#for all that he has the flaw of overwhelming self-reproach | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

class1akids · 4 years

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i don't get why you like bakugo so much. There is no reason why he behaves that way. todoroki had a harder childhood and he's still not an abuser.

Whoa. There is just so much to unpack here.

First, Todoroki being an abuse victim has nothing to do with this. Going through horrible abuse doesn’t make automatically anyone a bully or an abuser. That’s just stigmatizing victims. One of my favourite things about Todoroki is that while he calls his father out about the abuse, he also takes full responsibility for his own behavior whether it was influenced by his trauma or not. He never uses the victim card to justify treating people badly (e.g. how standoffish he was with Inasa during their entrance exam).

Second, I like Bakugou as a character, because he’s flawed and his internal contradictions make him interesting. He starts out as an extremely unlikable character, with lots of issues, and his redeeming qualities are revealed masterfully little bit by little bit. It’s a breath of fresh air that he has no flashy trauma story, nor mental illness to “justify” why he became a bully, or why he behaves as violently as he does.

So does that mean that he was born evil? No. But it’s a fascinating interplay of his core nature, nurture, the ugly underbelly of hero-society and bad personal choices that put him on the wrong path, and it’s also great to watch the little things that make him slowly correct his trajectory.

His story shows that while some bullies are victims of abuse themselves, often children from ordinary families become bullies too. I think it’s quite clear that Horikoshi did his research and deliberately built many of the little warning flags into Bakugou’s backstory.

He comes from a toxic family where small acts of aggression as problem-solving are commonplace, instead of proper communication or cooperation.

He’s shown to misread social cues and perceiving Izuku’s helpful or neutral behaviour as aggressive or threatening already at a very young age. He’s a low empathy child who probably would have needed extra help of learning to understand emotions (his own and that of others) and express them as something else than anger (and obviously his family was of no help since Mitsuki herself is unable react appropriately to her worry about Katsuki and expresses it as an angry reproach and victim-blaming)

His problematic behaviour started in the early pre-school days and went unchecked. No adult was ever shown to intervene and try to put a stop to it. It also seems to be implied that bullying was quite commonplace in the larger school environment (Bakugou himself was being challenged this way)

He has both an overblown sense of ego and a deep lack of self-esteem (a quite common result of praising talented children in the wrong way - praising them for their quirk talent [what they can’t control] rather than for the efforts they make [and Bakugou is not only talented, he’s an extremely hard worker]). Because of this, he feels huge pressure to succeed, and intense terror of failing. It comes with the need to constantly defend himself and assert control where he can.

Lack of awareness of how he’s perceived. I think that was one of the things that really shook Bakugou in the Kamino-arc that not only the villains, but also the media perceived him as a potential villain, because until then he’s never seen himself as anything but a great hero.

I think people don’t like to acknowledge this background, plus how the entire society is prejudiced against quirkless people, because they feel like that somehow it would absolve Bakugou from his wrongdoings. But it’s not. Recognizing the contributing factors doesn’t mean at all that he’s not responsible for what he has done. But to say that he’s just a bad kid would be wrong and simplistic. Kids do well when they can. Nobody wants to be the villain of their story - and one of the most interesting contradictions of Bakugou’s character is that he genuinely with all his heart wants to be the good guy, the best hero, but profoundly misunderstands what it means and what he needs to do to get there.

I know that a lot of the fandom feels that Bakugou is not punished enough for what he’s done and they want to see him put in his place. But I think his story focuses on the question rehabilitation v. punishment. Because he’s still a kid both with fantastic potential and a despicable attitude and honestly, it feels like Yuuei is the first place they truly ask themselves the question what to do with a kid like this (or maybe they already have experience of dealing with kids like him).

And their answer seems to go in the direction of rehabilitation. While there are negative consequences for Bakugou’s behaviour (such as losing to Izuku or failing his provisional exam), these are mostly “natural” consequences he inflicts on himself. His teachers seem to take the stance instead of giving Bakugou positive behavioural patterns (they treat him with respect even when he’s rude) and “unearned” opportunities to learn, grow and turn his life around. His peers also have great impact, because he is for the first time in an environment where he is not far above his classmates in terms of power or ability and he needs to keep pushing himself to stay near the top.

His friendship with Kirishima shows him that a very “manly” (read “strong”) person can be at the same time kind, supportive and cooperative, and that he can earn respect for demonstrating sound judgement rather than bullying

The Baku-squad in various situations taught him that he doesn’t need to be violent to get people to cooperate, but they also draw very clear lines to his rudeness and don’t hesitate to sass him.

Best Jeanist teaching him about the importance of an image, a meaningful hero-name (basically an aspiration), self-awareness of how you are seen and how you see yourself.

The notable exception to these positive interactions is when Bakugou is tied up and muzzled at the end of the Sport Festival arc. I think this was a deliberate narrative choice to show how publicly humiliating and punishing him would be counter-productive and just spiraling to worse and worse consequences. That one-off event leads to Bakugou’s kidnapping and his portrayal as a villain in the media.

But then it’s also shown that Aizawa defending him has a huge impact on Bakugou’s self-perception. It shows how impactful one act of support can be even in the face of overwhelming negativity (he served the same role in the Sports Festival arc).

I love how Bakugou’s story is non-linear - there are small moments that can push him in either direction. Often the meaningful moments are rather small gestures, things when someone shows him a better way of doing things, not when he’s being pushed down, which just makes him dig his heels in more.

I think it’s undeniable that the best outcome for society is if Bakugou is reformed and becomes the awesome hero he has the potential to be, that Izuku always believed he would be.

And for some, maybe it would feel “unfair”, would feel like he’s “gotten away” with it. But I don’t see it like that. I think as he learns, grows and changes, inevitably his bullying past will weigh on him personally, he will not be able to justify it to himself anymore. Holding himself accountable is probably going to be more effective, meaningful and cathartic than any punishment he could be given by outsiders.

This is what I want most as an outcome - that bone-deep understanding of how wrong he was, and a resolve to change. And we already see the seeds of that.

I like how the story is crafted - painful babystep by babystep, not with one flashy moment of turnaround, multiple people being important to his growth.

I think once he finds the clarity, it will be the catalyst for everything else (an apology, making amends, etc.).

#bnha #bnha meta #bakugou katsuki #bullying #the narrative made me love this gremlin #and that's quite the feat

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manticxre · 6 years

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'Pride' for each of your muses

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Proxy’s biggest flaw is his duality. He’s obtuse and slippery, and nobody quite seems to know what he wants from them. There’s a pretense of genuity he gives to others, but his mind works faster than his mouth and he often likes to pretend he slipped up and said something shoddy instead of admitting to his mistakes. His personas often blur together, and the only times he’s shown his truest self is to Doyoung and his beloved children. To others, he always puts up a front close to his own nature, yet not entirely the same.

Daeyoung’s biggest flaw is probably his desire to please those around him. He dislikes inconveniencing others as much as possible, and often goes all out of his way to do things on his own and even self-isolate even if it hurt him. Daeyoung cares deeply about the way others see him, and he tries his utmost to ensure they’re comfortable in his presence as much as possible, to the point where he doesn’t mind being used or manipulated if he liked the person enough. He’s relatively naive in his concept of things, and won’t hesitate to sacrifice himself in order to make the others happy.

Minho’s biggest flaw is his own self-reproach. He’s never believed that he could ever be good enough for another person, anyone for that matter, and despite all the people who have now gotten close to him, Minho has the constant and even pervasive thought that he will never be the person they would want to spend time with and he could easily be replaced. This type of thinking is so deeply ingrained in Minho that even after starting a family, Minho constantly reprimands himself for not being a good enough father/mentor/husband/etc, and he doesn’t catch a break for that reason- he’s always pushing himself beyond his comfort zone, his limits, in this poor attempt to ensure that someone would take notice of him. To round this all off, he was deprived of compliments and love virtually his entire life, and he doesn’t know if he truly deserves it now.

Narae’s biggest flaw is that she can’t see past herself a lot of the time. She’s led a charmed existence despite the loss of her legs, and it breeds a sense of ‘if I can do this why can’t you’ mentality inside her. People might be put off by how infectiously cheerful she can get, and she doesn’t seem to understand how often invasive and nosey she can get when it comes to others’ personal space/likes and dislikes. She has hardly any social boundaries with others, so to speak, and often just assumes the same for the other (especially if she gets comfortable with them). She doesn’t quite understand that she needs to put aside some of her own comfort to make concessions to others.

Dongyoon’s biggest flaw is that he’s reckless. He doesn’t know when to give up and would always go down without a fight despite impossible odds, but his fixation on his own personal goals often depresses him because he’s cruelly aware of what he can no longer attain, and he ends up constantly with tunnel vision over the fact that he can no longer run and do the one thing he loved and was actually good at. Internally, Dongyoon often knows that if he were to die, he could bury the Seos’ legacy with him, which only serves to embolden his often self-deprecating and dangerous exploits. There’s a deep sense of nihilism in him that allows him to recklessly do what he likes with little care for consequence (the fact that his mothers are obnoxiously rich help little) and he just auto-assumes that if he were to die, it would be for the best.

Eunsoo has no biggest flaw beside her all-consuming desire for revenge. You can’t be flawed when your personality hinges on another’s existence, but her nature is that she doesn’t care what happens to others. She only cares about herself and her revenge, and won’t hesitate on using another or stepping on the other to do it. As much as she says she hasn’t been consumed by the demon that had granted her life back, she can’t help but notice that revenge is the only thing keeping her going and she’s afraid of herself when she inevitably finally gets a hold of Lee Changjun and her murderer. She doesn’t want to know what she can actually be fully capable of, ever, but she subconsciously is aware of how damaging this is and is understandably horrified of it and yet is trapped in this choice of forging ahead with more blood on her hands or disintegrating.

Jaeyeol’s biggest flaw is his dependence and cowardice. He’s too tiny to feel the heat of his actions having consequence, and he’s content to act shy and hide behind the clout of his parents and the fury of his sister than to do anything on his own. He’s a huge squishy coward who would never get his hands dirty for whatever reason, and truth be told, he inherited some aspects of Minho’s entitlement when it came to his wealth- throw enough money at it and the problem appears to go away. He thinks far too little of lasting consequences, since that’s what he ends up seeing all the time.

Doyoung’s biggest flaw (and perhaps his only Achilles’ heel) is his apathy. He has always had difficulty relating to others, and to him, it’s overwhelming to see others emote to him but not be able to do the same. Relating to animals is the safest path he’s picked for himself, aware that animals emote differently from humans and he would not feel obligated or stressed over being unable to express himself to other humans the way he can to animals, who can pick up on his other social cues. Not only so, he also cannot relate to others as well, is slow to trust in general, and only ever opened up to a person who has now disappeared, which shut him off from the rest of the world as he felt that nobody else could address him in the way she had.

Jason’s biggest flaw is his superiority complex and privilege. One can tell, however, from the way he carries himself is the lack of understanding of how his privilege aids him- whatever he needs to cover, he gains a significant advantage. He was allowed a huge amount of leeway for his reporting exploits from it, and while he revelled in that, the casual racism and often disdainful attitude he now gets in Seoul is completely different from the deferent attitudes he had received back in. To say he struggles to adapt to the new area and culture is an understatement, and there can only be so much cluelessness Jason can pull off before it becomes grating.

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