possibly be confused at this point.)

So Shigaraki taunts Bakugo for falling behind Deku. He's just a minnow. But all he can focus on is something to the effect of -'Holy shit. He loves me. He loves me.. I need him to know that I-.. I need to live up to him! Izuku...'

The secret feelings reveal made him brave and honest with his own heart. There's nothing left but longing to be worthy of him, and be with him. He makes his last stand for him. And in the end, he reaches out for Izuku too -even though Izuku is not there with his own hand this time.

And this is when we first see the AFO stars are in his eyes. He does reach him. Or at least their connection. And that's why we see All Might, and why Bakugo is not surprised. But Bakugo seems resigned as though it's too late. He's already reminiscing.. But I believe All Might is going tell him it's not over. That he has to save Young Midoriya, and how.

What else could he possibly be there to say?

I can't wait for Izuku to find about Kacchan being OFA love-bonded to him.

#bkdk #bakudeku #thoughts #speculation #ofa

[class1akids]

I have seen people going around saying that Touya is hateful and irredeemable based on his rants at his family in Ch 390

Now even setting aside the fact that the main theme of Ch 390 is open, productive conflict being a key to understanding each other - how important it was to Shouto's growth, and how it was a part of Touya's spiral that the head-butting didn't happen sooner.

But I'd also like to point out that insta-change of heart in a battle, is not something Horikoshi does often (or even particularly well), at least not in the Todoroki plot.

Think of Kamino for example, where the whole country is emotional and rooting for All Might, while Endeavor is yelling like an oaf, goes home and trashes his gym.

It is only weeks later that he shows up at Remedial class and takes his first step towards atonement.

Or even Shouto himself - in the battle where Deku said "It's your power", he still acted cold towards him,

regressed almost immediately - so Deku didn't know if he actually managed to save Shouto

The pay-off came days later when Shouto showed up to the Stain fight wielding fire and his undying friendship and loyalty towards Deku behaving like they were already BFFs (when as far as we know, they didn't even talk after the SF - at least Izuku was pretty surprised with him showing up and having fire).

The point is - it's too early to say that nothing happened, Touya remained hateful, he's irredeemable, etc., etc. - when the narrative gave us hints that something is changing inside him, both in terms of Touya (his child self, his "origin" that he thought he left behind) coming to the surface and in how he sees Shouto and the rest of the family.

I think he needed to see them come together for him, he needed some kind of closure (Endeavor's apology), but it was too early for him to do a full U-turn right there and then. The Todorokis tend to take their time to think things through and process and I personally haven't yet given up on Touya also getting his "starting line" (no, we won't see a full redemption, but we may see some kind of open ending that will show us a path towards healing and reintegration).

#bnha meta #todoroki shouto #todoroki touya #todoroki family #endeavor #dabi

[novaawayne]

PHOTOSHOOT | Izuku Midoriya

Well, yes. U know. I saw this drawing of Horikoshi and then twitter was filled with this shit and I just… I need more of Izuku and those huge thighs

pairing: Izuku Midoriya x fem!reader

summary: you're Izuku's assistant and he has a photo shoot but you can't stop looking at those big thighs and imagining how it would feel to ride them

warnings: NSFW. Riding thigh. Soft dom! Izuku. Pet names (bunny). Assistant x boss. Bad grammar.

wc +5.3k

a/n. Okay, it's my first time writing smut in english so sorry if it's terrible i try my best. And yes, I think it's a bit long but I won't apologize because this shit is very good and I couldn't get it out of my head since I saw the drawing.

You know, english is not my first language

masterlist

As the number one hero's personal assistant, your job was more than exhausting. You practically had every minute of Izuku's life in order. And even though he only wanted to go out into the streets and face the villains, there were also a thousand other things he had to do.

Some things like giving interviews, attending meetings, going to dinners with important people, signing documents, appraising new merchandise to be released, and most importantly… photo shoots.

You had been talking to some publicists from other agencies and they came to the conclusion that it would be a great idea to have a shoot with some heroes from different agencies. But not only that. They would all be wearing the same suit though not just any suit.

Someone mentioned that it would be a good idea for everyone to wear Mirko's outfit. You almost get a nosebleed mid-call just imagining your boss wearing the Mirko heroine outfit. You accepted immediately, anyway, Deku trusted you a lot and always told you that you shouldn't consult anything with him. He would do whatever you asked without hesitation.

That's how you two were in a car heading to the photo studio. You looked at your tablet to see Izuku's schedule and he was on his phone or at least pretended to be. Because he couldn't help but look at you from time to time. He was in love with you and even though he was the hero, one muttered, he still couldn't be around any girl without being a blushing, babbling mess. He could hardly control himself with you.

"So..." Izuku spoke and you looked up from the tablet to look directly into his eyes "a photo shoot?"

You smiled at him.

"Yes" you opened a folder on the tablet before looking at it again "it will be a session together with other heroes, I think you know all of them. They confirmed to me that Uravity, Shoto, Earphone Jack, Red Riot would be there and they had also invited Dynamight but I'm not sure if they will go or not "

Izuku seemed relieved that they were all old friends and he wouldn't be uncomfortable.

"What a relief," he said as he released a breath, "and what kind of session will it be?"

Izuku watched as you hid half your face with the tablet as a blush spread across your face. Had he said something wrong?

“We have arrived” announced the driver.

Normally, the driver would open the door for both of them, but Izuku never allowed it. He was the one to get out first and then open your side of the door to help you out. It didn't matter that they had both ridden in the back seats, he always did. Even when he took you home when you left the office very late. The man felt a little guilty for making you stay longer than necessary and although you don't mind at all, Izuku insisted on taking you to your apartment in his car. Even on those occasions, he would open the door for you and help you out, besides, he would not leave until you entered your building and he was completely sure that you were safe.

And this is no exception, Izuku is already out of the car and opening your side of the door as he extends a hand to help you out. You can't help but blush at the gesture and it's just... It's not that you can't do something as simple as open a door, but you love that Izuku does it for you. He makes you feel a little bit special even though you know he would do it for anyone.

They both begin to walk inside the building and although it's a very short walk, the few passers-by who pass by immediately recognize Deku. He quickly becomes surrounded by a small crowd asking for his autographs and photos.

You can't help but look at the green haired man and see the way he smiles and blushes at all the compliments. He should be used to the attention by now, but it's like the first time you met him and the poor guy was a complete mess. Back then they were both still studying, he was from the hero class and you were from Management.

It was precisely in their third year that they were assigned to work together and without a doubt, you admired that boy from the first moment their paths crossed. You still couldn't believe that you were his personal assistant even after so many years.

Izuku then noticed that you were staring at him and gave you one of his characteristic smiles. You looked away immediately in embarrassment and before continuing, you cleared your throat.

"Come on, we're running late" you spoke loud enough for Deku to hear. The man took it upon himself to apologize to his fans and followed you closely.

It was wrong to be in love with your boss. But you couldn't help it.

They barely entered when they heard a couple of screams. You recognized those responsible as Ochako and Eijiro. Izuku smiled with great happiness when he saw her two friends.

You decided that you should give him his space to catch up with them. Anyway, you had to make sure of everything else. You had to see that the wardrobe was ready, that the makeup artists had products that wouldn't irritate Izuku's skin, that they had his favorite snacks, and that there was nothing that could make the man feel uncomfortable.

It was not strange that some people harassed him taking advantage of his work. On one occasion, a photographer wanted to touch Izuku too much but he had no idea how to react to that situation. It was you who intervened. Or like on another occasion where a boy who was in charge of the wardrobe and was taking Izuku's measurements also wanted to touch him in inappropriate places with the excuse that that was his job. But you weren't a rookie and you knew that this man was harassing him.

Not only were they girls, there were also many men who were interested in him. So you protected him in your own way. Making sure you had the history of each worker and sending a complete list of everything Izuku needed. If someone didn't live up to your expectations or there was something off about their background, you would immediately look for a replacement.

You thought he didn't know everything you did for him and you never cared. It was your job after all. But you couldn't be more wrong, Izuku knew perfectly well how hard you worked for him. And he appreciated it more than anything in the world.

"They told me that Kachan might be coming, have you seen him?" Deku asked his friends.

Kirishima thought about it for a moment.

"I spoke to him last night and he said this was bullshit but he didn't say if he would come or not"

Ochako shrugged.

"Maybe he'll come" he smiled "although the one I saw when I got there was Todoroki. It seems that he stayed inside ”

Deku's smile faded slightly, his friends didn't notice but even though he should have been happy to see Shoto…he wasn't.

"I'll go say hi then," he said.

Kirishima and Uraraka nodded.

"Let's wait for Jirou to arrive"

Deku nodded with a big smile and walked down the corridor that he saw you follow before. Deku knew that you admired Shoto a lot as a superhero. To be honest, that made him feel very jealous. Sometimes I saw you arrive with his merchandise. A scarf or a keychain. He even saw you carry a thermos with his colors.

You never hid your admiration for Shoto and it bothered him a lot, even though he had no right to feel that way. You could admire whoever you wanted, but... why didn't you admire him?

He arrived at the studio, there were lights everywhere and the scenery was pretty simple. But that didn't matter to him at the moment. Deku started looking for you until he found you by the snack table. But you are not alone.

In front of you was Shoto and you seemed very nervous in his presence. Your cheeks were a soft red color, your posture also gave you away, besides, you had a lock of hair behind your ear.

Shoto also seemed to act different in front of you. The man was normally serious and not very talkative, but at that moment he seemed to be very comfortable with you and a smile played on his face as he looked at you with interest and big bright eyes.

Izuku clenched his fists tightly then took a deep breath before relaxing to move closer. He took firm steps until he reached you. Shoto was the first to notice his presence.

"Hey, Midoriya" he greeted him the same as always. Like he wasn't stealing the girl from him.

Deku tried to smile and got behind you, so close you felt his body heat all over your back. And not only that, Deku had slipped a hand around your waist as he pulled you closer to him. The sudden act took you by surprise but it was something that did not go unnoticed by Shoto. Although he didn't quite understand what it meant.

"Todoroki, hello" he greeted kindly.

“I was talking to y/n to thank him for the wine basket he sent the other day for my birthday.”

You giggled as your face turned redder and redder. Izuku had no idea, of course he had also sent his friend a gift but he had no idea that you had also sent him one.

"It was nothing" you said modestly but still nervous "I hope you liked it"

Shoto nodded with a smile.

“Actually I've only opened one but it was delicious. Maybe later you can go and we will open a new one”

"She can not!" Deku yelled and for a moment everyone turned to look at him before continuing with his activities.

You also looked at him blankly.

"How?"

"I'm sorry" Izuku apologized with a completely red face "but y/n has a lot of work and I don't think she can come to your house, Todoroki"

Shoto nodded.

"Understand. Sorry to bother you, y/n. Anyway, I was thinking of inviting everyone, my sister wants to organize a party for our father's birthday but he doesn't have many friends and he asked me to invite mine."

Deku felt like a complete fool. He thought that they would have a date alone.

“In that case… maybe the two of us can go. Right, y/n?”

You looked at him with a frown as he squeezed your waist even more.

“Well, I have to check your schedule and Shoto hasn't told us the date yet. But of course, if Deku has the day off we'll go."

"Okay, I'll ask my assistant to send you the invitation" he looked behind you "oh, Bakugo has arrived. I'll go say hello."

Todoroki hadn't changed much since his school years. He was only friendlier but there was still a lot he didn't understand.

"Sorry" Deku muttered as he backed away from you "sorry" he repeated.

You looked at him blankly but before you could ask what was wrong, the alarm on your cell phone started to go off.

"Oh, it's late. You should go get your clothes right now."

You took him by the arm and took him with you. It's not that you hadn't noticed your boss's little fit of jealousy… but you preferred to ignore it for now. Deku actually appreciated it.

You perfectly saw how Izuku's face turned completely red when he saw his wardrobe for the shoot. You let out a laugh but finally gave him some words of encouragement.

"Oh, you must put this on first so it doesn't bother your crotch," the dressmaker told him.

Deku looked into your eyes and it was as if he had caught a burst of confidence. He had nothing to fear, after all, he was with his friends and trusted people. Furthermore, he was sure that this would also make his fans very happy.

"Okay, where can I change?"

"Ah, yes" you spoke "I'll take you to your dressing room. Apparently the suits had been mixed up and that's why they delivered it to you here."

"Ok"

You led him through a corridor where there were several doors with the names of his friends until they finally reached the one with his name.

"Here. Start changing and I'll tell the stylists to come over."

"Okay, thanks"

You didn't see Deku again for an hour and a half. There were things that you had to discuss with the other attendees and with the marketing manager that time flew by. The cameraman explained what they had planned and the project manager mentioned that he would send you all the photos so that you could select the ones that would be published.

Then they all went back into the studio. Kirishima seemed to be the most comfortable of all, showing a big smile and proudly modeling the suit.

The last to enter was Deku. That he no longer seemed so nervous and was actually quite normal. However… there was something you couldn't stop looking at for a single second.

Deku's big legs.

“Holy shit,” you mutter, still staring at those huge thighs you wish were wrapped around your head.

You almost forget how to breathe as a nosebleed engulfs you. Deku was the first to see you very worried and he didn't hesitate to give you a handkerchief.

"Are you okay?" He asked him very worried.

You nodded.

"Yes, I'm sorry"

“Hmmm… your face is very red. Don't you have a fever? Deku placed a hand on your forehead, and that only made you feel even hotter.

"I'm fine" you sighed "you look good, by the way"

He smiled ruefully.

"Do you really believe it? I think it is very comfortable but it is not my style”

It was your turn to smile at him. You placed a hand on his massive arm and nodded.

"Come on, they are waiting for you to start the session"

Deku ran off with a big smile on his face.

Why did your panties feel so sticky all of a sudden?

You came closer to watch the session up close. The photographer would walk them through how to position themselves for the group session and later they would go through individually or in pairs. There was so much material and they were going to take advantage of it to generate as much money as possible.

Deku actually seemed happy and comfortable as he posed and paced. Jirou was the one who seemed most uncomfortable but still she tried very hard.

The music started to get a little louder and after twenty minutes, you decided to go to the snack table to get something for Deku. A bottle of water will suffice and then he could go in search of food that he liked. Although you knew perfectly well what he would choose.

As you made your way back to the photographer, you saw Bakugo looking disgusted with the situation. Although you did not understand why he had stayed if he did not want to be part of the session. You didn't go over to say hello, you knew he would send you to hell as soon as he saw you.

However, your eyes never stopped seeing those huge legs. Had they grown in the last month? Not that you've never seen them before. In fact, five months ago Deku had done a men's underwear photo shoot and before that a commercial where he was in a bathing suit.

But now, it was as if his legs were much bigger.

You came back to reality when Deku stopped in front of you with a big smile and sweat on his forehead.

"Good job" you praised and gave him a towel and the bottle of water. A stylist immediately came over to fix his hair and put translucent powder on his face.

The stylist ran off as Kirishima left the camera and they were alone.

Deku returned the towel but kept the bottle.

"Thank you," he said finally. You smiled tenderly.

"It's my job," you reminded him.

"I know. But still… thank you” he looked back where this time it was only the girls who were the center of attention “it seems that now it is only them”

"Deku!" One of the photographers called him "come here"

You laughed

"It seems they want you with them too"

It was a really long session. They had arrived at nine in the morning and it was half past two in the morning when everyone was leaving the building. Time had passed very quickly and everyone really had a lot of fun. They would have left the session for another day, but everyone wanted it to stay that day because it would be difficult to get all the heroes together again.

You were beyond exhausted and you couldn't imagine how the heroes were doing. They all looked dead.

Deku and you were the last to leave. The car was waiting for them outside and they both got in in silence. You were looking at the tablet, doing your best to go through the tasks for the morning so that Deku could rest a little more.

When you looked at him, you saw him leaning against the glass of the car half asleep. It really had been a long day. You would definitely cancel everything for the next day.

Unintentionally, your eyes traveled his thighs. What would it feel like to ride those massive thighs? No. You shouldn't think about that at all.

"We have arrived" announced the driver. You frowned as you realized they weren't outside your building.

“I thought… we would go to my apartment first” you told the man.

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Midoriya told me that he should bring both of you here."

You felt nervous, like you couldn't breathe.

"Ah yes" Izuku muttered as he released a yawn "it's late and my apartment was closer. I thought you could stay with me today."

Your face got hot.

"No, it is not necessary. I can order a taxi if…”

"Please" he interrupted you "please stay with me"

They both looked into each other's eyes.

"Fine"

Deku got out of the car and then helped you out. He quickly spots the large building in front of you. It wasn't the first time you visited Izuku's apartment, you had done it a million times, but it was the first time you would sleep with him.

It didn't make sense though. You didn't understand why he asked you to stay with him. It is true that your apartment was on the other side of the city and that Yamato, the driver, was also tired from waiting for them all day.

Maybe Deku was just being nice to his driver. Yes. It should be that.

Deku took his backpack out of the trunk and they both went into the building. Why did you suddenly feel so nervous? The doorman glanced at them before letting them through and returned his gaze to the security cameras as they headed for the elevator.

They both climbed into the metal box and Deku pressed the button with the number twenty-three. The top floor. Compared to your apartment, Deku's was huge. It's not that you complain about your home, in fact it was perfect for you, but you always liked visiting Izuku's house to see his beautiful decorating taste.

The door opened and they came into a small hallway, where at the end was a handsome black wooden door. Deku opened and stopped the door to let you in first. You thanked him with a shy smile and quickly heard the door close behind you. Then slowly the lights started to come on and you also heard Izuku's keys hit the glass bowl at the entrance.

For a moment you felt so small and shy in Izuku's home. Like you don't deserve to be there.

"Everything is alright?" Izuku asked.

"Yes. I'm just tired and I can't think anymore” you lied. You took off your shoes before walking on.

"I know, I feel knocked out too" he smiled "is there something for tomorrow?"

"No. I took it upon myself to clear the agenda for you to rest. You can arrive at the agency at any time you want”

"Thank you very much, bunny"

They both stayed where they were. Izuku said it unintentionally. He shouldn't have said it out loud.

"I'll go change and find something you can wear" he spoke again as he entered his room.

"Yes thanks"

You approached the beautiful chair that covered a large space in the room and was shaped like an L. you still remember when Deku bought it, it took him almost two hours to choose it. It had also cost a fortune but Izuku was very happy. Deku returned almost immediately, before you could close your eyes and rest for a moment.

He was wearing his clothes to sleep with. A green shirt that looked very old and sweatpants that hung dangerously low on his hips. The rib of his underpants was visible. You couldn't believe how Deku still wore old clothes with the huge amount of money he had.

You would definitely buy him new shirts in the week.

“I found this hoodie and this shorts,” he said sheepishly as he handed it over to you.

You stared at it and quickly realized that it was one of the hoodies that went on sale three years ago. It was green, just like her hero costume and the hood had long ears just like his.

It couldn't be a coincidence that he gave you precisely that hoodie. No, it was not. Deku was very eager to see you wearing his merch. For seeing you wearing his colors and not Shoto's.

"Oh, thank you very much Izuku" you stood up "is it okay if I use the bathroom?"

"Of course"

You took more than half an hour in the bathroom. The hoodie fit you perfectly, maybe a little big but Izuku's shorts didn't. They didn't hang on your hip and just ended up on the ground, and you weren't even that skinny but Deku had a lot more muscles than you and he was a lot bigger.

In the end you left the bathroom with only the hoodie on. Izuku was on the couch with his head thrown back and his eyes closed. He really he was very tired.

You approached him and gently touched his shoulder to wake him up but there was no response. You tried again.

"Izuku? Maybe you should go to bed."

But there was no answer. However, you suddenly felt him pull your arm and you sat on his lap. Izuku's face was hidden in the curve of your neck.

"You smell so good" you heard him murmur "you look so cute wearing my stuff"

You felt moisture on your neck. A gasp escaped your lips when you realized they were wet kisses.

"Izuku?" You wanted to push him away but you didn't have enough willpower to do it. He felt so good.

"I noticed" he moved away a little to look at his face "the way you didn't stop looking at my thighs all day"

Your face suddenly felt hot. He had caught you?

"But I don't care," he continued, "I was glad your eyes were only on me."

His hands gripped your waist tightly as he lifted the garment to feel the softness of your skin. He realized then that you were only wearing your panties.

"Izu..." you gasped again. His big hands against your skin was a wonderful feeling.

"Would you like to ride my thigh?"

You were in shock. Was this really happening?

You nodded.

“Good girls use their words. If you want something, you have to ask for it, darling."

Who was this man and what had they done with Izuku? You had never known this side of him but you were starting to like him.

You were silent for a moment. Feeling small kisses from Izuku along your neck and soft caresses on your sides.

"Izuku...can I...can I ride your thigh?"

He smiled without taking his lips off your skin.

"Of course honey"

You stood up and Izuku settled into his expensive chair as you tried to find enough air to breathe and settle into his thigh. Your cheeks burned but you felt too drunk to think about anything other than riding your boss's thigh.

Izuku spread his legs a little more and you settled in front of him. He immediately felt the moisture seeping through your panties. You put your hands on his shoulders to support yourself and you began to move your hips from front to back.

"That's it honey, I want you to cum using only my thigh"

You nodded.

He really felt great. Izuku's thigh was huge and firm yet slightly soft and warm. Much better than you had imagined that afternoon.

"Izuku, this feels so good" you gasped.

"It's what you've been imagining all afternoon, isn't it, bunny?"

You nodded again.

"Yes. I… I wanted to do this”

"Come on, I want you to be greedy and use me for your pleasure" he encouraged you "I'm very strong, so you can apply a little more pressure"

And that you did. Your clothed pussy ran down Izuku's thigh multiple times, faster each time. You heard Deku moan as he looked at you and he didn't hesitate twice before bringing his hands to your hips to press you more against his thigh. He also began to bounce his leg off of him, which sent little vibrations through your core.

"Izuku... I... I... so close"

"Come on bunny, I want you to make a whole mess"

And that you did. You came so hard it was hard to find enough air to breathe again. Your entire body fell onto Izuku's chest as you tried to recover.

Izuku stroked your back very gently.

“That's my good girl. Do you think you can help me now?"

You looked at him with misty eyes and then you looked at his pants. A lump was growing and it seemed very painful.

"Of course"

You were about to stand up to kneel between his legs but he stopped you as he shook his head.

“Not today,” he gasped, “today I want to enter you. Another day I'll let you have fun."

Another day? Did you hear right? Would this happen again?

"Good"

You straddled Izuku and leaned in to kiss his lips. He was surprised but accepted the kiss. It was a messy, passionate kiss. You pulled away from him just a little to start kissing his jaw and then his neck. Every sound that came from Izuku's lips was like hearing an angel sing.

Your hands went to the edge of his shirt and you slowly lifted it up. You felt his abdomen very well chiseled. You parted your lips from his skin just to get rid of that ugly shirt and toss it on the floor before going back to caressing every inch of his skin.

Izuku felt in the clouds. Every caress you gave him was simply wonderful and he could come at that very moment but he held back.

Your hands then went to the spring of his boxers, which you lowered along with his pants.

Deku's cock bounced against his abdomen and it was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen. So long and wide. With a bright red tip. And not only that, he had freckles along his thighs. You had noticed it before but seeing it up close was wonderful.

You really wanted to taste it and feel it in your mouth, but it would be another time.

Your index finger touched the tip, earning you a huge moan from Izuku along with a squeeze in your hips.

"Come on, bunny. Don't be like that with me"

You smiled. It was clear that you were now in control of the situation.

You took his cock with your whole hand and pumped a couple of times gently. Deku was a complete mess under you. You repeated the action a few times and spread the pre-cum all over his cock.

Finally set your panties to the side and lined the tip against your entrance to slowly enter. They both stifled a big groan but Izuku was very impatient and he pushed your hip all the way. It stayed like that for a moment. They both had their eyes closed as they took in what was happening.

"Please" you heard Deku stammer "move, please"

And you did it. You started to move your hips. The moans of both began to fill the room. You were about to take off your hoddie due to the heat spreading through your body but Deku stopped you.

"I want you to wear it while I fuck you, don't take it off"

"Okay" you muttered.

You rode Izuku's dick, feeling like you were in heaven. The lewd sounds fill the room completely. Your nails were leaving marks on Izuku's back and he couldn't feel more excited. He loved that burning sensation you left on his back every time he touched the right spot inside you.

His lips met again. Deku's hands grew stronger as he indicated the pace you should follow. Surely you would have some bruises the next day but what did it matter at that moment.

Deku ran a hand around your waist to draw you even closer to him while his other hand went to your clit to rub it hard. Suddenly you felt so much pleasure running through your body that you didn't think it was possible.

Izuku broke away from your lips just to kiss your neck. Suddenly he had the need to leave marks so that everyone would know that you belonged to him and only him.

You were his and no one else's.

"Izuku... again" you stammered between gasps "I'm going to... Izuku please, I want you to cum inside me"

He was surprised by your request but if that was what you wanted, he had no reason to refuse.

“Do it bunny. I am also close. I want you to be a good girl and milk my dick."

They both climaxed almost at the same time. First it was you, stifling a big moan kissing Izuku's lips and then it was him. You knew that he controlled his strength so as not to break a bone.

In the end, Izuku fell back on the couch and you slumped against his chest.

His expensive chair was a complete mess but he couldn't care less.

"Just so we're clear" Izuku spoke after catching his breath as he hugged you and caressed your back. His cock was still inside you “I'm in love with you. I am really very in love and I would like you to be my girlfriend”

You smiled, leaving little kisses on his clavicle.

"That i would like"

He cleared his throat.

“I would also like…” somehow, he went back to a blushing mess “for you to use more of my merchandise and less of Shoto's. It makes me feel…jealous”

You smiled, leaving a kiss on his lips.

"Ok. But believe it or not, I have quite a collection of your merchandise. It's just that I was a little embarrassed to take it to work."

Izuku's eyes began to glow.

"Is that so?"

"Of course"

He hugged you tighter.

"I'm so happy"

Two weeks later the photos from that session were released. Needless to mention, they were a complete success and sold out immediately.

Of course, you also got every one of the photos where Deku was. It didn't matter that you now had him all to yourself. Those photos were worth gold.

↬ written by Novaawayne

#bnha #izuku midoria x reader #izuku x y/n #izuku midoriya #bnha deku #deku x reader #mha deku #midoriya x you #midoriya x reader #boku no hero fanfic #bnha midoriya #boku no hero acedamia #my hero academia #one shot #fluff

[makeste]

BnHA Volume 35 - A Brief Reaction Journey

hello! so as mentioned in my last post, I’ve started catching up with the BnHA manga again FINALLY after almost two years, and have made it through a fair number of chapters so far! and since I’m not sure how long it will take me to actually post the corresponding liveblogs, I figured I’d make a couple of posts in the meantime to sort of preview my reaction journey thus far with some good old-fashioned OUT-OF-CONTEXT BULLET POINTS taken from my ramblings. originally I was going to make a single post for all 25 chapters I’ve read so far (up to 367), but I quickly realized that was waaaaay too ambitious lol. so for now it’s just this one, and I’ll put up the vol. 36 post probably tomorrow afternoon.

spoiler warning: just fyi, this post will obviously feature spoilers for chapters 342-350*, BUT it will also include some stray spoilers from chapters 362 and 403 as well, so just a heads up for that if you aren’t fully caught up!

*chapters 340 and 341 are not included because I've already posted full reaction posts for each one here and here, respectively.

Chapter 342

Endeavor being taller than Jeanist just feels so WRONG to me regardless of whether or not it is factually accurate. does this mean All Might is also taller than Jeanist?? I don’t want to live in a world where Best Jeanist has secretly been a perfectly normal sized person this entire time. someone please lie to me and tell me that he is tall

many thanks to Kacchan for inserting this small bit of levity into this scene which was otherwise well on its way to sending me into a SPIRAL OF FEELINGS, and in fact still is whenever I look at that panel of Deku with Eri and Kouta, and also that GODDAMN HUG WHERE HE AND INKO ARE BOTH CLEARLY AND PAINFULLY AWARE THAT THEY MIGHT NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN, AND IN THAT MOMENT THEY’RE JUST TRYING TO HOLD THE OTHER AS TIGHTLY AS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE, AND SHE’S PRAYING TO WHATEVER DEITY IS OUT THERE THAT HE’LL COME BACK SAFE AND WHOLE, AND HE’S PRAYING THAT HIS MOM WILL BE ALL RIGHT EVEN IF HE DOESN’T COME BACK, AND NOT ALLOWING HIMSELF TO THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH HE ALREADY MISSES HER, BECAUSE HE CAN’T THINK LIKE THAT ANY MORE, BECAUSE THIS BOY IS FULLY GROWN NOW BECAUSE HE HAD TO BE, BECAUSE HE HAD NO CHOICE, AND I’M BOTH SO PROUD AND SO FUCKING SAD ABOUT IT AND I JUST NEED A MINUTE HERE ACTUALLY, OKAY!! OR FIVE MINUTES!!

LMAO WHAT AN AUSPICIOUS AND NOT-AT-ALL OMINOUSLY FOREBODING NAME. “hmmm what should we name our new class 1-A fortress?” “hmm well I was thinking maybe Troy, after the legendary city with the famously impenetrable walls, which to the best of my knowledge were never breached, or at least that’s what I assume since I never finished reading The Iliad! :) :) :) ...wait, why are you all looking at me like that. they didn’t actually breach them, right? guys? what happened to Troy? GUYS?”

I’m actually so proud of Deku because he’s come such a long way from the days when the mere CONCEPT of even TALKING to a girl was enough to floor him lol. but also I’m legit cracking up at he way he tried to segue into random small talk in the middle of the goddamn apocalypse. gotta be smooth about it!! casual!! you can tell how casual they are because both of them are suddenly struck by the inexplicable urge to fuss with their hair!!

Horikoshi really said “FUCK YOUR SQUADS!! ...but if we had a Todosquad this is who would be in it I guess”

my god. between this and the OchaDeku conversation the villains truly do not stand a chance do they? and they don’t even know how screwed they are yet. REDEMPTION IS COMING!! IT’S KNOCKING ON THE DOOR, TRICK OR TREAT, Y’ALL READY FOR THIS

Chapter 343

so we’re opening with everyone’s favorite Guy With An Old Wad Of Chewing Gum For A Face, AFO!

did this son of a bitch kill Nao’s dad and steal his sexy lie-detector quirk??

sob AFO is all “can I have your son’s cell phone number please” and they’re all “SURE”

bonsoir little Yuuga

do. ...do you not actually know. was this meeting not prearranged. “why are you here Aoyama?” “why are you here, Deku?” truly, why are any of us here??

I’m sitting here trying to play the “guess which parts of this dialogue are real vs fake” game and coming up completely stumped on every single sentence

so Yuuga’s all “can you believe that even though the city of Musutafu is basically down to just U.A., a Dollar Tree, a couple of crumbling park benches, and one very determined Starbucks, we somehow still have functioning courts and lawyers?” I actually can’t believe that at all tbh. you’re telling me “it’s the fucking apocalypse” is still not a good enough excuse to get out of jury duty

damn, Aoyama out here with the trash talk and the ON YOUR LEFT?!

MONOMA??!?!?!?!

Chapter 344

“Eraser’s” plan, indeed. you dare say that right to Kaminari’s face

SHINSOU!!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?

HEYA YOURSELF YOU HANDSOME KNAVE!! LOOK AT YOU!! fucking loving the costume my dude! pretty please tell us your hero name to go along with it. is it MindCraft. I think your hero name should be MindCraft. don’t look at me like that Shinsou we need more punny hero names in the world

“yes well you see, I couldn’t do it, so I learned how to do it.” great story Shinsou

the way he’s rubbing the back of his neck there. are we gonna get some real Monoma character development at long last. feels like it’s long overdue and I am thrilled. he’s such a great character and I feel like we’ve only barely scratched the surface of who he actually is as a person and as a hero

THE UNEXPECTED VLAD KING MENTORSHIP WITH THE ARM AROUND THE SHOULDERS?? he really needed that support. outwardly he’s always made a big show of wanting his turn in the spotlight and begrudging class A for stealing the scene at every turn. but how much of that is really just an act. some of it? most of it? maybe even close to all of it? because right now he suddenly seems so small and young here and really wishing he wasn’t in this unenviable position of being one of the many World’s Last Hopes who are all way too fucking young

did Mirko’s giant robot hand just grow into an EVEN GIANTER giant robot hand??

long beautiful flowing mermaid hair. sorry what was I saying I kind of spaced out there for a sec

YES, AFO, ALL OF THIS TO SPLIT YOU UP YOU STUPID MUSH HEAD. MAYBE IF YOU EVER ACTUALLY FINISHED A MANGA IN YOUR GODDAMN LIFE YOU’D KNOW HOW A FINAL BATTLE IS SUPPOSED TO BE CONSTRUCTED. YOU MOLDY AVOCADO

Chapter 345

“no you don’t understand, we have so many sixteen-year-olds whose coattails we’re all hanging onto. we have sixteen-year-olds who can take over people’s minds. sixteen-year-olds who can create portals to warp you halfway around the world in an instant. and let’s not forget the sixteen-year-olds who can act their damn asses off. we have the best sixteen-year-olds in the world. our sixteen-year-olds are so much better than yours you fucking losers”

Deku I swear. if I’m about to discover that the reason you weren’t there to stop Kacchan from being literally, actually, canonically murdered is because your distracted ass got yoinked into the void by some no-name villain chucklefuck, I’m gonna...

don’t listen to him Aoyama you were magnificent. you were my favorite in all of the stage plays

BUT IS PHASE TWO SUPPOSED TO INVOLVE DEKU IN ANY WAY THOUGH??? HELLO??? IS ANYONE LISTENING TO ME??? I’M FROM THE FUTURE AND THIS IS URGENT, PLEASE

“I fucked up Ochako, I fucked up so bad” omfg Deku

she doesn’t want to hurt you Deku she just wants to shower you in love. in her own special way. by stabbing you a lot

anyway have fun on this... tropical island??? I guess?? Kacchan will just have to hold down the fort in the meantime. which I’m sure will go absolutely fine

Chapter 346

“th-th-this is really bad, right?” yes Tamaki, yes it is. you’re stuck here on the Super Mega Ultra Radical Gnarly Cracked-Out Wonder Stage with Shigaraki Fucking Tomura and at least two of you are about to die and I’M NOT OKAY

so now we’re also getting this hilarious insight into the inner workings of the Mega Ultra Tremendous Stupendous Incredible Sky Coffin and it is truly, truly phenomenal

Horikoshi stop taking my sarcastic jibes and owning them completely challenge!! all the best sixteen-year-olds. all the finest greatest Hyper Ultra Sparkle Glimmer Wonder Battle Stages

this is genuinely one of the boldest lampshading efforts I have ever seen in fiction you guys

“yes, we acknowledge that this does indeed seem impossible to have pulled off, BUT have you considered that, fucking quirks though???? AND THAT THEY ARE, AS THE KIDS SAY, WILD??”

Chapter 347

lmao they’re shouting at Monoma accusingly and he’s all “I’M HAVEN’T BLINKED AT ALL YOU GUYS I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU”

don’t mind him, he’s just out here growing out his hideously malformed hands and fingers endlessly from every part of his body, normally, as one does. nothing quirk-related about it. anyone could do this if they simply exercise and maintain a balanced diet. this 100% is not a quirk y’all it’s just essential oils

SUDDEN MONOMA FEELS DELIVERED TO MY DOORSTEP???

awwww. the way he’s almost panicked, frantically wondering if he somehow fucked the quirk up and desperate for Aizawa to believe him that he’s trying his best. and Aizawa quick to reassure him. this kid is so desperate for approval. and unapologetically careening his way onto my top ten character list, welcome dear boy

so that’s that. see you in two years Deku. his last words spoken out loud to Kacchan were, and I quote, “wha --”

Aizawa is so hopelessly impossibly hot at all times and I don’t know how the universe can handle his existence. he’s even doing it without activating his quirk now. no ponytails or anything. just an eyepatch and a dream

don’t mind me, I’m just out here doing literal algebra to figure out how long it would take Deku to get back here if he traveled at the same speed as All Might did in chapter 90 (30 seconds per 5km, apparently). about 20 minutes, give or take. well shit. hopefully he’s a little faster than Kamino-era All Might was, especially since he can fly and has that Fa Jin shit too. or maybe Rody can fly him lmao. or S&S’s hot fighter pilot boyfriend

“what’d Sensei say, Deku?” “he said no, looks like I gotta uber. can I borrow your credit card, I promise I will venmo you back”

unfortunately for Deku he does not realize he’s accidentally gotten himself caught up in what will undoubtedly end up being the most erotic and bisexual of the various final battles

can’t believe Deku has like 6 love interests and out of all of them, Toga is the first one who actually asks him out. good for you girl. gotta shoot your shot

Chapter 348

FELLAS IS IT GAY TO BREAK OUT INTO TERRIFIED BEN DAY DOTS BECAUSE A GIRL EXPRESSED HER CARNAL INTEREST IN YOU????

anyway so since Deku apparently doesn’t understand how romance works either, he’s trying his best to give an actual response by recontextualizing all of this in terms of the one big thing he does understand: All Might

you’re telling me you never wanted to stab All Might to death and then turn into him?? wow I just can’t believe it

but also... okay lol. so I was thinking about this sarcastically, but was then struck by the very unironic thought that there sorta kinda is someone whom Deku does, both consciously and subconsciously, try to be like, and who he also kinda does apparently share the same heart and mind as. at least if chapter 403 is anything to go by lol. soooooooo. huh

god damn it Toga. absolutely none of what you’ve said or done here has been even the SLIGHTEST BIT reasonable. you can’t just tell someone you want to stab them and be their girlfriend. and if and when they try to let you down easy by responding with the MOST THOUGHTFUL AND GENTLE REJECTION ANYONE COULD EVER POSSIBLY MAKE UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, because they’re actually the WORLD’S NICEST MAN, you can’t just respond by doing whatever it is you’re presumably about to do, which I’m guessing is gonna be really violent and unhinged

so Ochako is all “ever since we fought last time I’ve been thinking about you a lot!” and Toga is all “are you serious, YOU broke up with ME bitch” and now she’s standing behind her with a knife

“she’s the least predictable of our opponents” YEAH NO KIDDING LOL

“everyone knows that Toga is actually Ochako’s villain, like ffs Deku you haven’t even interacted with her since the Provisional Exam arc.” Deku they’re 100% right and you’re looking more and more the fool with each passing second

well all right lol. twenty minutes to get back to Musutafu. let’s just hope he doesn’t run into any traffic on the way

Chapter 349

what the fuck is OFA Dos’s quirk exactly and are we ever gonna get to it before I literally die of old age. at this point there’s gotta be a reason why he’s not using it, right?? so what’s the deal there? does he still somehow not know how? is it too dangerous? and I really need to know why II has the Bakugou gauntlets. tell me this isn’t one of the things we’re still waiting on answers for two years down the line because I swear to god I will cry

anyway so Deku’s saying he’s doing his best but he’s still “too slow”. WELL THEN MAYBE IT’S THAT TIME?? DEKU?? WHAT DO YOU SAY

NO FUCKING WAY LOL, CAN IT REALLY BE THAT EASY??!

OH WHAT THE FUCK, FUCK YOU NOT!CCHAN LOL YOU’RE JUST HERE TO COCKBLOCK HIM?

fuck. so has he used it since then?? is he gonna use it finally now that Kacchan’s alive and well again?? oh my god I need to shut up and stop asking questions and just keep reading. fuck

wow so Dabi’s literally just burning the All Might statue while he stalls for time trying to figure out how to beat his OP little brother who was literally engineered to be better than him sob. out of all the villains he’s probably the most screwed right now isn’t he

starting to get an inkling Dabi’s not happy that he doesn’t actually get to fight Endeavor. getting some subtle hints here and there that he might actually be upset about that

apparently wanting to fight Dabi and stop him from helping to destroy the world makes Shouto a pawn. wake up Shouto. stop being such a sheep, Shouto. can’t you see that saving the world is exactly what Endeavor wants you to do???!

this is just going to be seventeen chapters of Dabi talking about nonsense while they both stand around progressively getting hotter both literally and metaphorically isn’t it

Chapter 350

OH SNAP. [SLAMS HAND ON TABLE] HERE WE GO. IT’S FINALLY THAT TIME

well, well, well. to the surprise of absolutely no one. the real one who was responsible for everything this whole time

but I just have to pause real quick before we continue. because it absolutely cannot be a coincidence that AFO just happened to be there once again. just waiting in the shadows to magically swoop in the minute disaster strikes. and so, just like with baby Tenko, this immediately makes me suspect that Touya burning himself alive was not in fact a training accident at all. which is something I did not expect, and which, just. fuck, fuck, FUCK AFO. fuck this guy.

looks like the children's ward of a hospital?? wait, what??

how the fuck is he still so adorable. when exactly did the transition take place between adorable and sexily unhinged. right now Todoroki Touya still looks to be the absolute most adorable child on the planet

I miscalculated. I was not emotionally prepared to handle this chapter right now. I should not have clicked

really love to see that Touya didn’t just cave right away. wouldn’t have felt right, ngl. just doesn’t fit in with what we know about his character

oh shit wait we’re cutting back to Dabi talking to Shouto and he says he did come back home??

fucking why. goddammit what the hell. why is this the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever read. LOVE HIM!! SOMEONE!! ANYONE!! just love him, please. literally all he has ever wanted!!

JESUS. I HATE THIS. I am so upset right now. out of all of the horrific and traumatic and terrible, awful things that have happened to BnHA characters in their flashbacks, the thing that hits me the most out of all of them is this one image of a sixteen-year-old boy standing before an altar, with his family very much alive and standing RIGHT FUCKING THERE IN THE NEXT ROOM, and yet somehow feeling more alone than he’s ever been. so alone he literally gives up all hope in this one moment. my god I feel all of it and it’s so fucking devastating I keep having to stop typing so I don’t completely break down sobbing

well damn. after a rush of 15 and 13-page chapters, which were all admittedly appreciated by me in my race to catch up to Light Fades to Rain before this coming Friday, Horikoshi finishes up the volume with one hell of a 17 page finale. once again the Tododrama delivers. this was fucking phenomenal

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha vol. 35 #way too many characters to tag so I am not gonna bother! #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #lotta 'calm before the storm' chapters in this one #also I was kinda disappointed by the cover of this volume ngl #but at least monoma and shinsou got their little moment on the back #vol. 36 post should be up tomorrow #vol. 37 post to follow once I finish the rest of those chapters #and then I'll start posting the actual recaps again probably in a couple of weeks or so #once I finish catching up

[adminbryantsaki]

Tarragon

Alpha! Shouta x Omega! reader Winter Rut.

(I do not own My Hero Academia or the characters within. Anything associated with that fandom belongs to Horikoshi Kohei. This story belongs to my 2023 Spice-tober collection. I hope you enjoy. If this story isn’t your cup of tea, blend of spices, or brew of coffee move on. Reader discretion is advised.)

TW: Omegaverse shenanigans, sex scene.

WC: 844

You were wrapped up in a fluffy blanket front of a window in your log cabin, watching the snow fall outside, with a fire crackling away in the fireplace. You had your face pressed up against the glass as you could smell the cold, crisp scent of the snow outside. Your head turned to the front door when it opened, showing that your Alpha had returned home from a grocery trip. You ran over and gave him a hug before he could even take his shoes off.

“Missed me, didn’t you?” He asked as he hugged you and guided you out of the entry way so he could close the door and begin putting the groceries away with your help. As you put the bread and eggs away into the fridge, he checked the crock pot that he had prepared that morning with some white and red onions on the bottom, sliced up chicken that was previously frozen, a whole head of cabbage that had been chopped up, along with granulated garlic, paprika, bay leaf and tarragon that made the cabin smell amazing. He stirred the contents in the crockpot before putting some rice he bought from the store that day into the rice cooker along with some water and setting the machine to cook while he arranged the freezer for the new packages of meat that he purchased earlier in the day.

 You sat in your chair and rested your head on the table as you watched your Alpha finish putting the groceries away and plating what he made for dinner. He walked over, setting plates of food in front of you and him, sitting down to finally eat. The two of you enjoyed the meal as you talked about your day.

 Once the meal had been eaten, Shouta set the dishes in the sink to soak before he picked you up from your chair and carried you to his den in the living room where he laid you down on the thick, warm blanket and kissed you gently. You nuzzled into his neck and you could smell the scent of pine trees after a heavy rainstorm and hot coffee coming from his neck and filling your nostrils, making your brain go fuzzy with the underlying pheromones coming from his rut scent. “Alpha’s in rut. Do you need help?” “Would I have you in my den if I wanted to take this rut on alone? Of course I’d love to have your help.” He told you and kissed your neck, gently dragging his teeth along your sensitive flesh as it was exposed to slight draft of cold air. You gasped and gripped onto his shirt as a shiver was sent down your spine.

“I-I’ll help you. Just get me warm. Your den has a draft and I don’t like it.” You told him. He kissed you and fixed the wall of his den to not let any cold air in before he went back to leaving several bite marks all over your neck and shoulders. He worked his way down, easing you out of your blanket, letting you wrap your limbs around his torso, burying your face into his neck as he slid your sweatpants off along with your underwear, and he pushed them away from where you were laying. He looked back at you and kissed you gently, supporting himself up on his arms and sliding his erection into you and making quick work of thrusting in and out of you at a rapid pace, making you moan into his neck and grip onto his shirt as he rutted into you. You could smell the faint scent of the tarragon from the dinner on his skin which helped you relax more and let him thrust deeper into you, growling deeply into your ear. You came long before he did, making him smirk and keep thrusting into you until he released deep into your womb along with you cumming for a second time.

He waited a few minutes before he kissed you deeply and pulled out of you, laying next to you, and watching you come down from your high at your own pace. He pulled you close to his chest and you snuggled right into him. “You’re warm, Alpha.” You told him and he smiled. You looked out a window in his den at the snow falling outside calmly and in a peaceful manner with the fireplace crackling in the background. You felt your eyelids grow heavy and Shouta encouraged you to fall asleep as you were safe in his arms. You did so and he fell asleep soon after you did.

The End.

#bnha #admin writes #mha #bnha aizawa #bnha omegaverse #mha aizawa #mha eraserhead #bnha eraserhead #shouta smut #aizawa shota #aizawa shouta #aizawa shouta x reader #shota aizawa #shouta aizawa #kinktober 2023 #mha kinktober #bnha kinktober #spicetober 2023 #spice tober 2023

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

>They are really following the “saving child shigaraki” path 💀

No? Well, yes, but Deku seeing what happened to Tenko and talking to Tenko was always going to happen, it doesn't mean that only child Tenko gets saved lol. Tenko is Shigaraki's origin, his core, his genuine ideas, his honne (true feelings and desires). Of course Deku has to understand and save Tenko to save adult!Tenko, lol. Nobody seemed to complain when child!Ochako was talking to child!Himiko and etc., so what's up with some people's attitude now? 😭

I think the fandom is a bit paranoid because they really fear some theories.

I sometimes entertain those theories just to fuck around and create what ifs. It's a mere childplay. "Oh what if the school burned today and we all graduated earlier" type of mindset. The odds of it happening are non-existent, but c'mon. Unless you plan to burn the school yourself or you know someone will try, the odds are almost zero.

"but somewhere in the world a school burned—"

Sure, some mangas decide to end things the worst way possible only to cause shock, to fuck with fans, for money, sometimes simply because they don't understand their own stories. Even the big mangas is subjected to that. The author can go bananas for whatever reason and give you a terrible ending.

From my perspective, Horikoshi has rarely lost sight of the story he wants to tell. If he opens a plotline, he takes care to close it later. We got our traitor, we got the resolution with the Todorokis, we got AFO, class 1B, the villain comebacks...

Even when there were moments I knew Horikoshi went a little on the tangent (like Stars and Stripes) he was quick to return to the main issue. In bnha, to get an answer for your question you only have to wait for the manga to explain it— or in some cases, check the spin-off. If the answer is not in bnha itself, it normally is in the Vigilantes manga.

When someone asks me "Hey Shan, do you think that is possible?" the correct answer is always yes, because as long as the story is not over anything can happen. Objectively speaking, yes, it is as possible as anything else. As long as you're alive a lightning strike can hit you. A shark can bite you. An alien can come for you. The odds are there.

Now, is it probable?

No, not much.

Turning Tomura into a child to erase his crimes and resolve Deku's role within the plot is not only the lazy route, but also a disservice to the story. People don't resurrect out of nowhere in bnha. Limbs don't grow again. This is a story where the consequences are permanent. Even saving Mirio had a cost. There are only a few characters that can magically heal and their participation is soo little, it's almost as if they weren't there.

Each story has rules. You don't care about the real life rules or your own law code or whatever; you care about the inner rules of that story.

So far, Horikoshi has taken care of not breaking the inner rules of bnha. Why would he do so now?

Another bnha trait is that it doesn't stay stagnant on a plotline that is interesting yet irrelevant to the main story. It also doesn't hurry the story if it needs to go down a certain path. It will happen on its own time, after the events that need to happen had happened too. Example: saving Tomura has been a whole process. If Horikoshi were to turn Tomura into a child, why would he show all that he has shown us?

That's 'cause Horikoshi is explaining Deku's choice of saving Tomura. I know the trend of separating Tomura from Tenko, but it's absurd. They are one and the same. The kid is the adult and vice versa. You save the kid version, you save the adult one too. In order to save the adult one, you need to save the kid first. And if you went all the way to save that person, why would you want to erase all of it and turn them into a child again?

Isn't the story about how Deku giving little Tenko a chance? Isn't the story about Deku telling others they can do the impossible? Didn't Nighteye say that Deku could change the future and now we see him also changing the past, if only to allow the present to be a little more bearable? Livable?

I'll say this here: the theory that dictates that the heroes will turn the villains into kids to save them and the villains will stay like that has absolutely no foundation within the story.

If it happens, it's bad writing.

Horikoshi uses the kid images as symbolism. It is meant to represent the core of a person. It's the part of them that would never change, the part of them that dictates their dreams and goals, what they hate and love, who they are. It's the most basic of their forms, their essence, their soul if you want to speak on those terms.

Heroes are meant to connect with those parts of a human in order to save them, because the job of a hero is not only saving the body, but the human as a whole. To preserve hope, to heal past wounds and give people a reason to smile. To help people laugh as a kid again, to bring back their wonder and their innocence, to fight the apathy and the cynical part of themselves.

Bnha is fantasy. People have powers. The dead can communicate with the living. Of course that the heroes can talk with the childhood versions of the people to heal their past traumas.

Easy as that.

I can't say for sure if the villains will live or die. I only have my opinion (they'll live), but I am not the author. Horikoshi can have an epiphany tomorrow and kill everyone in the story with a meteor. Idk.

I can only say that Horikoshi has presented a cohesive and coherent writing, one that follows the lines it dictates to their natural conclusion. If things stay like that, there's no need to fear none of the crazy theories circulating the fandom. At the end of the day that's all they are, theories.

#shan's asks #bnha #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha 417 #mha 417 #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha leaks #mha leaks #shan's bnha opinions #shan's mha opinions

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XXI-B + Conclusion, Final War-B: The Hospital Attack)

To preface before I start documenting these final four chapters, there’s been a lot said (not least by me) about how wildly out of touch the resolution to this plotline is.  While I didn't set out to rehash all of that again, it turns out I can't actually talk about how the series portrays heteromorphobia without talking about how it resolves it—if I'd wanted to do that, the place to stop would have been with the last post. This whole piece is also destined for AO3 eventually, so it needs to be readable for those who don't follow me on tumblr. Therefore, if you've been following my #heteromorph discrimination plot posts for a while, there are portions of this post that will be pretty familiar territory!

If you're new and want my full breakdowns, you can find them in my Chapter Thoughts posts or in this pair of posts rounding up the asks I’d gotten on the topic.  Here, I will simply say that I don’t think Horikoshi’s fumbling of the plot can be read to mean that all the stuff I’ve documented thus far was just me reaching too hard, reading stuff into the manga where nothing was intended.  While I’m sure some of it is—I definitely went out on a few limbs!—I think the main answer to, “How can heteromorphobia be such a well-thought-out depiction of a logically foreseeable form of discrimination while also having such a terrible resolution?” is, “Because the mainstream opinion about how best to handle discrimination is wildly different in Japan than it is in progressive American circles.”

That doesn’t mean I’m willing to wave the wand of Cultural Differences over this resolution and forgive everything—there were plenty of Japanese fans critiquing it as well![1]—but it does somewhat modulate my feelings about it.  In any case, let’s get to it.

1: Most of what I saw was on Twitter, but there’s a Japanese site called bookmeter that’s kinda goodreads-esque, and which had several critical reviews posted for the volume, including one that felt like every point laid out was something I’d complained about as well.  Super validating, but a shame it was necessary!

(I'll be changing up my formatting just a bit in hopes that I can find a way to present sub-sub-bullet points that tumblr won't choke on in this 13K post. Pray for me.)

Chapter 370: 

O We open with a scene which we’re led to believe is about Spinner but which the end of the chapter will reveal to be about Shouji.  It’s shockingly open about the extent of the discrimination Shouji faced, and there’s worse yet to come, but here we find people throwing stones at him, telling him to die, saying he has dirty blood that will defile the land, that he should stay inside the house, and that no matter how much time passes,[2] they will never accept “his kind.”

2: Viz renders this as “no matter how much society progresses,” but the word jidai means something more like “the times”/”the age,” and the progression term used can mean improvement, but in the circumstances, probably just means forward movement.  I think the intention is more like, “No matter how much the times march on,” if only because it would be very odd for the people yelling this vitriol to frame it as themselves resisting progression.  After all, bigots don’t typically think of themselves as “regressive” compared to everyone else’s progressiveness; they think of themselves as normal or valuing tradition compared to everyone else’s moral laxity/perversity.

So, remember how I talked about the spiritual/religious charge to the language the CRC used to talk about their “sanctuary” and the League/Spinner’s presence in it?  Here’s the full scope of that.  It’s about kegare, a Shinto concept of uncleanliness associated particularly with blood and death, and while that’s normally something that can be purified simply by undergoing the proper ritual cleansings, when something is, in itself, intrinsically unclean, no amount of purification will fix it; you can only keep it sealed away.  Hence the yelling at Shouji not to leave the house.

The spirituality-based discrimination calls to mind the burakumin, originally an outcaste group of people who made their living working with all the aspects of life Shinto considered kegare—butchers, tanners, executioners and the like.   They were made to dress and cut their hair in ways that identified them on sight, barred from entering temples or schools, and lived in their own villages.  The laws mandating much of this were abolished in 1871[3] and urban sprawl gradually rolled over burakumin villages, turning them into slum areas.  While today it’s not uncommon for people to not even know they’re descended from burakumin lineage unless they’re specifically told,[4] more subtle discrimination does endure.  While it’s clearly not the only inspiration, there’s a lot about anti-burakumin bias that’s reflected in heteromorphobia.

3: Albeit not without considerable and violent protests against the liberation of the burakumin/the idea that they were henceforth to be allowed to hold other occupations and become ordinary citizens.  Arson, destruction of villages, attacks and deaths—all things considered, the anti-Kaihourei riots are probably a decent place to look for inspiration on the historical massacres Spinner’s #2 will be talking about shortly.

4: Or find out because someone who knows the significance of those old neighborhoods finds out first and they’re suddenly on the bad end of some discriminatory act or another.

O We find out that the group Spinner’s leading consists of fifteen thousand people, that number split between PLF remnants and ordinary civilians who support the PLF’s cause.  It’s unknown exactly how that split breaks down, but based on how the rest of the attack goes, I think it’s probable that the group is mostly civilians—if it were more PLF, it probably wouldn’t be so wholly defanged by Shouji’s big plea for peace.  So that’s what we might call a “bad look,” that fifteen thousand ordinary civilians feel so incredibly hard done-by that they not only flock to join a known terrorist, but that they do so for the purpose of attacking a hospital.

O They’re opposed by about two hundred police and heroes, the relevant of whom for our purposes are Present Mic, Rock Lock, Officer Gori, Shouji, and Koda.  With the exception of Present Mic, who will in any case be heading inside very shortly, they’re all minorities of some sort, with Rock Lock being very visibly, obviously Black, and the others being heteromorphs.  None of them are immediately thinking about the composition of the crowd, but rather about how difficult the crowd is being to handle.

O Rock Lock yells out that the rioters are too organized to be some random mob, a dismissiveness that gets him shouted at by the Spinner fanboys—tragically their only appearance in all of this!—that, “Folks with human faces just don’t get it!”  I have to assume that putting Rock Lock in this scene is no accident, but rather is there to make the rioters come off as short-sighted, so deep in their own pain that they lash out at someone who, if HeroAca!Japan is anything like present day Japan, almost certainly understands better than they think!

The phrasing, in any case, points towards the dehumanization that heteromorphs, especially animal-associated ones, are subject to.  After all, as Re-Destro might point out, in the post-Advent world, isn’t it the case that any given heteromorphic human’s face, no matter how strange it may be, is de facto a “human face”?  Yet the vitriol from the Spinner fans clearly reflects how internalized it’s become for them, that they don’t look “human,” despite the fact that “looking human” means nothing at all in the time of quirks.

O Koda gets called a traitor by an elderly beaked heteromorph from, apparently, a rural area, underscoring what’s been alluded to a few times prior to this, and which will be laid out explicitly in a few pages, that heteromorphobia is far, far worse in the countryside than it is in the cities.  Mr. Beak assumes—correctly, it seems[5]—that Koda’s a city kid, because why else other than ignorance would a fellow heteromorph stand against them?

5: Koda’s from Iwate Prefecture, which is only above Hokkaido in terms of population density; a bit of research suggests that its largest city, Morioka, is considered to be a mid-sized city.  So that’s definitely the hard upper limit on exactly how “big city” Koda could reasonably be.  That said, Shouji also identifies Koda as someone who grew up in a city, for which I assume he must have at least some basis.

O Spinner’s #2 fulfills the promise of his early shorthanded characterization of being a fiery, well-spoken zealot by standing on top of a building over the mob and exhorting them onward with revolutionary, inflammatory rhetoric.  And boy, does he bring up a lot to talk about!    

Demagoguery for Fun & Profit

O Quirk counselling and quirk education?  Phony nonsense, he says.  That’s a fairly confusing grievance to bring up in this context, so let’s consider what he might have in mind.

• For quirk education, I would contend that BNHA has shown very little of it, in spite of having Academia right there in the title.  The academics in question are about Heroics, after all, not quirks in and of themselves.  Here’s the complete list of what I would say the reader has seen that could be qualified as actual education about quirks:

Aizawa telling the kids(/low tier villains at USJ) some broad generalities, things like a very basic explanation of how quirks work on the genetic level or how they’re classified.  Most of this is delivered in the context of how his quirk works; the only outlier that immediately comes to mind for me is his explanation of how quirks are like muscles, and can be strengthened via training.    

Mirio and Tamaki’s middle school class doing “quirk training,” which is framed as a P.E. class and is specifically aimed at finding ways for each kid to be “useful to society,” not about them learning anything about quirks in a broader sense.    

Endeavor’s recent reference to Nedzu’s alleged “quirk morality education,” about which I have already registered my skepticism.    

The bit in Re-Destro’s monologue to Shigaraki where he mentions he was taught not to judge others by their quirks.  It’s hard to judge how applicable this is to normal society because Re-Destro was raised in a cult, and the book shown during this sequence was released by Curious’s publisher.

So of those options, what is #2 talking about?  I’d say the last one is probably closest to what he means: don’t judge others by their quirks.  But of course, people judge others by their quirks all the time.  Family, classmates, teachers, people in the same neighborhood, heroes and police—we see examples from literally the first page of characters who are being judged by their quirks or lack thereof.  While that judgement doesn’t apply only to heteromorphs, they are, by dint of their visibility, going to face it everywhere they go, regardless of whether any given situation—say, going to the grocery store or on a date—involves quirks or not.  So, whatever lessons people in this society are getting about quirks and judgement, they clearly aren’t absorbing them.

It also bears pointing out, of course, that #2’s personal affiliation is with the Metahuman Liberation Army, and he definitely shows signs—as I’ll get to in a bit—of the quirk supremacism that group is so unanimously painted with in the endgame.  So while the supremacy he’s preaching is about heteromorphs rather than quirks more generally, he could well be saying quirk education is phony because he’s all for judging people on their quirks!  However, his criteria for that judgement differs from both forms of judgement taught by the society he’s railing against—what they practice and what they preach.

• Then there’s quirk counseling, a practice the story most prominently associates with Toga, who’s barely a twitch of the needle away from baseline (though her abuse is not wholly without reference to her appearance, in that her natural smile is repeatedly branded as scary or deviant).  So why bring it up in association with heteromorphs?  My suspicion is that a heteromorph—especially a heteromorph with an animal-associated quirk!—being visibly “different” in some way makes the people around them hyper-sensitive to behavioral “deviations.”

For a start, you see that hyper-sensitivity brought to bear against Toga.  Curious contends that Toga’s sense of “admiration” was a perfectly normal thing, but it was the tie to blood that made it wholly unacceptable.  It’s notable that, before she snapped, Toga was never shown to actually want to hurt people: the bird was already injured when she found it, her friend got a scrape the way any child might, Saito was involved in a fight Toga had no hand in.  She hurts people now because a lifetime of rejection and dehumanization, but Toga’s admiration of blood was not intrinsically indicative that she’d grow up to be violent; people treated it that way because of cultural attitudes towards blood and blood-attraction.

So, might the same sort of thing be true of e.g. animal-associated heteromorphs?  That they might exhibit behaviors which would, in different circumstances, be totally fine, but which they’re judged for unduly harshly because of cultural beliefs about the animal they resemble?  Let me just spitball a few possibilities:

A cat heteromorph who, as a child, showed affection by nuzzling.  That’s fine when a literal kitten is doing it, and funny and cute when a baseline child sees a cat doing it and imitates it for fun, but when the cat heteromorph does it, he makes people uncomfortable, makes them wonder if he lacks self-control, comes off as weird and too-forward.  So his parents rebuke him and bring him to a quirk counsellor to break him of the habit, leading him to feel ashamed and alienated from a harmless natural impulse.    

A snake-headed girl is the first heteromorph in her family line and the way she stares at people so fixedly, never blinking, creeps them out, makes them feel like she’s dangerous.  She isn’t and has no intention of being so, but she’s sent to quirk counselling anyway and the lesson she learns is to just never look people in the eye at all.    

A condor heteromorph develops a morbid interest in corpses in middle school.  He doesn’t want to eat them, he’s not some kind of cannibalistic animal—at least that’s what he told himself before quirk counselling, where his counsellor, like his teachers, assumed that his interest had to be tied to animal instincts.  He wanted to be a mortician, or join the police and get into crime scene investigation, but when he told people that they just looked at him like he was already holding a fork and knife.  (He ends up getting into photography, and just has to live with the fact that now people have two excuses to call him a vulture.)    

Two children—one with a plant-based emitter quirk, the other an eight-eyed spider heteromorph—are caught in the act of killing some insects by a local police officer.  It’s the sort of innocent childhood cruelty you might find anywhere, and, indeed, when the officer calls their school about it, that’s what gets decided about the emitter—he was just a child who didn’t know any better.  But the heteromorph gets recommended for quirk counselling instead—after all, spiders kill insects.  What if this is an early warning sign for instincts towards predatory behavior?  It’s important to nip these things in the bud.

That’s all off the top of my head or taken from some conversation with friends on the topic, and maybe it’s a reach, but it’s also a very plausible explanation for why a heteromorphic idealogue might bring up quirk counselling as a specific grievance—because, like the Villain-designation for criminals, it’s unevenly and unfairly applied.

O The next point #2 makes, and definitely the one that made the biggest splash in fandom at the time, is his invocation of a pair of historical incidents, possibly both but at least one of which was a mass murder targeting heteromorphs, carried out by a bunch of baseline types.  He names them as the 6/6 Incident and the Great Jeda Purge.  These are both stealth Star Wars references, though the former is disguised a bit better by being in the same format that Japan sometimes uses for naming events like attempted coups.[6]  Given the image we see, it’s fair to assume the event in BNHA was similar.

6: See for example the May 15 Incident or the February 26 Incident, called the 5・15 Incident and the 2・26 Incident respectively in Japan. You see this in China as well, with the Tiananmen Square massacre being referred to there as the 6/4 Incident.

Notice that the perpetrators here are mostly holding weapons.  Were they quirkless themselves, or were they avoiding using quirks such that they couldn’t be branded as Villains?  Knowing the answer to that would give us a timeframe for this.

He goes on to declaim, on the basis of these events, that the history of the paranormal is one of persecution and oppression of those with “differing forms.”[7] The term in Japanese there is kotonaru katachi, 異なる形, which uses a different reading of the kanji in igyou (異形) and muscles in a verb conjugation, which has the effect of softening the harshness of 異 somewhat.[8]  This would be a great catch-all term for those with heteromorphic bodies who might or might not have heteromorphic quirks[9] if it weren’t for the fact that literally the only person we ever hear using it is an anti-social zealot.  No one on Team Hero ever makes this kind of distinguishment.

In any case, #2 is obviously over-simplifying to play to his audience—recall the baseline woman we saw back in that shot of Persecuted Early Quirk-Havers back in Chapter 59—but, as I’ve discussed extensively, being more visible does make one a more ready target.  Also, of course, the presence of the CRC in the story lays the groundwork for this sort of historical horror story even long after the worst days of the Advent.

7: I provide my own translation here because the Viz one, “those who don’t fit the mold,” is vague to the point of uselessness.

8: The koto reading, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty rare, often tagged as archaic in words including it.  The i reading is far more common, in words that denote wrongness, divergence, abnormality, and so on.  But it may be less about the reading and more about the fact that adding the verb conjugation makes the term more of a descriptive phrase than a direct noun.  As ever, take my talk about Japanese language minutiae with a grain of salt.

9: “Differing forms” is broad enough, however, that it could also be read as covering, say, people with amputations, congenital anomalies, or other sorts of non-quirk-related disfigurements from accidents or disease.  As in real life, navigating the linguistic space between specificity and Othering can be tricky.

O Next, #2 rhetorically demands what excuse was given by those who perpetrated these slaughters?  He answers his own question with the quote, “They give me the creeps.” Note how this ties in with my earlier suppositions about the likelihood of discrimination worsening the farther one is from baseline, as well as those about the necessity of putting up a good, positive, appealing front.  It’s a perfectly intuitive leap, that more extreme variants of heteromorphy, or those who evoke negative associations—animals tied to rot or bad luck, people made wholly out of green ooze—are going to be more likely to be found “creepy” than those who look like e.g. sexy bunny girls or straight-laced guys who just happen to have pipes jutting out of their calves.  Of course, that’s on something of a sliding scale; the more biased an area is against heteromorphs in general, the easier it will be to find oneself on the wrong side of that line.

O #2 presents the idea that society has reflected on their actions and made amends, or at least that’s how society’s narrative goes.  Illustrating this, we see two of the three heteromorphs in the police force, as well as Nedzu.  Interestingly, the panel does not include any heteromorphic heroes!  I might guess that this is because heroes are meant to use their quirks to serve others; they’re really just enforcement tools, lacking any particular authority beyond a quirk-use license and some admittedly broad soft power courtesy of the social contract.[10] Conversely, a school principal and a police chief (Gori remaining the outlier here) have actual authority, such that the average heteromorphobia-denier can point to them as evidence that heteromorphobia doesn’t exist anymore.

10: Which is to say, I don’t get the impression civilians are required to take orders from heroes, such that they would actually get in legal trouble for disobeying.  The fact that people do typically follow those orders speaks more to the power heroes wield via their association with the police force, as well as the general tendency of people to assume that someone in a uniform giving orders during an emergency is probably a professional whose orders it would be safe and wise to follow.

In the same panel, we also see a baseline guy palling around with a vaguely murine heteromorph dude (he looks more like a mascot suit mouse than an actual mouse, but he’s certainly nowhere close to baseline!), illustrating another way society wants to pretend it’s moved past heteromorphic discrimination.  I can’t help but note, in regards to this specific pair, that the manga uses faces the readers know to illustrate the point about heteromorphs in positions of authority, whereas to make the point about baseline/heteromorph friendships, it has to make up a new pair to show us because the series hasn’t made the time to actually build any (heroic) relationships that actually look like that!

Now, one could argue that using familiar faces to underscore #2’s speech would imply that he’s aware of those faces, and while that’s fine for figures of authority, there’s no reason for him to be aware of e.g. Natsuo and his mousey girlfriend.  However, the same would apply to anyone placed to demonstrate a random urban friendship crossing the “differing forms” line, including those two strangers.  Who are those two, after all, that #2 is any more familiar with them than he would be of Natsuo and mouse gal?

Honestly, I think the best relationship candidate we have—a pair who would both communicate what the panel needs to communicate to the reader and who would feasibly be enough in the public eye to get pointed at for rhetorical purposes by an in-universe speaker—would be Kamui Woods and Mount Lady.  Unfortunately, they don’t work because Horikoshi has never seen fit to actually reveal Kamui Woods’ real face, so they’re much less visibly “a baseline person being emotionally close with a heteromorph” than the random two Horikoshi made up.

O The oratory continues into discussing the divide between city versus rural views on heteromorphs, and this is, to me, the first clear sign that the series is beginning to lose the thread of this plot.  Taking #2 at his word asks us to concede the heteromorphobia has been completely wiped out in cities, eradicated with that wonderful antidote called “education.”  But discrimination very much does exist in cities!  It may be less violent, less extreme, less vocal, but in the form of things like law enforcement bias, housing discrimination, microaggressions, the quirk counselling #2 himself brought up, it’s very much still there!  Now, it could be that he’s just downplaying that discrimination to focus on the really ugly stuff you don’t see in cities, but I don’t know what his reasons for doing so would be?  Not when there’s so much else he could say that would be equally inflammatory without alienating urban heteromorphs by dismissing their still very much present, modern suffering.

O He then brings up the talk of “light”—echoing Skeptic’s earlier rhetoric—and it not reaching those gathered at the hospital, so they must make their own, for people who’ve never once regretted the quirks they were born with can never be their heroes.  What this primarily puts me in mind of is Hawks’s background with heroes prior to his father’s arrest—that heroes were only on TV, not present to save him in his actual life.  Keep that in mind for Shouji’s response later on.

O Towards the end, #2’s speech finally tips over the line from what could plausibly be read as protesting unequal treatment to an outright call for supremacy.  Notably, he doesn’t call for quirk supremacy, but rather for heteromorph supremacy—for the tables to be turned, the cards reversed, for them to not merely be equal, but rather to be superior.

It’s unclear how much of this he’s sincere about and how much is just convenient rhetoric disguising views that are more quirk supremacist in actuality.  For many reasons, I want to read him in good faith: because the MLA originally struck me as being written in good faith throughout MVA and the first war arc; because #2 never once uses his quirk in this mini-arc, casting doubt on him having such an amazing quirk that he’d benefit overmuch from quirk supremacy anyway; and especially because it would be incredibly bad faith on Horikoshi’s part to make a character delivering a speech like this a total bad faith, manipulative outsider.  Unfortunately, #2’s inner monologue in later chapters will make a good faith read all but impossible to sustain.    

O Halfway through his speech, #2 unmasks himself, revealing both his face—dominated by four pairs of pedipalp-esque mouthparts, though the markings on his head are pretty eye-catching, too—and his scar.  We’re never told how he got it, but the implication is certainly that he was attacked for his appearance.  That may just be a conclusion it serves him to let people make, given his bad faith elsewhere, but thankfully the manga doesn’t go so far as to say that explicitly.  In any case, his deliberate reveal turns his wound into a form of performance art, drawing attention to it, forcing it to be a part of the conversation—the polar opposite of Shouji covering his scars because he doesn’t want them to be a part of the conversation about him, and those scars being revealed because his mask is torn off against his will.[11]

11: This also fits a larger pattern of villains, by and large, choosing their expressions of vulnerability, making deliberate shows of agency in how their weakness is perceived by the broader world—Shigaraki taking his hand off for the first time, Dabi’s video, Toga approaching heroes with genuine questions, and so on.  There are certainly exceptions, but generally if a villain shows his “true face,” it’s because they’re making a conscious decision to do so, and may be actively manipulating how that reveal is going to land.  Conversely, heroes want to present a powerful, confident, untarnished image to the public, so their shows of vulnerability all have to be forced out of them after pitched battles or acts of violence.  Heroes don’t make themselves vulnerable to the public on purpose, which feeds into the way the public then treats them when they are forced into vulnerable positions.

O Spinner’s a mess at this point, and the reason he’s a mess is all tied up in his faith in/desire to help Shigaraki.  It’s not explicitly about heteromorphobia, but on the other hand, given that the thing that drove Spinner to be here at all was his horrifically low self-esteem caused by heteromorphobia, maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all.  It may have taken Spinner longer than the Tenkos, Touyas, and Chisaki Kais of the world to reach the “fall victim to a dark influence due to the neglect and abuse you faced at the hands of Hero Society” plot, but he certainly got there in the end![12]

12: I call this The Sekoto Peak Problem, and it’s a big criticism of mine about how the final arc is framing all these conflicts as being solely brought about because Bad Faith Villain Men like AFO are scooping up vulnerable people and driving them towards violence, without acknowledging the much worse circumstances those vulnerable people might be in if they were just left to their fates.  Touya, for example, if not for AFO’s timely rescue, would likely have simply died on the mountain long before Endeavor was able to find him.

O Shouji takes the mob to task for attacking a hospital without ensuring the safety of the uninvolved innocents within, a laughable bit of sophistry[13] that accurately foreshadows how disastrous his reasoning will be throughout the rest of these chapters.

13: It’s laughable sophistry firstly because the heroes knew this mob was coming but chose to leave Kurogiri at a hospital anyway; one can mount a very reasonable argument that Kurogiri’s teleportation power qualifies him as a military objective, which would make stashing him at a hospital an actual war crime in an international conflict, as well as negating the hospital’s protected status as a civilian object.  It’s laughable sophistry secondly because it criticizes a Villain-led mob for failing to evacuate the building, as if said mob had exactly the same social cachet possessed by heroes, that they could freely walk in the front door of a hospital and start shouting evacuation orders with reasonable confidence that they’d be obeyed.  Finally, it’s laughable sophistry because Shouji is quite simply wrong about the order of the actions he’s describing—the heroes’ evacuation of Ujiko’s hospital was concurrent with their invasion of said hospital, not precedent to it.

   

Chapter 371: 

O Shouji accuses Spinner of taking actions that will set them back thirty years, which is just a really egregiously victim blamey sort of thing to say, placing the responsibility on heteromorphs for the crimes of those who hate them.

O Koda’s perspective gives us a flashback to Shouji telling his classmates about his history—his town and his scars and his reason for wanting to be a hero.  It’s all material that works in the context of all the set-up we’ve gotten—the CRC and the religious inflection of their specific brand of hatred, the rural heteromorphobia, the hints about Shouji’s own discrimination, the attack on the Ordinary Woman, and so on—but that would have been far better served to have been integrated into the story more naturally.  Koda has no specifically established relationship with Shouji (seriously, there is absolutely nothing; it’s shocking how out of nowhere his sudden deep dedication to Shouji is), nor does the scene he remembers have any specific flags for when it might take place,[14] leaving the memory feeling less like a natural extension of their arc than it is a graceless sequence muscled in to attempt to rouse some emotion in the audience when Koda has a quirk awakening he is not otherwise remotely in dire enough straits to have rightfully earned.[15]

14: Shouto and Bakugou being missing might suggest that they’re off at their remedial license course, which would put the scene somewhere in late September up through December (stretching from the aftermath of Overhaul to the introduction of the MLA), save that there are several other students missing as well—Sero, Iida, Sato, and Aoyama, none of whom where in the remedial course.

15: Nearly every other inarguable quirk awakening[※] we know of in the series has as a chief component serious physical injury: Bakugou, Ochaco, Toga.  Geten’s is the only exception, and his is tied to the strength of his feelings for Re-Destro, which are clearly and overridingly his most significant character trait!  Shouji is not anywhere near that central to Koda’s life, and he sure as hell isn’t injured enough to have gotten it that way.

※: By which measure I exclude stuff like the change in Shigaraki’s Decay or Mina’s acid attack against Gigantomachia.  Shigaraki was explicitly just breaking through a mental block to access power he already had.  Meanwhile, if Mina’s Plus Ultra moment had been a sudden quirk evolution, she wouldn’t already have an attack name picked out for it, nor would her horns have gone back to normal after it.  Acidman: ALMA is an Ultimate Move, not Mina having a quirk awakening.

O The flashback itself calls for another subsection.    

Ignoring the Difference Between the Personal and the Systemic for Fun & Profit

O The big thing here the description of the whole town coming out for a “blood cleansing” whenever Shouji touched someone.  This is depicted as Shouji, probably a preteen in this sequence,[16] being savagely attacked with farming tools, the most visible of which is a pitchfork.  This visual, as well as #2’s invocation of historical slaughters, is the darkest heart of heteromorphobia: a child being ritualistically assaulted in the open street as a matter of course, as a consequence for touching someone.  This is the image you should hold in your mind as The Problem through all of the potential answers and responses that get trotted out through the rest of these chapters.

16: Visibly older/bigger than, say, Kouta, but also visibly younger/smaller than middle school Deku.

Before moving on, I do want to examine this image in just a bit more depth.

This is, firstly, the moment that Shouji got those scars, and it’s very important to note that what we’re being shown is likely not a random, representative sample of what the town “coming out in force for a blood cleansing” looks like.  The strong implication is that this is in the immediate aftermath of the sequence we’ll see shortly of Shouji saving the girl from the river: he’s wearing the same clothes and shoes,[17] he’s the same size, and there’s a spray of blood from where he’s being struck across the mouth where he didn’t have his distinctive scars when he saved the girl.  Does that mean the blood cleansings were typically not this violent?  That’s hard to say.  On the one hand, we don’t see any other scars on Shouji, and he wears his arms pretty bare!  On the other hand, we never see any part of his body bare except his neck and arms, and since he can regrow his arms,[18] they’re not exactly conclusive evidence that he’s never been scarred there.  Also, he does say talk about his situation—the scars he bears—as something other children in the country have to bear, suggesting that the norm is rather worse than a little symbolic gash across the palm or something!     17: In fairness, he may not own very much different, as I’ll discuss shortly.     18: The duplicated ones, at least.  I seem to recall reading once that he could regrow the base set as well, but I’m still working on tracking down a citation on that.    

Secondly, as was the case with the image of the historical massacres, the adults here are using tools/weapons in the assault, not quirks.  As I mentioned in a footnote last time, them not using quirks to carry out this attack makes them merely criminals, not Villains, and therefore not nominally a Hero’s job to deal with.  While I can’t imagine any Hero in the manga these days would stand back and let this go on, the absence still stands out—no Hero is participating in this, nor observing from the sidelines, nor trying to intervene.  Heroes simply don’t figure into this picture at all.    

Thirdly, we can see a few children in the background, both there with adults, I assume their parents.  The child on the right is a passive observer, clinging close to their mother and simply watching; their father has one hand supportively on their shoulder.  Neither parent seems distressed, insomuch as we can tell from their somewhat indistinct features and rather clearer body language.  The child on the left is being actively held back by their mother, who’s standing with her back to the violence, her body interposed between it and her child.  The kid is reaching out towards the scene, but it’s unclear what the intent is.  Are they trying to intervene or do they want to join in?     Neither child appears to be the little girl Shouji saved—the one on the right is dark-haired, and the one on the left—the more likely prospect just going by the body language!—is wearing a long, dark T-shirt instead of the little girl’s overalls.  I suppose the left one could be the little girl if we assume she was hustled out of what she’d been wearing by her parents, eager to get her out of now-tainted (and also soaking wet) clothes and into something dry and warm and, in more ways than one, clean.  However, that seems like the sort of thing that would take longer than what looks to have been a pretty impromptu, disorganized bloodletting, unless everyone just held off on assaulting Shouji right out on the street until the “victim” could be present.    

Finally, there’s the pair of adults right at the center of the background.  If anyone in this picture is actually related to Shouji, I’d put money on them being here, watching but not attempting to intercede.  I don’t think it’s conclusive, though; the woman is thin and hunched, making her look older—I’d guess Shouji’s grandmother before Shouji’s mother.  That hunched posture and her hands being raised to her mouth do give her the most obviously distressed appearance of any of the adult, though, to the extent that the person with her is focused on supporting her rather than watching what’s going on in the foreground—and forward attention is what I’d expect if the dark-haired figure is related to Shouji.

So that’s the image we have of the crowd—actively taking part or observing with varying degrees of reaction running from distress to indifference to, potentially, enthusiasm.

O Next, let’s talk about Shouji’s parents.  He implies they were baseline—at the least they were significantly more baseline than Shouji himself, as they lacked arms “like his.”  That makes it quite telling that Shouji’s parents are nowhere to be seen in his story beyond the simple mention of how they were different than him.

Now, I don’t want to suggest here that Shouji’s parents are completely irredeemable people.  While I would imagine that—at least initially—they shared their town’s bigotry, having a heteromorphic child themselves would have exponentially increased the hardship of their own lives.  In a town like that, I’m sure that many if not all of their neighbors must have come to regard them with suspicion of wrongdoing or transgression—recall the first page of the last chapter, where Shouji is accused of tricking the town in his having brought dirty blood to it.  Hie parents almost certainly lost friends and likely became ostracized themselves, and ostracization in a small Japanese town can be a horrifying thing to deal with.

And yet, even with all that being the case, they didn’t abandon Shouji or give him up; they didn’t commit family suicide with him.[19]  Assuming he wasn’t removed from their custody after the incident, they’re presumably paying his school and living costs;[20] likewise, unless he just ran away from home or is carrying out an incredibly elaborate deception about what school he’s attending, they almost had to support his desire to attend a hero school to begin with.  In his situation, parents who support his desire to be a Hero is a big fucking deal.  After all, between the winning and the saving, heroes will de facto be touching people all the time!  If Shouji’s parents still live in his hometown, how do you think those people will take it when someone first realizes the Shouji family sent their kegare-riddled monster off to be a Hero?

19: The history of honorable suicide in Japan casts a very long shadow, and when it’s combined with the meiwaku culture, you get an underreported epidemic of things like parents who can’t see their way out of a bad situation taking their lives and their children’s as well, so as not to leave messy loose ends that others will have to bear the burden of dealing with.

20: I won’t get into whether or not the U.A. students’ parents are paying for any given thing on the following list, but here are some potential costs to consider, assuming that Shouji, like Uraraka, was commuting from an apartment prior to the dorms being implemented: tuition, school uniforms, textbooks, school supplies, school meal plan, food not served at school (e.g. breakfast and dinner or meals when the school is on break), non-uniform attire, personal care and hygiene, housing and transportation costs, a measure of spending money for unanticipated expenses or culturally expected gift-giving, etc.

All that being said, it’s obviously not a glowingly loving relationship, either.  Think back to Shouji’s absolutely barren room in Chapter 99 and consider it in the context of the information we get in this chapter.  Is he really so ascetic by inclination, or is he just used to making do with as little as possible?  After all, it goes without saying that if him coming into contact with someone called for blood purification, anything he himself was in regular contact with was also to be considered incredibly impure.  That includes his clothes, personal belongings and living space; even setting aside his parents’ view on it, who in his hometown would even want to provide or sell things to the family that they think will go to the child with the dirty blood that’s defiling their land?

Shouji’s parents’ absence is also glaring in other ways.  For example:

They’re either not in the beating scene image above at all or they’re that central background couple hanging back and just watching; whichever is the case, what they’re assuredly not doing while their son is being beaten so badly he will still have glaringly visible scars years later is “trying to stop the violence or take the blows themselves.”    

Shouji says he has one single good memory about his body, but his parents are nowhere to be found in that memory.  Ergo, his parents have not given him a single moment of positivity about his heteromorphic form.    

Parents of U.A. students were evacuated to U.A.—not just the ones near it, but even ones like Uraraka’s parents, who live at least a two hour drive away, in a wholly different prefecture with a third prefecture in between them and U.A.  Every student we see in the departure scene in Chapter 342 is shown with their parents except Shouji.

To sum all that up, Shouji’s family situation is not maximally bad, but it’s certainly proximally bad.

O Next, we get Shouji alleging ignorance on the part of heteromorphs raised in cities, that there are still parts of the country in the modern day where stories like his happen.[21]  It’s a milder version of the same assertions made by #2 and the beaky heteromorph last chapter, in that Shouji doesn’t suggest heteromorphobia doesn’t exist at all in cities, simply that there are extremes of violence that can only be found in the country.  It still feels off, however, to suggest that absolutely no one else in Shouji’s class might ever have heard of this through any channel at all: being from similarly small towns, reading about an attack in the news, reading about factors that impact the public approval ratings for Heroes, going through a morbid phase in middle school and researching it, being talked to about it by their parents, etc.

21: The suggestion of the Viz translation of this suggests that city-raised heteromorphs do know this, but only because they’re read about it in textbooks.  My sister-in-law, who does professional translation, tells me this was a subtle mistranslation of the original text, however; the textbook framing is supposed to imply a remove of time, not merely of distance.

It’s not as unrealistic a story beat here as it would be in an American comic, as Japan does tend more towards using silence as a weapon against bigotry—children won’t learn what they aren’t taught, and similar reasoning.  Still, to portray the class as so unanimously ignorant reflects a deep incuriosity, be that in the kids themselves about the world around them or in their author about how the knowledge/perpetuation of discrimination spreads.

This is particularly the case when you consider the story’s handling of the Ordinary Woman—attacked in her own town because people were suspicious of a heteromorph out after dark, turned away from multiple shelters because of her heteromorph status.  It’s certainly true that things got worse for heteromorphs after the first war arc, but for discrimination in that specific form to emerge, there needed to be something for it to draw on.  The fear of villains and the association of villains with heteromorphs are the foundation for the upswelling in anti-heteromorph sentiments in cities.

O Mina’s reaction to all this is one of rather theatrical anger.  That is, no one around her takes her broad declarations—that the world would be better off without the people who hurt Shouji—as anything more serious than hyperbole.  This is, it would seem, the only sort of anger that’s acceptable to show in response to hearing a story like Shouji’s—empathy to the wronged, sure, but no real intent to confront the wrongdoers.

O Mineta stares into space for a second before emphatically apologizing for calling Shouji an octopus once—a call all the way back to his microaggression in Chapter 6!—and asserting that it wasn’t his intention to say Shouji was gross or anything.  Shouji responds gracefully, saying it’s “only natural” that his arms would make people think of octopus.

He doesn’t go on to say, “But that doesn’t mean people have to say it out loud,” but it’s possible that Mineta’s apology is meant to suggest that regardless.  At least, one certainly hopes this isn’t the author’s way of quietly absolving his more popular characters of all the times they’ve done the same thing!  It’s notable, however, that none of the other Class 1-A kids that have done this are in the scene.  Shouto and Bakugou, who have both used that kind of language in anger (and in the latter’s case, also just with no provocation whatsoever) are the missing elephants in the room, and even Sero, who was the actual person to call Shouji an octopus, is, in his absence, Sir Letting The Gag Character Handle This Apology So I A More Serious Character Don’t Have To.

O Shouji brings up the Heroes Who Look Like Villains rankings.  We know the Number 1 on that list is actually Endeavor, per a movie bonus booklet, but bringing it up in this context does implicitly confirm that said rankings have an unseemly slant towards heteromorphs, and what did Skeptic say about Villains and heteromorphs again…?

O Shouji says he wears the mask because he knows that if people see his scars, they’ll wonder about them, and fear he’s out for revenge.  He doesn’t want people to think that, so he covers them up.  He’s praised for this by Tokoyami, and the narrative pretty clearly also thinks it’s admirable and cool.  I have serious issues with this—chiefly that it’s prioritizing the oblivious comfort of the baseline citizens over the fellow feeling and affirmation of other persecuted heteromorphs—but I’m also curious to see if the mask will come back now that its meta-narrative purpose of hiding Shouji’s scars from the reader has been fulfilled.  I note, for example, that Shouji is not wearing the mask in the color spread for Chapter 394, and the color art does have some precedent for being an early predictor of stuff in the body of the manga.[22]

Incidentally, while I’m talking about Shouji’s mask, I do wonder how effective it would even be for him to cover his scars up?  I have my doubts for two reasons.  First and most obviously, heroes are such celebrities, all over the news all the time, such that if Shouji really does get as popular as he intends to, there will be people who want to know what he looks like.[23]

22: The big one is Aizawa’s eyepatch.  It showed up in two pieces of color art (the popularity poll results spread for Chapter 293 and the new art announcing the BNHA Drawing Smash Exhibition) before it was revealed in the manga.  Both pieces released within days of each other in early December, 2020, three months after Shigaraki raked his hand down Aizawa’s face during the war and almost two months before the latter showed up in bandages in the hospital, with another two months to go beyond that before the eyepatch itself made it to the manga in late March.  In a more stealth spoiler, the same popularity spread revealed Shigaraki’s blackened, burned face-hand two chapters prior to Spinner digging it out of Shigaraki’s pants.  The 394 spread is also my basis for asserting that Mina’s horns have gone back to normal after her attack against Gigantomachia, compared to Shouji lacking his mask and Koda having his new horn in the same spread.

23: Edgeshot’s character profile page notes that his fans are split into two factions: those who’re mad to see his real face and those who think the mask is what makes him cool.

O More importantly, though, heroes have to be licensed, and Hero Licenses are photo IDs.  Photo IDs don’t typically allow face coverage because not being able to provide a visual reference to what the bearer looks like defeats the whole purpose.  While we don’t know what full-fledged hero licenses look like to say if they’re taken in or out of costume, we do know the provisional licenses the students carry showed them in their school uniforms, despite the fact that they definitely had working costumes by then:

Pardon the sudden screenshot. The manga has this shot, too, but the anime fills in the details of the text a bit more.

It seems probable to me that the photo on a Hero License must show the bearer’s face, so that if they’re tooling around a crime scene and a cop who hasn’t seen them around before asks for their license, it can reliably be used as a form of identification.  (I wonder how Hagakure manages?)

Also, think back to the press conferences we’ve seen in the story, most recently the one post-war: at every one, the heroes are in serious, solemn black suits, not their costumes.  So at any press conferences Shouji ever has to speak at in the future, he’ll have to show his face there, as well.

O We see a direct flashback to Shouji saving a little girl from drowning in a choppy, swift-flowing river as he says in voiceover that he’d rather cling to the single good memory related to his body than dwell on the bad memories.  He very much uses his quirk to do it, with his right set of limbs used to hold onto the bank while his left ones reach out to the girl, extending out another few “nodes” of arm-length when he at first can’t keep hold of her fingers.  As they sit and catch their breath afterward, the girl clings to one of his tentacles and cries.  This is not quite what his entry in the Ultra Analysis databook was hinting at[24] when it said he wears the mask due to his scary face making a little girl cry; that’ll be next chapter.

24: My apologies for not bringing this up before; it’ll be covered on AO3.  The gist is as detailed above; the databook came out circa the Endeavor Agency arc, so this was a known factoid about Shouji by the time this chapter came out three years later.

O Wrapping up the flashback, we’re left with Koda’s memory of Shouji saying that he knows it’ll take longer than a generation to tear down a wall that’s stood for over a century, so, just as previous generations have done, he’ll keep paying it forward, being the coolest hero the world’s ever seen, “to give good memories to generations to come.”  Which sounds really nice when he says it that way, as opposed to the broader implication that people whose children have been or are in danger of being maimed by bigots should just keep their heads down and “keep paying it forward.”

The whole “be a cool hero and give good memories” bit is particularly egregious to my eye, for a few reasons.

How much good did cool heroes do for Takami Keigo when they were just on TV?  Which is where Shouji will be, because in order to be “the coolest hero the world’s ever seen,” he’s going to have to be at the top of the rankings, and being at the top of the rankings means prioritizing cities, which means all those heteromorphs out in rural areas are never going to see him in person.  And anyway, what’s stopping all those bigots from just changing the channel or going on a rant about Woke Mutie Agendas every time a heteromorphic hero crops up on TV?    

How much did the visibility of previous generations’ cool heroes do for Spinner?  Does Shouji think Spinner was super inspired and uplifted by seeing e.g. Gang Orca on TV using the emitter-like hypersonic waves his quirk gives him to beat up Villains, an undue percentage of whom are also heteromorphs?

It’s certainly nice that Shouji was inspired enough by heroes on TV to want to emulate them, but he is demonstrably not the norm when it comes to wildly disadvantaged and victimized heteromorphs.  Also, I have to wonder how much his admiration of TV heroes would have done him if he’d gotten to the girl just a little later—say, in time to get her out of the river, but too late to be able to save her life without knowing CPR.  As bad as it was for him when he saved a little girl but had to touch her to do it, can you imagine how much worse it would have been if he’d touched her and then failed to save her, being found or having to walk back into town with her body?

I realize that's incredibly dark, but it's the kind of question that presents itself when the story is so insistent on Shouji's exemplary behavior being the model for heteromorphs to follow in their own lives.

   

O Exiting the flashback, when Shouji calls out to the heteromorphs, we finally get a straight-out look at how disastrous this conclusion is going to be in the way he shouts that no, the people who hurt them weren’t justified, but that there has to be a better way, that they should think about how to use their rage—but offers exactly zero suggestions himself for what that better way might be, or what they should be using their rage to do instead.[25]

25: I have seen the argument put forth that Shouji is one (1) teenager, and one (1) teenager cannot fairly be asked to Solve Bigotry.  To this, I would counter that if Shouji doesn’t have even one (1) single idea to offer, why is the camera lens holding him up as the hero who quelled a fifteen-thousand-strong mob with only words?  He doesn’t have to Solve Bigotry, but if he’s going to be used as a counter for other peoples’ misguided but at least active attempts to address the problem, he needed to be better than a mere white knight for the status quo.

Spinner’s #2 calls Shouji out on this directly, saying that if the situation were that easy to resolve, it wouldn’t have come down to this, and accusing Shouji of having no feasible solution to offer, just childish and naïve egotism.  And call me a hopeless MLA Stan and you’d be right, but truly, where’s the lie?

His efforts in this regard, however, wind up pushing Koda to what certainly has all the markings of a quirk awakening because it upsets Koda to see Shouji being “mocked.”  Man, sure is a good thing quirk awakenings are just a dime a dozen and definitely don’t require life-threatening injuries and/or incredibly severe emotional distress over someone who means more to you than your own life, right?

O In a last little stroke of ugliness for the chapter, Spinner calls Shouji gross.  Just to, you know, make it really obvious that the villains are all totally bad faith representation for this cause and thus can be safely dismissed.  (Christ, I hate these chapters.)

   

Chapter 372: 

O We get the flashback of Shouji and Koda asking All Might to assign them to the hospital defense group.  Points of note:

Neither Shouji nor All Might can be bothered to use the Ordinary Woman’s real name, instead just referring to her by her size.  Seriously, I get the intent behind insisting that she’s just an ordinary woman, that there’s nothing in particular stand-out about her in the current age; it’s pretty much the same deal as Shinomori saying that OFA can no longer be wielded by an “ordinary” person, with that phrasing being used to ironically emphasize that quirks are now seen as ordinary, while those without quirks are the unusual ones.  However, it obviously wouldn’t work in-universe for characters trying to specify who they’re talking about to say, “That ordinary woman,” with the end result being that they have to grab for what stands out about her if they want to be understood—in this case, her obviously unusual height.  In trying to emphasize that she’s normal, Horikoshi forces his characters to define her by what makes her stand out.    

Koda says that if Shouji’s going, he is too, a moment that would really land much better if they’d had literally any interactions of note at literally any point prior to this exact moment.  Frankly, even last chapter’s flashback is pretty thin on that front, since Koda is not one of the students who gets speaking lines when cuddling up to Shouji to comfort him.  (I’m not even convinced it’s very in character for Koda to be one of the kids diving in for cuddles—he’s usually pretty shy!)    

Shouji says that he could never call himself a hero if he were to stand back while the hospital attack plays out, implicitly emphasizing the role his reaction to his own oppression plays in his heroic motivation.

O Another flashback[26] gives us Koda’s mother discussing the possibility that he might get horns like hers someday, and what those horns can do, as well as mentioning that she used to have to put up with considerable mistreatment herself, and, lastly, telling her son to grow up into a man who gets angry when people mock those dear to him.

26: The sheer number of them crammed into this mini-arc really says a lot for how rushed it is, but complaining about the structural problems of the last few arcs would be a different essay.

Breaking those down, we’ve got:

The fact that Koda’s mom says he might grow in horns like hers suggests to me pretty strongly that her own horns are a quirk evolution she just doesn’t have the language to name as such.  If it were just a matter of maturation, something that came in with puberty, there’d be no “maybe” about it.  Given what we know about the context of quirk evolutions elsewhere, this in turn suggests that she did not exactly get her horns under peaceful, wholesome, uplifting circumstances!    

This is backed up by her mention of the “real cruelty” she faced.  Interestingly, this kind of raises some questions in relation to Shouji’s assertion last chapter that people like Koda who grew up in cities lack an understanding of the extremes of heteromorphobic violence that endure elsewhere.  Did Koda’s parents move to the city from the country at some point when Koda was young/before he was born, and the “real cruelty” was out in the country?  That might track with the overalls she was wearing.  And of course, Koda’s mother was a younger woman then, so maybe it’s just the fact that heteromorphic discrimination was worse at the time.  Either way, Koda’s mother is clearly open with him about the fact that she was mistreated because of her appearance, though she may have downplayed the severity of it.    

The idea of Shouji being “dear to Koda” is immensely frustrating for how utterly groundless it is, based on absolutely no prior grounding within the story other than the general bond among the 1-A students.  That’s just me complaining, though—more pertinent for this essay is the problem with how this moment frames anger.  Like, the whole mini-arc has the same problem, but this chapter is particularly rotten with it.  To preview: Koda’s anger is portrayed as righteous, as was his father’s, because their anger is about protection, about defensive reaction, about intervening with harm currently in progress—basically all the stuff Heroes are supposed to do.  It is notably not about action based on past harm or proactive attempts to prevent future harm.

O Koda’s bird attack knocks Spinner’s #2 off the roof in one of the most egregious examples of, “I can’t come up with an actual counterpoint for his arguments, so I’ll just shut him up through force,” I’ve ever seen.  Sure, there’s something to be said for not engaging bad faith parties in good faith arguments, but like…  That guy already had a platform of his arguments—he was standing on the roof of a tall building!  The author gave him several pages to make his pitch; the argument’s already out there in the readers’ minds!  The only thing getting rid of him does is guarantee that the person the taciturn Shouji actually has to argue with is…Spinner.  Who is not exactly a born orator at the best of times, and he’s very far from even that level here.

Now, #2 will get a few more lines next chapter, but they’re against one of the people on his own side.  No heroic character has to argue #2 down; instead, they get to match wits with the literally drooling Spin-zilla.  Which is a bit like stepping into the wrestling ring with someone who’s had a bag thrown over his head and his hands zip-tied behind his back.

This confrontation is, woefully, not the only place in the endgame where a heroic character gets all the time and freedom in the world to make their big pronunciations while their opponent gets shut down by some outside factor—interference from other villains, psychological decay, literal possession—but it’s in particularly stark relief here.

O Shouji contends that the crowd is letting their pain be exploited, which is a fair cop, but will become difficult to square with his praise of them next chapter.

O He says that these peoples’ children might be the next targets, presumably because of their actions here today.  This is particularly maddening because it’s coming from someone who was, himself, already targeted as a child!  Not because of anything his parents did, and certainly not because of anything bad he did, but simply because of the bigoted, backwards views of his town.  Children already and still are being targeted!  Shouji’s backstory is all wrong for this stand, and there’ll be another angle on that next chapter as well.

O Here we finally fulfill the promise of Shouji’s databook entry and see the Little Girl Crying Because His Face Was Scary.  She wasn’t crying because she was just scared of his face in isolation, but rather because she sees his face being scary as her fault, directly correlating his wounds to her rescue.[27] Those wounds stand in marked contrast to what happens when other people save small helpless children from danger, and underlines the biggest problem with this whole resolution: the idea that simply Being An Hero will create change.

27: My big question is, “Given that him being in contact with her was so bad it got him scarred for life, how did she even sneak out to see him again to give him this tearful apology?  Did young Shouji even want this apology, or would he have preferred she not risk the two of them being seen together again for both their sakes?

Now, it’s certainly likely in Horikoshi’s world that this little girl will, herself, grow up to be different from the people around her, that she won’t think heteromorphs are tainted.  And like, that’s at least one less person being awful, right?  And doesn’t every one count?

Sure, of course—but what happens when she runs up against that prejudice herself?  Will she try to intervene the next time she sees a blood cleansing?  Will she simply abstain from such action and teach equality in her own household without trying to change the village around her?  Will she simply move away and leave her hometown worse for her absence?  If she does stay in that town, will she herself become an outcast for her views—a form of silent, passive harassment that can be absolutely life-wrecking in those small Japanese villages?  If she gets married and has children, will her husband have her back in trying to raise those kids free of hatred?

For that matter, isn’t there a chance that, being surrounded in people who think heteromorphs are tainted, that she’ll just internalize something like, “It was my carelessness that got that poor heteromorph boy beaten so badly.  He was trying to help, and it only got us both hurt—him for the beatings, me for being in contact with his filth.”  Like, she’s so young in that scene; she’s got a whole lotta years of having the anti-heteromorph narrative reaffirmed at her before she’s old enough to do anything different herself.  It feels to me like the kind of thing that she could easily fall back into as she grows up, only to have a huge spiritual crisis about it once she hits her late teens to early twenties.

In any case, it's just a lot to put on a single child—on her and Shouji both!

O Spinner rallies enough to yell out a message of his own, but it’s just a quote of what he told his followers when he first sent out the call, not anything new to rally them, nor tailored to respond to what Shouji’s saying.  This has been the danger of the plotline all along, and here it comes to fruition: in putting bad faith villains with ulterior motives[28] up against an underdeveloped character who’s hidden the evidence of his mistreatment from Day 1, someone with no apparent intention to ever speak up for others like himself, no one comes out looking good.  Truly, heteromorphs deserve better rep.

28: #2 is the obvious one, but Spinner’s here in bad faith, too.  While I’m sure he’s not totally indifferent to the matter of heteromorph rights, it’s self-admittedly not his current priority.

O That said, if what Spinner says is old hat to the crowd, it is new to the audience, and it serves to sharply up the ante on from what we knew previously about the persecution he faced in his hometown!

But it would have gotten better if he’d just put on a mask and dealt with it, amirite?

Recall that Spinner has previously only said that people in his town called him names—this is self-evidently many steps worse.  Note, though, that it’s another example of the violence heteromorphs face not involving anyone using quirks—that is to say, nothing that’s a hero’s jurisdiction to deal with.  That being the case, how much could Spinner get away with fighting back or running before the “it’s okay to use quirks in self-defense” stops holding?  After all, is it still self-defense if biased cops[29] can accuse him of “escalating” the conflict?  How far away can he get by climbing on walls before it becomes, to some small-town local Hero, unlicensed public quirk use?

29: If policing in HeroAca Japan still works basically the same as it does in IRL Japan, then in truly backwater areas, ones too small to afford the upkeep of a police department, an officer would be sent in from another area to live in a home attached to the police box.  That being the case, it’s not a given that the officer would share the locals’ bigotry.  That’s where we come back to the whole “what percentage of Villain-designated criminals are heteromorphs” statement and what it implies about bias in the law enforcement system.  Also too, building a strong relationship with the community is absolutely essential to rural policing, and there are, oh, so many stories about what happens when someone new in a small Japanese town gets between the inhabitants and their “traditional spiritual practices.”

O Pig Nose Guy starts making an impression by noticing the doctors—most prominently Dr. Yoshi, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a baseline nurse—forming a human chain in front of the hallway leading to the Inpatient Ward.  This drama is undercut on both fronts by the fact that Spinner is not looking for the Inpatient Ward, and in fact barrels right on past that hallway without even glancing in its direction.  So, the mob stops because they’re struck to hesitation by a group of people protecting a part of the hospital that the mob was not even intending to assault in the first place.

O As part of stopping, Pig Nose Guy seems to have some sort of flashback to a time he saw Dr. Toad caring for an elderly baseline man.  This raises a lot of questions to my by-this-time hyper-critical eyes.

What past circumstance brought Pig Nose Guy—presumably fairly rural, as most of this crowd is implied to be—to Central Hospital, the most technologically advanced hospital in the entire country?    •  If Pig Nose Guy is not rural, but was still so fired up about heteromorphobia that he joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital, wouldn’t that suggest that a lot of people in the story have been misleading us about the extent of anti-heteromorph sentiment in cities?    

If the person in the bed is someone related to Pig Nose Guy—perhaps someone with a rare illness that requires specialized treatment?—why is the guy entirely baseline?  If it’s just a friend, then they must be very close, given that PNG was willing to take a trip to the Tokyo metropolitan area to visit him.  But if PNG is that close to a baseline guy, why did he ever believe that baseline folks are such a lost cause that he, again, joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital?    

Why is this important, impactful memory one of a heteromorph in a caretaker role instead of being taken care of?  To elaborate on why that question matters, a common issue you’ll see minority groups raise when talking about representation in media is the role any given minority character performs in their narrative—the gay best friend there to give the straight female lead advice, the Black person there to help a white person self-actualize, that sort of thing.  This is not so much a critique of any given, specific character as it is criticizing the restrictions on of what demographics are allowed to be portrayed as full, rounded individuals in popular media versus which are relegated to stock stereotypes or supporting cast.     This isn’t something BNHA addresses explicitly, but I do think we have some precedent for suspecting heteromorphs in this world have similar problems—think of the image for Class B’s play in Chapter 173, Gang Orca playing the Villain at the license exam, and, most egregiously, the Hug Me Corporation and its all-baseline-all-the-time image of bystanders and victims.  That being the case, it really gets to me that Pig Nose Guy’s memory here has the man in the hospital bed being baseline while it’s the doctor who’s the heteromorph.     Like, what does that communicate about his mindset, exactly?  “Oh, I remember this time I saw a heteromorph who’d managed to actually kind of Make It in society and he was nice to the baseline guy in his care.  But the spider guy leading us, he didn’t sound like he wanted us to be very nice at all.  Is that what I am?  Not nice?”  On the other hand, if the whole point of this memory is to remind PNG that there can be peace and support between heteromorphs and “people with human faces,” why in heaven’s name isn’t this a memory of a heteromorph being cared for and supported by a baseline person?  Why does the person doing the labor in this picture have to be of the oppressed class?

I hate this panel so much.

   

Chapter 373: 

O The last conversation plays out between Pig Nose Guy, #2, and Shouji, revealing #2 to be a bad faith idealogue who thinks of Shouji with microaggressions and his followers as meatshield patsies.  It’s real bad.

O Shouji says that the feelings that led the mob to come today are neither useless nor wrong, and that their willingness to keep thinking about everything makes them look like a bright and shining light to his eyes.  However, he carefully does not engage with the fact that those feelings, which were previously aimless and directionless, were only stirred up and stoked to the point of “coming today” by the villains.  It’s the same sort of thing the villains always get told, really—you may have a point, you have suffered, but when you act on that point, that suffering, then you’ve gone too far.  All you’re really supposed to do with that pain is—what, exactly?  Thinka bout it and choose to Nobly Endure?

O The last little bit of insult to this chapter, to my eye, is #2 getting an apology from some anonymous hero we’ve never seen in our lives, who says, “We’ve heard your voices loud and clear today.  Sorry for not realizing sooner.”

Remember the bit where the person who apologizes to Shouji for the octopus comment is Mineta, the gag character, instead of Sero, the serious character who brought it up in the first place?  Remember the conspicuous absence of Bakugou and Todoroki, who have actually used that language with conscious demeaning intent?  This apology is the systemic version of that absolute unwillingness on Horikoshi’s part to let his sympathetic/popular/important characters look bad.  It’s the same thing that led to none of the heroes who retired after the war being heroes the readers know and care about, the same thing behind the total collapse of the series’ critique of All Might.  Heroes are allowed to be ignorant, but they are not allowed to be complicit.

Notice, too, what this random hero does not say, what Shouji does not offer, the absence that damns this resolution: any promises of concrete change.  We’ve finally gotten to the crux of Horikoshi’s point, as delivered by Shouji, and it really does all boil down to this:

And I can’t overstate enough what a terrible resolution this is, especially given how Shouji’s own experience puts the lie to it.  Remember, Shouji saved a child from drowning, one of the absolute most prototypical actions someone can do and get called a Hero by the bystanders/victims/evening news.  The only thing he could have done that would have been more stereotyped would have been saving her from a burning building!  He saved that little girl from drowning and the townsfolk attacked him with farming tools for it.

How much more heroic would he have needed to be?  How much more of a shining light could he possibly have been?  In what universe could someone with that backstory possibly think that the answer to systemic bigotry—violence that goes wholly accepted by the community and wholly unpunished by the broader society—could be this Model Minority bullshit?

Ultimately, for Shouji’s backstory to realistically have given him the motivation he professes, his actions needed to have changed the people in his village for the better.  If the reader is meant to believe that Shouji’s “answer”—the premise that selfless heroism can change the hearts of bigots—then we have to see it.  And, you know, even if that had been what we got, there would still be grounds to criticize it!  It would still be a perhaps-too-idealistic depiction of fighting oppression; it would still put too much responsibility on the victims!  But at least it would justify Shouji’s own stance.

As it is, we have Shouji choosing to believe in the changeability of people who specifically shouted while throwing rocks at him that, no matter how much the times advanced, they would never accept him.  His answer does not entail a single non-heteromorph working to bring heteromorphs living in the darkness a light; it entails them kindling their own.  As with Pig Nose Guy shutting down in the face of a memory of a heteromorph doctor, this resolution asserts the life-changing power of…being told that heteromorphs have to do all the work to make baseline people feel better.

   

Conclusion

Do I think that this terrible resolution means heteromorphobia was poorly set up or retconned?  No, I don’t.  I just think it means that Horikoshi is a Japanese man writing a Japanese story from a position of demographic privilege in Japanese society.  I think he’s fully capable of setting up a detailed, intelligent, thoughtful discrimination allegory, a logical, internally consistent extension of the discrimination in the world around him to the alternate future he’s created—and then coming to a completely different resolution than I would because his context led him to different answers than I wanted or found acceptable.  Compared to the U.S., Japan as a culture is more communal, more collectivist; they have less history with successful protest movements, more history with protest movements turning violently extremist or just being ignored by those in power.  The idea of “not making trouble for others” is an incredibly deeply engrained value.

I have a decent idea why this resolution is what it is.  I can try to make myself view it through the more generous, forgiving lens of Cultural Differences; I can fail to do so and instead conclude that this is portrayal is much less about Cultural Differences than it is yet another in a long chain of Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Author Writes Discrimination Allegory, Fucks It All Up Because of His Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Centrism.  That doesn’t mean I believe heteromorphobia came out of nowhere, and I hope this essay has at least demonstrated that much, whatever you might think of its resolution.

——————————

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me, all! At 42,000 words and 93 pages in Word, there's definitely more I'd like to do with this, chiefly taking a spin through the Vigilantes spinoff, which I've always found to be very good at grappling with practical questions and concerns BNHA Core largely ignores. The character of Kamayan is particularly relevant to this topic.

However, for now, I'm going to take a break on this subject and turn my attention to something else. I'm not sure what it'll be quite yet, but meta projects that have moved towards the top of my list concern the ridiculous series of nerfs Toga has been subjected to in this endgame, arc thoughts on everything I hate about the stupid, stupid All Mech fight, and an organized argument for the endgame being chock-full of retcons that are obvious if you look at them for more than the five minutes it takes to read a chapter each week.

You may notice that all of those are pretty negative-sounding, and you would be right. Given that the whole reason I stopped doing my chapter posts is that I was weary of the constant negativity, the actual next thing I do will probably be to get back to one of my neglected MLA fanfic projects.

'Til next time, all!

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #octolad #plf advisors #my writing #preview for Vigilantes: #Kamayan is a crank and that distracts everyone #from realizing that Kamayan is also right

[bibibbon]

What MHA's lacks: world building part 2

I have already talked about this topic before but I mainly focused on the world building of Japan as a society itself .

Now I wanted to talk more about the MHA world building outside of Japan. When it comes to world building outside of Japan all we have are the MHA movies (which are somehow canon but the timeline for them makes no sense to me) and the whole interaction with star and stripes/USA.

Obviously we were gonna get a look into heroics and heroes outside of Japan after the war arc (it was inevitable especially with Japans need for foreign help) but I can't help to say that the little amount of world building outside of Japan that we got was lacking to say the least.

America or star and stripes. It was obvious that we would be getting heroes from around the world but I really hated how the idea of America and American heroes was something that was heavily sterytopical (maybe Iam thinking too deep into it 🤷‍♀️) but I don't like how star and stripes legit had her costume based on the American flag (I know it's supposed to be like all might). To me star and stripes felt like such a rushed plot point who is just the female version of all might that lacks all the character depth and wasted potential that all might has. The idea of America actually having a military is very interesting but it's never expanded on why or how they have a military. How is a military army any different than quirked heroes? We just saw them operate various airships and that's it for them 🤷‍♀️. I personally think we should of gotten an idea or at least a view as to why there is a military for example, America has a military and heroes whereas Japan uses heroes as soldiers and entertainers. Star and stripes should of been introduced way earlier in the series because she is the number one in USA and everything about her is heavily inspired by all might so we could of seen bits of her after all mights retirement and whatever relationship she had with all might because everything about that plot point of foreign American military and heroes was so vague and needed expanding.

I-island. I love the concept of i-island even if it's introduced just in a movie (I think it should of been a canon manga plot point), if you think about it having an island that focuses on the creation and progression of technology and it being like a very high tech island is a very interesting idea. What type of Industries are in i-island? The population is well off due to the island being very neutral in political ideals and is considered a place of education and technology. You could of had it to be an area that has a very low crime rate because everyone is open to the same opportunities and the small population makes it so that people are very connected to eachother. I-island could also be a place where heroes are sent to train and usually go to find a support company to work with.

Other heroes. When it comes to the whole world of MHA there are a lot of heroes from many different places but I don't necessarily like their character design like is it only me who finds it weird that pro hero native (who is a Japanese citizen) has a hero costume that is of native Americans? Or when showing us a hero from Egypt their costume was a literal pharo?. I feel like horikoshi could of been more creative when it came to showing other heros form other parts of the world and their costumes. I am not totally against having heroes that share and represent parts of cultures but if it's done in a way where it's just them wearing a very sterytopical costume then what's the point ?!?!? Sure you can make a character who does wear a very sterytopical costume and profits off other peoples culture to show how hero society is messed up and actually critique something like that but we don't see that and I think that's wasted potential.

Political relations and political differences. Every country is bound to have a variety of different political relations and differences so this could be difficult to explore if you try and include every single place in the MHA world. However, the building up if the war arc and the aftermath we should of seen Japan's political relations with other countries. Did other countries offer aid in anyway? Did they send out something akin to peacekeepers to the field? Or something of the sort. Is there even a party or organisation that connects other countries together in a tien if crisis in MHA and did they refuse to help Japan because they feared AFO or something. I feel like this could of been an interesting plot point to explore but it's never mentioned best thing we get is one panel of a political saying something

Transfer students. I think it was a fantastic plot point to have pony as a transfer students in the heroics course but I just wish we got more of her. For example where did she live? How was her life before she came to Japan? How does she feel about everything? How was it for her and her family when it came to the war in Japan? Or how did they deal with the parent conference when she is a transfer student? Surprisingly, pony has more potential as a character and more plot points to explore than a lot of 1 A character but we don't get much of what goes on with her.

#mha critical #bnha critical #hori is a bad writer #horikoshi critical #mha #bhna critical #worldbuidling #bhna

[sapphic-agent]

Consider this a part three for the Momo rewrite! As said before, as the story goes, Momo becomes a parallel to Ochako, and becomes a parallel to Ochako. Ochako and Momo are very sweet, loving, understanding girls who are often underestimated because, well, they're both girls. Ochako is someone who wants to tackle that head on, and show people she's her own person, but still is that bubbly, upbeat girl we all know. Momo, during her arc, is still quiet, timid, and still has a lot of internalized thoughts of how she should be "feminine" and to "be a lady". Her parents in this didn't even WANT her to be a hero because "it is not a job for a women and isn't ladylike." Momo is confident, and assure of herself, and during a girl-on-girl talk. Ochako reminds her that SHE is hardworking! That she is a great leader! She shouldn't be so hard on herself, and do what she wants. Momo is silent, smiles to herself, but isn't that simple. She opens up a bit about her homelife. They just... kind of talk. Momo gets a better perspective on things. She has a lot to think about. I would also like to think that when Momo and Kendo have their intership, we can add onto this. Momo on that arc was just. Uwabami literally just used Kendo and her for their looks. I think it was a wasted opportunity to make a commentary thing about how women in Japanese society need to be quiet and be something to look at. During this, Momo has gotten a lot of confidence, at least to stand up. After she arrives, and does that commercial, Momo overhears the "looks" comment, she directly challenges Uwabami of her stance, and shots that shit down because JESUS. After this, Momo has had enough. Momo wants to transfer her (and she recommends Kendo do the same) to Ryukyu's agency. She wants to be taken seriously. She's getting fed up with just being seen as the pretty girl. She's tired of Mineta harassing her, she's tired of people downplaying her compliments, she just wants to be seen as a person. Not some artificial mask. Also during this arc, the girls get a quirk upgrade too and something that helps them move along their stories. Maybe Momo has her own villain in the LOV besides Toga who has a lot of internalized sexism. I'd manage her quirk upgrade would be just her forming a shitload of guns, or just weapon artillery, and commanding like a badass, finally showing off her skills, and helping people. Also, the girls with Ryukyu get more roles during the yakuza arc. I've had some thoughts for it. If y'all want, I can go over my rewrite ideals to how I expand on the girls with that. Lemme know what you think!

Love it, love it, love it!

You gave Momo more characterization in 3 asks than Horikoshi did in 400+ chapters

#momo yaoyorozu #momo yaoyorozu deserves better #pro momo yaoyorozu #mha critical #bnha critical #anon ask

[dekusleftsock]

Thoughts on the most recent chapters?

Do you think BKDK is going to maybe be canon? Or do you think we are reading too much into things (like Black Whip forming a heart)?

I’ve talked about this before but it’s been a while since I’ve talked about it. So, do I think bkdk is going to be canon? Absolutely.

Here’s the thing; chapters 342 and 348 were “supposed to be” about izu//ocha but they weren’t. They were setting up for the tsutogsocha battle, and ultimately the conversation between toga and ochako about love and how they view it.

There’s so many little details in those chapters. From how much physically distance there is between ochako and deku in 342

And also how it felt EXACTLY LIKE a confession chapter and then it wasn’t. It was about toga and ochako; not ochako and deku.

People were saying that “well theyre about to go into a war where they don’t know if they’ll live or die. Why would they be focusing on love?” As if that isn’t grade A shonen confession scene stuff. It’s also that they’re about to go to war, why would they NOT want to lay everything out in the open? This is EXACTLY THE TIME to talk about things before you die. They knew they weren’t going to be battling together either. If they thought they were going to say everything that NEEDED to be said, they would have. And they did. And the only thing needed was Izuku, ochako, and todoroki expressing that they wanted to save the people who hurt others.

348 was also a very “shonen confession scene” chapter. Where the other girl reveals Ochakos secret crush on deku or whatever, but it again, didn’t happen. In fact, horikoshi even USES tsu as a way to say “this is stupid and not the time right now. This isn’t about them or their love”

If horikoshi wanted to make izu//ocha canon, this would have been the chapter. He didn’t though. This was his last chance if he was going to, but he didn’t. If he did it now idk how he would do it unless it’s just a “flash in the future” type of thing. It simply doesn’t add up.

As for my opinions on the newest chapter, horikoshi is amazing at symbolism. Something we have to think about when we doubt ourselves is that everything in a story has a purpose. Being told the curtains are blue is because they actually mean something. So, do I think we’re looking into it too much? Never.

In the case that we ARE looking into it too much, the story just simply doesn’t make sense. The symbolism, carefully crafted and written characters, the design, it all has a purpose within a story.

When we ignore that, we are actively only taking away a small portion of the big picture. The surface level. But it’s not surface level and we know this. We know it goes deeper than that.

Trust your gut.

#midoriya izuku #bkdk #mha deku #bkdk brainrot #bakudeku #bakugou katsuki #bnha deku #mha analysis #deku midoriya #mha bakugou

[spiritofwhitefire]

The sacrificial Lamb: Analyzing Touya’s quirk reveal

From the very beginning this has been a story about child abuse. The way it’s structured even makes that very clear because it begins from the perspective of a child, a child’s point of view on the world of heroes, that starry eyed image of the very clear divide between good and evil. There is a very much darker read of midoriya’s origin but that’s not what I will talk about in this post. I want to talk about Touya Todoroki and the major reveal about him that we were give in the latest leaks

:read more:

Frankly most of the characters can be read as having a background of child abuse (arguably bakugo, much more blatantly toga, shigaraki, hawks) but the Todoroki family is probably the clearest and most nuanced that we are given especially because we get to see the different effects Enji’s actions have had on each family member individually. Rei (spousal abuse of course, not child abuse) and her mental decline. Fuyumi and her obsessive need to fill in the empty role of the mother figure and gloss over the ugliness that of her fathers actions. Natsuo and his almost impotent anger and odd guilt. Shouto and his fear of openness and difficulty building relationships because he can’t trust anyone anymore.

Then of course we have Touya, the sacrificial lamb to the monument his father built to his desires. A sacrificial lamb is raised from birth for its purpose, loved and coddled and raised to be beautiful and perfect, it loves its master and it can be argued its master loves it too.

The way enji treats his entire family could easily be compared to the way one might treat a flock of sheep. He has them for the purpose of furthering his own ambitions and happiness without much care or thought toward how they might be feeling. He could treat them well or he could treat them badly but in the end none of them matter to him as much as he matters to himself. Each animal has a purpose to the farmer: there is the broodmare (rei), spares (fuyumi and Natsuo), the prize pet (shouto) and then the sacrificial lamb himself, Touya (the once prized possession).

When thinking about enji Todoroki, it is impossible not to be reminded of Hamartia, the fatal flaw, the ironic flaw that leads to his inevitable downfall and in this case the downfall of an entire society (he’s not the only cause but he’s one of them). A hero Intent in creating a successor, a perfect successor who could surpass even himself, so intent on accepting nothing less than perfection that he tossed away his eldest son and in doing so created a powerful villain.

The greatest irony though, is that in the end, Touya WAS the perfect heir, he had exactly the quirk that enji wanted, he was just too blinded by his own hubris to see it. And at the risk of reading too deeply into horikoshi’s motives, this was the perfect decision for him to make WRT Touya’s storyline.

I read another, likely much better, meta on here that talked about the repetition of enji and touya’s individual needs to be be seen. Enji is constantly telling the crowd to watch him and yet he can’t even recognize his own son when he’s right in front of him. Not when he’s an adult covered in scars and not when he’s a kid just trying to impress his parent. And the abuse that Touya suffered is the sort that people often have trouble seeing. The kind that happens in the home, the kind that grooms the kid to accept it as normal and desired because it comes from his parent, the kind that is often blamed on the kid themself because they just won’t follow the rules. And then of course Touya grows up to become Dabi, a criminal and a murderer and then no one cares about what happened to him anymore. Enji can tell himself he was doing what was right, Touya didn’t have the right quirk, he could never be what enji wanted, and his choices as an adult are his own. So of course we need a reveal like this to show how wrong enji was. Because it’s not enough that he was wrong for abusing his kid, for using them as livestock, for having a family when he didn’t want one. No, he was wrong because he had what he wanted from the start and tossed it away just because it wasn’t immediately perfect.

The worst part is that i do believe that Touya still wants the love and acknowledgement he was denied. But enji ensured touya’s death when he was a child and Dabi has been chasing his fathers death in turn before finally succumbing to his own. And it was pointless, every bit of it. That’s the tragedy of enji’s legacy. The sins of the father revisited on the son.

#bnha meta #MHA meta #boku no hero academia #my hero acedamia #touya todoroki #Dabi #bnha 363

[sofsdragons237]

So, hello thereee lovely person

♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡

I'm sorry for my dissapearence, but I'm here ready to write again with all the attitude ☺️

Todaaaay, I bring....

Drums pleaseeeee

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

MHA 1-A GIRLS COMFORTING YOU AFTER BREAKUP

So, before we start...NOTES:

💅 Bnha fandom [Kohei Horikoshi world XD]

💅 Sad, depressed YN

💅 Comfort, motivation/breakup

💅 Bad grammar maybe? [Sorry 🥺]

♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡

I think that's it, well, so, let's start shall we?

Hope you like it, go for your popcorns, and, ENJOYYYYYY ❤️❤️❤️❤️

You go running to the girls changing room, tears where falling down your cheeks, but you don't want anyone to see you in that mood.

What had happened?

Everything seems to be alright, just a normal day ready to listen another class of Aizawa and doing homeworks in the middle of the class while he was explanning, atending quirk training and at the same time therapy.

In the morning, on your way to the snacks machine, your boyfriend approached to you a little bit serious and anxious about something, that makes you confused, because in his face you could see that something was bothering him.

???: "Can we talk please?"

YN: "Oh sure"

You say while extending your hand to get the Coca Cola cero out of the mouth of the machine.

You listened him carefully, but word after word, according he was following his talking, you felt how a sharp sensation cover your chest, almost as a knife entering deep inside your heart and an internal bleeding spills out.

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

How this could end like this? You crying bitterly in the walls of a changing room, there was nobody, so it was only you and your feelings, it seems that this was not gonna end so soon.

Then, you listened how a lot of steps were approaching and opening the door of the place.

You jump scared, you see around trying to spot a place to hide, and after some seconds of adrenaline, you decide to enter to a locker.

You really didn't want anyone to see you like that, you cover your mouth to stop the sobbing and made the less noise posible...

In less than a minute, the place was covered with a lot of girls talking with each other and laughing.

???: "Hey girls, have you know something about YN? She didn't attend quirk training and I haven't seen her through the day.

Was that...Yaomomo's voice?

You opened a little the metal door of the locker to see a little better, a small ray of light enter the close cage and all the 1-A girl appeared surrounding the changing area.

Uraraka: "Is she sick?"

She put her shirt on while expressing worrying

Tsuyu: "I texted her in the morning *Kero* but she didn't reply"

Now at this point everyone seems intrigued and worried about you.

You look down at the ground.

"They really care about me" you said affirming to yourself "I'm sorry" in certain way the feeling of guilty has empowered your body and that makes some extra tears go down.

???: "THERE IS YN!!!"

A scream surrounded the place.

You look ahead widing your eyes in panick. Mina was pointing you from the center of the room, and everyone raise their looks just to find you hiding in the locker.

You close the door quickly, everyone has seen you, there is no turning back.

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

Mina opened the door being followed by all the girls behind her, all the light kicks your face and you try to cover it.

Uraraka: "YN-san, are you crying?"

You didn't answer

It was obvious, your cheeks were humid, and the tears can't stop from falling, you were in a terrible condition, a condition you just can't hide easily, you were in pain, and after all the trying of covering up and hiding it from everyone, you just need to admit that you need help, you need a someone.

Your crying gets intense

Mina: "Oh baby...."

Mina surround her arms just to hug you and get you out of there to get you a sit and talked.

Toru: "YN sweetheart, what happened?"

All the girls surround you and try to comfort you by offering water or a candy, giving you hugs and sitting next to you...

Momo stand in her kness in front of you just to caress your hands and give you a sweet smile.

Momo: "You are not alone YN-san, we are here for you"

Your lips were trembling, you try to say a word, but it was difficult because of the shaky voice.

YN: "My heart...it hurts..."

Jiro: "Is it heart problems? A tachycardia?"

Jiro was ready to go and ask for help of recovery girl, but before she can make another step you stop her

YN: "No, it's not that...it's just..."

Everyone wait for you to finish

YN: "My boyfriend finish with me"

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

Silence...

Mina: "Someone is gonna prove my acid today"

She sounds mad, just for being follow by Jiro

Jiro: "Let's break him a bone, after all he got 206 in there"

Toru: "YEAHHH LET'S DO IT!!!"

It seems that everything was pointing for a third mundial war

Momo: "Girls, this is serious"

Momo clean your tears with a tissue, while Uraraka was removing the hair of your face and make you a ponytail.

Uraraka: "Ta daaa, beautiful as always"

She add a red ribbon at the top of your head smiling happily at her creation.

Tsuyu take you from your shoulder.

Tsuyu: "YN-san, let me give you the welcome again to the real life *Kero*" - You look at her confused - "This is an experience that many of us pass through, and...*Kero* it hurts, but it's part of being a human"

Momo sighs

Momo: "You deserve better YN-san, you are a sweet person, a total ray of sunshine, and so so important to be crying for someone that don't deserve your tears, because if he truly loves you, he wouldn't have made you cry"

Uraraka: "Everything happens for a reason, if he goes away of your life is for a reason, maybe he was gonna do something terrible that could hurt you more, and you don't deserve that"

Jiro: "I still insist to break him a bone"

You laugh a little at Jiro's comment.

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

You were terrible hurted, you can't deny that, but just the feeling of being accompanied, that you don't need to have this pain in your back all for yourself, make you relieved in that way.

YN: "I don't want to fell in love again"

You wretched your skirt frustrated

Toru: "YN-san, don't say that, I know that in this moment it feels that love emmm...sucks, but I promise you all gets better and, just because you got a broken heart, that doesn't mean more love can came to heal that wounds"

Jiro: "And look it in this way" -She leaned against a wall- "Pain makes us feel alive, sometimes we need pain to remember us that we are still going walking on life, that we are humans and we are strong"

The school bell sounds

Mina: "Shoot, Aizawa is gonna kill us...well nevermind we all are gonna say it was Jiro's fault"

Jiro: "WHY ME?"

They all started to laugh like if there was no tomorrow, a little of humour many times can make a bad ambience a little bit better.

Mina looks at you and smile tenderly while you laugh, and clap in happiness when she sees, you were showing faith in that sweet giggle of yours.

Mina: "That's it, look that characterizing smile that shine even in a rainy day"

YN: "Hmmm?"

You were feeling better, that was a fact, after all that motivation, you know you have a little bit of hope raising in your soul.

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

Momo approachs and take your cheeks for you to look at her.

Momo: "Don't make a guy to take away that nice smile of yours, one day, it will came the correct one, and will make you so happy, because you deserve someone better"

Tsuyu: "Just concentrate in yourself, and heal *Kero*"

Uraraka: "We are gonna be right next to you to help you with it"

Then, Mina takes your hand and guide you to the exit, ready to go to class and go back to the game, Toru helped you carrying your backpack while the other girls take with them their things quickly because they were gonna go late for class.

Mina: "So...what if we ask Todoroki to freeze him?"

Jiro: "Good idea"

Momo: "Girls...please stop"

All the way back to the classroom, the laughs cover the hallway and your mood was better this time, Mina was still holding your hand, and all the girls were surrounding you giving their motivation...

"Thanks..." you thought while tears where falling, but this time, of joy, of a feeling maybe...

Of freedom.

...

~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~

Hey guys, I know the story is not so good, but at least I hope this can be a little bit entertaining and at the same time comforting.

Dear reader, if you are passing through this position, please, I know it hurts, but you will see everything will be just fine, you are gonna be fine, you will heal and one day, you will just see that past and laugh of it.

You are strong, important, and you deserve better, because you value.

And whatever it has happened, it's not your fault!

You did what you can, and that's what matters

I promise many stories are coming...

If you have a recomendation or want me to write something, I'm reading comments

👇👇👇

Love ya, drink water, eat well, and...Bay bay 👋

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

#do not steal #creds to owner #bnha scenarios #bnha #boku no hero academia #kohei horikoshi #bnha girls #comfort #comfort heartbreak #pinterest images #yn #kinda depressing #motivation

[sofya-fanfics]

Hot Chocolate

I got inspired by @creativepromptsforwriting​​​’s December Prompts : hot chocolate.

I’m sorry for the mistakes, English is not my native language. I hope you like it.

Summary : Katsuki walked into the coffee shop and ordered hot chocolate. Once his purchase was made, he left the coffee shop. He rolled his eyes when he saw Mina and Eijiro approaching. Of course, someone had to see him with a cup decorated with Christmas patterns in his hands.

“What are you doing here ?” Eijiro asked. “I thought you didn't like chocolate.” 

“It's because you bought it for the one you love,” Mina said with a teasing smile.

Katsuki blushed, but did not deny it.

Disclaimer : My Hero Academia belongs to Kōhei Horikoshi.

@creativepromptfills​

AO3 / FF.NET

Katsuki looked at the coffee shop queue and sighed in annoyance. It looked like it was going all the way across the street. It had been like that every day since the establishment had been selling their special Christmas hot chocolate. Katsuki now preferred to buy his coffee somewhere else and he had decided to wait for the end of the holidays to return to this coffee shop and avoid the crowds. But for once, he had done an exception.

“I'm sorry Kacchan. I didn't know there would be so many people.”

Katsuki glanced at Izuku, who was smiling at him, embarrassed. Of course there were more people than usual, thought Katsuki who restrained himself from rolling his eyes, it was the weekend.

“It's okay,” he said. “We don't have class today, we have time.”

Izuku nodded and smiled. Earlier, he asked Katsuki if he wanted to go with him to the coffee shop to buy Christmas hot chocolate. Their whole class was talking about it, but Izuku had not had time to buy one yet. He was really excited to taste this amazing drink as Mina called it. Katsuki had agreed to go with him. He had never liked hot chocolate, but he had thought that for once he could buy a coffee there. After all, it was not like he had anything else to do. The queue moved and they entered the coffee shop.

******

The bell rang the end of class. Katsuki put his books in his bag, eager to get back to the dorm to relax and to forget about those equations that had been giving him a headache for the past hour. He heard Izuku telling Tenya and Ochaco that he wanted to go back to the coffee shop. Since he tasted the Christmas hot chocolate, Izuku was like all the students in their class and swore by this drink. Katsuki rose from his chair and approached him.

“I'll go with you,” he said.

Izuku opened his eyes wide. He knew he did not like hot chocolate and that he quickly lost patience in a queue. He would never have believed that Katsuki would offer to accompany him a second time.

“Are you sure Kacchan ?”

“I need caffeine.”

Izuku could not help smiling and followed Katsuki out of the classroom.

******

Katsuki blew into his hands to warm up. He looked up at the sky, wondering if it was going to snow. He was in the coffee shop queue, hoping that he could buy their Christmas hot chocolate and go back to the dorm as soon as possible. He had to stop himself with all his might not to explode into the crowd.

Izuku had injured his arms during his training to control the One For All. Even if he had been able to leave the infirmary to return to his room. He was exhausted and his injuries hurt him. Katsuki thought that a hot chocolate would comfort him a little.

He walked into the coffee shop and ordered hot chocolate. Once his purchase was made, he left the coffee shop. He rolled his eyes when he saw Mina and Eijiro approaching. Of course, someone had to see him with a cup decorated with Christmas patterns in his hands.

“What are you doing here ?” Eijiro asked. “I thought you didn't like chocolate.”

“It's because you bought it for the one you love,” Mina said with a teasing smile.

Katsuki blushed, but did not deny it. Ever since he learned the origin of Izuku's quirk, they spent a lot of time together. Their relationship had always been complicated and Katsuki knew he was responsible for it. Even if at first his feelings were confused, he eventually understood that he was in love with Izuku. And all he wanted right now was to make him smile again.

******

Katsuki knocked on Izuku's door and open it when he told him to come in. He was sitting on his bed and he was holding his arm against him. Despite the fact that he was smiling at him, Katsuki could see that he was still in pain.

“Kacchan, is everything okay ?”

Katsuki nodded. He approached him and handed him the hot chocolate.

“I came to give you this.”

Izuku opened his eyes wide.

“Did you buy me hot chocolate ?”

“You don't have to take it if you don't want it.”

Izuku shook his head and took the cup. He took a sip.

“This is delicious ! Thanks Kacchan.”

“I'll let you rest.”

He was about to leave when Izuku grabbed his hand.

“If you want, you can stay a little longer.”

Katsuki nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed. They stayed together the rest of the day, enjoying each other's presence, their hands still linked.

The end

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bakudeku #bakugou x midoriya #katsuki bakugo #izuku midoriya #bakudeku fanfiction #fanfiction #My writing

[adminbryantsaki]

Tight space and Spontaneous

Luna! Naga! Hizashi Yamada x Alpha! Werewolf! Shouta Aizawa.

(I do not own Hizashi Yamada/Present Mic or Shouta Aizawa/ Eraserhead. Horikoshi Kohei does. If this isn’t your cup of tea, blend of spices or brew of coffee, move on. Reader discretion is advised.)

TW: Labor, Birthing, laying eggs, sudden birthing, enclosed space, fear, birthing fluids, water birth, loss of babies.

Wc: 1,457

Hizashi was moving slowly around the apartment, trying to get his way to the kitchen for a snack since he was hungry. He was near his due date and had been put on complete bedrest except for him needing to use the bathroom or in this case, get food since Shouta was on patrol when hunger strook him. He had settled back at his makeshift desk in the bed when he felt something wet leak down the front of his tail.  He sighed thinking he had wet himself but when a sharp pain followed the leaking told him that it was time for the eggs to be laid. He quickly yanked the blankets back and slithered as fast as he could to the bathroom. It wasn’t the bathroom he wanted to birth in but it would do since it had a bathtub. He also grabbed his phone and speed-dialed Shouta to tell him that it was time and he needed to come home quickly. A few weeks ago

“We need to set up two different birthing plans. One if I’m there with you and one if you’re alone.” Shouta spoke on the way home from their weekly checkup. “I’ve been doing some reading about different birthing exercises. In either case of when I go into labor, I’d want to do a water birth. Either in the bathtub or in one of those kiddie pools.” Hizashi responded. “That sounds like a good plan. Now, if your water breaks, you know to call me as soon as you can, alright? And do you want to birth in the hospital or at home?” He asked. “I’d prefer to birth at home. I don’t like the idea of birthing at a hospital.” He responded. Shouta nodded and they kept driving. Back to the present  Hizashi made it into their guest bathroom which was a tight fit for him with the full length of his tail. He turned on the water to fill the bathtub as he listened to the ringing of the phone as he tried to contact his husband. “C’mon Shouta, pick up already.” He spoke as one of the first smaller contractions hit him and he doubled over in pain as the call connected and he heard his husband’s voice sound from the other side of the call. “Hizashi? What’s going on? Are they coming?” He asked. “Yes. Labor started a few minutes ago. Come home now. I want you here.” He spoke in a pained voice. “Alright. I’m on the way. When did your contractions start?” Shouta asked as he began to run home as quick as he could. “Right now!” Hizashi spoke through the phone. Shouta took note of that and started a timer on his phone to time the contractions. “Okay. Stay on the phone with me and talk with me. Did you get into one of the tubs or the kiddie pool you had me set up in the living room?” He asked. “I’m in the guest bathtub.” Hizashi spoke as he took a deep breath as the contraction passed. “That’s the smaller one. Don’t worry. I’m almost there.” He spoke and turned a corner where their house was down the street. “I know it’s the smaller one. it was the one I thought of because the water broke suddenly.” Hizashi said in an annoyed tone as he tried to get himself comfortable in the bathtub. Another set of contractions came and went until suddenly the front door opened and footsteps sounded down the hallway and Shouta appeared in the doorway. Hizashi looked up at him and relaxed a little. He reached out for him and Shouta went to the edge of the bathtub.

“Sorry I took so long. I’m here now. How close do you think you are?” Shouta asked as he held his hand and rubbed the back of his mate’s hand. “I feel like the first egg is close.” He spoke and held his hand back. Shout a stripped down to his underwear and got in behind him to coach him through next part of his labor and birth. Hours passed and the full clutch of eggs were birthed and Hizashi was cleaning them off to put them in the incubation chamber they bought and had installed in his nest. Once the eggs had been cleaned and gently placed in a warmed towel, Hizashi drained the tub and with Shouta’s help, he climbed out of the tub and slithered slowly to the nest with the eggs in his arms. Shouta grabbed a towel to help dry off his mate’s tail so he wouldn’t get the blankets of his nest wet. Hizashi put the eggs in the incubator and slithered into the nest and coiled up close to the incubator to keep them safe. He eventually passed out since he was tired from the labor. Shouta checked in on him and smiled to see that he was resting. He climbed into the nest and put a blanket over his mate and laid down to cuddle his mate, looking over to the incubator, happy to see that the eggs were here and appearing to be healthy. A few weeks later Hizashi found Shouta in his office grading papers. “Shouta! It’s time. They’re hatching!” He spoke and slithered back to the nest to watch them hatch. Shouta scrambled from his desk to see his children emerge from the eggs. He made it to the nest in time to see a tiny fist break through one of the eggs and the shell break away to reveal a tiny baby inside. The baby had a dark head of hair and looked like Shouta, except for when they opened their eyes. They had vibrant green eyes like Hizashi. The baby cooed for a moment before their face contorted into a wail and began crying and reaching out for them. Hizashi opened the door and pulled the baby out of the egg and into a blanket he had prepared to swaddle them into. He wiped off the rest of the egg goo off of the baby and checked to see if it was a boy or a girl. He smiled and looked back to Shouta.

“It’s a boy.” He spoke quietly and wrapped their son up in a blanket and held him close to help him settle down. “Did we think of a name for him?” Hizashi asked as he glanced over at the three other eggs still in the incubator and looking a little gray and sickly. He looked a little sad but was happy to have their son.  Shouta noticed and looked at their son. “I think we talked about Haru. Do you still like that?” He asked quietly. “Yes. I do.” He spoke. “Then Haru Aizawa it is.” Shouta responded and kissed Hizashi’s head, knowing that he was heartbroken about the other eggs not making it.  Hizashi held Haru close as tears fell down his face and Shouta took the eggs to the kitchen to have them be prepared foreither being ground up so Hizashi could regain strength or if he wanted them buried. He would wait until he was ready to make the decision instead of him making it for him. A little while later, after Hizashi fed Haru some formula and put him down for a nap, Shouta came in and looked at his family with a soft smile on his face. “I want to bury these ones.” Hizashi spoke as he watched Haru sleep. “Alright. Where do you want them buried?” He asked. “By the tree in the backyard.” He spoke quietly. Shouta nodded and went outside to dig three holes in the ground for the eggs. Hizashi came out just after he had finished digging the third hole and had the eggs in a towel. He gently placed them in their graves and watched as Shouta covered them with dirt and placed markers at the head of each grave. He then put the shovel away and held Hizashi for a moment to let themselves mourn their loss until the wails of Haru who had woken up reminded them that they didn’t loose all of them and that they had a little boy to care for. “I’ll get him. You take your time, love.” Shouta spoke and went inside to tend the needs of their baby. The end.

#bnha #admin writes #mha #bnha aizawa #bnha omegaverse #bnha present mic #hizashi yamada #mha present mic #mha aizawa #mha eraserhead #bnha erasermic #eraserhead #eraser head #erasermic #erasermic mpreg #mayternity bingo #mayternity #2023