#plf arrests

[stillness-in-green]

More and More on Mina, Machia and the MLA

For my readers other than @randomvongenerico, please have this peremptory list of this very lengthy post's contents to help gauge your interest:

Some more discussion on what is or isn’t, would or wouldn’t be blameworthy about various characters’ actions (or hypothetical actions) during the war arcs.   

More discussion about Mina, chiefly about how (and why) her acid powers are handled compared to all the male characters with fire powers, and the way her plot points are poorly set up by the narrative, with the result of shortchanging her development.   

Yet More Complaining About How The Story Is Handling Heteromorphobia, this time featuring a compare and contrast on quirk-based bias as it might affect Mina, Bakugou and Tokoyami, as well as a dissection of Shouji’s contention that the only possible way to know about the violent bigotry in the rural areas of the country is to be from them.   

Some fairly extensive spitballing in response to questions about how I would have handled the scene at Machia’s prison compound if I were writing it, as well as why I have trouble conceiving of anything Hero Society could do to Hose Face for killing Midnight that would actually feel like justice.   

A little bit of basic talk about Tumblr, its functionality and some relevant slang.   

Buried at the very bottom, I stand up in front of God and everyone and explain in brief why Kaminari is a worse character than Mineta, with some particular focus on Kaminari as emblematic of the conflict between what the series tells us versus what it shows us about the legality of quirk use in careers other than heroism.

Hi again, rvg.  Because it's been forever since our last post exchange, let me say again that I appreciate the apology and want to thank you for being such a good sport about it.  Last time I had something like your initial response, that person told me straight out that they’d been condescending and antagonistic on purpose, though they regretted having done so after my reply.  I appreciated the regret, but would have preferred they take a day or two to cool off in the first place!  That’s the experience I was bringing to your comments, but I’ll keep in mind what you said about lack of experience with initiating chats and Tumblr in general.

For what it’s worth, yeah, there is a character limit on both asks and replies, so that’s the trouble you were running into there!  You might also consider using a cut next time before a really long post, though if you’re on mobile, I recall that being a difficult-if-not-impossible feature to find, and it’s not as important as it used to be ever since Tumblr’s started adding default Expand drop-downs on long posts.  That aside, welcome (belatedly) to Tumblr!  I hope you find some good people to chat fandom with; I’m always open to some back and forth about things I know well enough to talk about, though I’m, er, decidedly unprompt with replies.  And, as noted, definitely more of a villain fan, so probably not the most fun person for discussions on the kids.

That said, to your replies!  Other readers should note that, while I wrote all this roughly in response-order to rvg’s points, I reorganized everything after the fact to group together the broad topics.  I’ve tried to provide some bare minimum context for anything that would otherwise be too much of a zero-context non-sequitur, but if anyone wants to see rvg’s comments in their intended order and context, their reblog can be found here.  Otherwise, hit the jump!

  

Would You Have Held It Against ___?

But would you hold it against Mina if she had actually done more substancial damage to Machia? Let’s say, not the face, but Machia’s fingers instead of his claws. Machia still doens’t feel any pain. Would you chastise Mina for it? Even though she’s actively saving Mt Lady by doing that?

It’s hard to say for sure, since I imagine that if Mina’s acid had hit Machia’s fingers instead of his claws, we probably would just have seen them abraded and singed, like how Dabi’s fire damage was drawn on Hawks, not with chunks of skin melting off and exposing naked bone.  Physical damage in BNHA just doesn’t work like that, at least not against named characters.  If Mina were doing realistic damage, I imagine everyone else would be too, and then I’d be criticizing all of them, because, holy shit, that is not okay to do to people, any people, and especially not when you’re acting as an agent of the state.

But hypothetically, no, I think I would be more lenient even if she did do concrete and permanent damage to Machia’s hands, and it’s because she’d be doing it to save Mount Lady.  Shinsou could have taken control of Machia and then just had him lie still while whoever was in charge of this facility redrugged him,[1] and that would have been fine by me—disappointing, sure, but only because Machia’s interesting and I’d like to get more on him than we do, not because I’d be critiquing Shinsou’s actions.

It’s specifically Shinsou and the rest choosing to weaponize Machia against AFO that I object to.  Mina harming Machia would be taking that action herself, to protect someone that’s right in front of her, risking no one’s life but her own in doing so.  Shinsou throwing Machia up against AFO—which he’d made the decision to do before hearing Machia’s angry grumbling—is risking Machia’s life, without Machia’s consent.  And it’s not even for the sake of saving anyone, at least not anyone that’s right there in that moment—AFO is fleeing.

Sure, he still presents a huge threat to lots of people, but given that we’d just seen proof that AFO did not know about Shinsou’s power,[2] they could also have used Machia to, for example, rapidly transport the heroes to some place they could set up a second ambush to trick AFO into responding to Shinsou.  I mean, good god, AFO’s the chattiest villain in the comic; Hawks lured him into at least two extended conversations even after he’d resolved that he needed to leave.  He’s a Demon Lord and thus categorically incapable of shutting up.  And that would have been that, really.  Take control and let the clock run out; end of problem.

It would have been anticlimactic as hell, so obviously that was never going to happen, but there’s no reason the heroes couldn’t try for it, you know?  Instead of the bone-headed decision to just hand AFO his most loyal soldier on a silver platter on the thin chances that they could either prevent the brainwashing from being broken at all or that Machia’s upset would translate to both the capability and willingness to attack his master.

I’ve observed this problem in a few different areas, that Horikoshi sometimes writes the heroes, particularly Hawks, as not taking actions or drawing conclusions that, from their perspective, should seem sensible, well-reasoned, and with solid chances of success; instead, they simply disregard possibilities they should logically be considering but which the reader knows are dead ends, or they benefit from things they could not have known at the time they acted.  That hurts immersion because it gives the heroes victories, both tactical and moral, that they simply haven’t earned.  Shinsou’s control of Machia is a particularly egregious example.

  

Speaking of Monoma. Since we were talking about the morality of Shinso’s Quirk. Would you say Monoma using his Quirk to copy a villain’s Quirk and use it on him and his allies, would also qualify as something that should be criticized? I’m curious.

Nah, I don’t think so.  Taking an opponent’s weapon and using it to subdue him is a perfectly valid tactic, especially since Monoma’s method doesn’t actually deprive his opponent of their weapon, just replicates it for his own use.  It really all does boil down to Shinsou’s method forcing people to fight and hurt their own allies.  Mina causing Machia physical harm, Monoma using a villain’s own weapon against them, even the heroes’ surprise attack: none of those are remotely on the same “holy shit that is a literal war crime” level as what the heroes planned in advance to have Shinsou do to Machia, and what he willingly agreed to do well before he found out that Machia was not as opposed as the heroes thought.

  

I mean, I get what you’re getting at. I’m just wondering. If the heroes hadn’t launched a suprise attack, and had left the villains do the first move and come to them, would you then be criticizing them for being irresponsible and incompetent instead? Sorry for going on a tangent, it’s just something I’ve noticed when it comes to readers criticizing the heroes. It’s either people complaining that the heroes are too ruthless, or that they’re too nice, naive or not pragmatic enough.

(This is in response to some discussion of the heroes' actions in the first war arc's raid on the villa+hospital lab, not the second war's divide and conquer plan.)

I actually don’t really have a huge problem with the surprise attack in principle—I might criticize Cementoss ripping the building in half when there could well have been people on those upper floors, but otherwise, it’s hard to imagine what else the heroes could generally have done to deal with the numbers they were dealing with.  I mean, it’s basically just a scaled-up version of the attack on the Hassaikai base, and I don’t have any moral quibbles with the way the heroes and police handled that.

Rather, my problem with the raid is that I thought the heroes were too effective given the way their forces and those of the PLF had been set up.  It’s not the tactic itself that’s the problem (though individual acts of worse violence within the attack, like Hawks killing Twice or the attempts to outright murder Shigaraki in the tube, are still an issue), it’s the finality, the totality, of how effective the attack was.

To be brief about it (because I’ve talked about this at length elsewhere), I don’t think the heroes should have known where all the PLF bases were, I don’t think they should have been as effective in disordered mass combat as the PLF, I think the advisors should have put up a better fight in all cases, and I think there should have been enough members of the PLF in significant positions of influence or power that the HPSC couldn’t uncover them all, leading to complications when those members realized their organization was under attack.

As it is, the heroes handily win every fight they have with the sole exception of Gigantomachia and Shigaraki.  The PLF is neatly swept off the table save for a few “remnants,” with no attention given to the practical difficulties of detaining tens of thousands of combatants with no motivation to let themselves be quietly arrested, much less how the justice system is going to handle trying and sentencing them all.  That has repercussions going forward, as well: heroes clearing the board of all the (named) PLF members save Skeptic leaves the bulk of villain forces in the subsequent arcs to be prison escapees, and man, if the PLF’s moral nuance has been squandered, the depiction of the prison escapees is even worse.

The raid is, of course, only the first of two big surprise attacks the heroes manage.  I have significantly more issues with the second one, but most of that boils down to the fact that the divide and conquer/Tempt and Trap plan feels crueler, meaner, and much more openly aimed at extrajudicial murder.  And like, that would all be fine and in-character for Hero Society in general and Hawks, the main planner, specifically, but with Deku, Shouto and Uraraka all starting to think Save Villains thoughts, and fresh off the traitor reveal, the kids should never have been as collectively okay with the second war’s tactics as the story has presented them as being.  To echo an older complaint, good god, what universe is Horikoshi living in that he thinks the people that converted a place of learning into an arena they call a “coffin in the sky” are the heroes?

  

I was under the impression Midnight was off to the side from where the MLA minions were passing by, and the Skull Mask guy took a detour to kill her.

I’m not sure from this if you’re explaining how you read Hose Face’s attack on Midnight at the time, or if you’re maintaining that that’s an accurate read, so just to clarify, here are the panels in question:

As you can see, the PLF guys’ path through the woods has them coming in from directly behind Midnight.  Hose Face calls out that he’ll take care of her once they get close enough for the reader to make out who they are, at which point he gets out in front of Scarecrow and hits Midnight from the same direction as their initial approach: directly behind.  He most certainly doesn’t take a detour of any kind, but rather chooses the action that is going to get his group through the obstacle with the least amount of time and effort possible—entirely his prerogative as the highest-ranked member of the Guerilla Warfare regiment on-scene.

  

But if we classify this entire conflict as a war, wouldn’t that mean that both sides are free to use whatever tacticts and methods they feel like as long as it’s not a war crime?

If we classify it as war is irrelevant if the side aligned with the current ruling authority hasn’t done so themselves.  I imagine the Japanese government is in no hurry to validate the terrorists on an international stage by acknowledging that they’re numerous and dangerous enough to declare actual, formal war against!  Calling it a war drags in a whole pile of wartime conventions Japan has signed numerous treaties about; it grants the opposing side some legitimacy as a cohesive, organized force that will need to be negotiated with down the line.  As long as you’re calling it a police action, you don’t have to negotiate shit until you get to the plea deals!  Team Hero never declared war here, so yeah, I still expect them to carry out their plans and actions accordingly.

Also, in the thematic/meta sense, I expect the heroes to either conduct themselves as heroes—admirable, upright, heroic—or face the narrative consequences when they fail to live up to that ideal.  The hyper-encapsulated version of this conundrum is the recurring idea that attacking Shigaraki never actually prevents Shigaraki from coming back worse and more dangerous next time; the heroes are never going to achieve a different result by attacking him again but harder this time, and that’s why Deku is set up to finally try something different.[3]  I would just like it if what’s true on the micro-level could even be attempted on the macro-level.  Or, in other words, if the narrative is going to tell us that saving villains is the correct path, it can’t only demonstrate that for the villains with known-to-the-heroes sympathetic backstories.

  

General Mina Points

Regarding your analysis about Mina’s acid being underpowered because it’s harder/less believable to downplay the effects of acid than fire/explosions/etc. in Shounen Damage Logic, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.  I don’t see anything wrong with just showing the Nebulous Abrasion Damage that’s the ubiquitous, default mode of illustrating nonspecific injury in this comic for Mina’s acid the same way we get it for the boys.

I can see your argument, but like, just for example, when Endeavor first encounters a Noumu, he bathes it in fire under the assumption that it’s a normal villain and then says he’s surprised it’s still up because he’s never seen anyone stay conscious after that attack.  Bathing someone in flames in real life is not a “knock them out” kind of attack; it’s a “severe burn ward for months” kind of attack.  If Endeavor’s been throwing that around at random criminals for thirty years, we are plainly very far away from realistic damage, and I’d be perfectly satisfied with treating Mina’s acid the same way.

If I had to take a guess as to why Horikoshi’s so staunchly avoided letting Mina cut loose—other than regressive gender politics—I’d say it’s that acid simply feels nastier or more morally dubious than fire.  Fire has positive as well as negative connotations; acid’s a lot more, shall we say, unilateral in the collective imagination, especially given what’s going to turn up if you run a web search for “acid attacks.”

To look at it in JRPG logic (and I don’t care if AFO’s admiration stems from a comic; that comic was clearly playing with Dragon Quest tropes), acid is pretty much the same thing as poison, and poison effects are chiefly the realm of enemy characters.  It smacks of underhandedness or cowardice in anything more cognizant than roving toxic plants or venomous beasts.  Certainly you see the occasional party member specialized for status effects who can inflict poison damage on enemies, but I can’t readily think of a main character that does.[4]

Perhaps, then, because readers are somewhat conditioned to think of acid as particularly dangerous and nasty compared to fire, and because there’s a limit to how morally dubious Horikoshi is willing to (consciously) write the students, especially the girls, Mina’s sharply limited in how she’s allowed to use her acid.

That said, I got a very hearty laugh from, “Just look at Dabi.  He can’t even kill himself with fire,” so thank you very much for that.

  

It’s as if Horikoshi only ever figures out what to do with Mina retroactively instead of in the moment (e.g. there were no interactions between Kirishima and Mina until AFTER Kirishima’s backstory, we never got any hint that would connect Mina’s and Midnight’s characters until AFTER Midnight died, when Mina speaks about not giving in to vengeance she references SHOJI’S WORDS which happened in HIS FLASHBACK, and then this whole chapter is technically a flashback too when you think about it).

That’s a big oof, all right.  I know about the Midnight non-connection and the issue of Mina’s anti-vengeance words having first been delivered by Shouji and relayed to the audience by Koda (it being his flashback, rather than Shouji’s), but I didn’t know there was no indication of Kiri-Mina connection until after his flashback.  Wowzers.

  

But also, in one of my comments I had left a link to a post analizing Kirishima’s and Mina’s characters and their dynamic. I don’t know if you checked it out or not, but it was a pretty interesting read. If you did read it, let me know your thoughts on it.

Apologies for not responding to that; I hadn't clicked it because I just wasn't terribly interested in the topic. Having checked it now, I can say that I'm unlikely to read it because I've encountered this person's meta before and, even at a glance, found it to be flawed for reasons I am not comfortable gabbing about in a public space. I'm sure they make some valid points, but I will have to respectfully bow out of reading and commenting on it here.

  

But what about Mina telling Kirishima that “now they’re even” though?

(This is re: my contention that Mina saves Shinsou, not Kirishima, from the Sludge Villain, and that Kirishima was never in any danger from the Sludge Villain.)

I mean, she can say it, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe that she/Horikoshi are accurately portraying the stakes involved.

  

Just for the record, you’re not saying that Mina not giving in to revenge isn’t noble in and of itself. What she does is indeed good.  You’re saying it doesn’t have any emotional weight because Mina has always been a morally good character, so you never thought she would ever give in to revenge in the first place. Correct?

Correct!  As I’ve said, Mina has perfectly healthy emotional regulation: when she experiences negative emotions like anger, guilt, or grief, she doesn’t dwell on them; she vents them to friends and finds healthy ways to channel them into bettering herself and the world and people around her.  She’s got a great head on her shoulders!  But all of that means that her giving into anger about Midnight’s death was never a remotely convincing threat to me.  Of course she wouldn’t; there’s never been a moment that foreshadowed that she was in the slightest danger of harboring that kind of obsessive, vindictive grudge.

That being the case, it feels unfair of Horikoshi to pin a big dramatic monologue on a desire for revenge which Mina was never shown to possess to any greater degree than any of her classmates.  She’s one of the last hero-aligned characters I’d have guessed if you’d asked me who was going to get a beat like that in the endgame.

(To anticipate the obvious question, Aizawa would have been my first guess; he’s even been written for it properly in the way he and Mic have responded to Shigaraki—clearly holding a grudge for something that would have happened to their classmate when Shigaraki was all of six years old.  Conversely, while plenty of the 1-A kids could have believably carried a “struggling with vengefulness” plot if they’d been written with it from earlier on, I don’t think there’s a single one of them who feels like a good match for it in their current incarnations.  Iida’s moved on from his Stain days too smoothly to buy it from him, Bakugou’s only real obsession is Deku, and Deku already had a whole arc of being obsessively negative and driven by dark desires to find and deal with a villain.  If any student was going to show up to the fight with bloody-minded revenge on the brain, it should have been Shishikura.)

  

But What About the Heteromorphobia, Tho’?

(Warning: Incoming off-topic harping about Shouji and the inane resolution of the hospital attack.)

I have even seen someone make a post on Reddit arguing that Shinso being discriminated for his Quirk makes no sense because it’s not villanous, and that it makes more sense for characters like Bakugo, Mina and Tokoyami to be discriminated because they have more villanous looking Quirks. I don’t really agree with everything that guy said. But he did bring up a good point. How come Mina doesn’t get side eyes from people due to her Quirk like Shinso does?

I will have to disagree with Reddit User That Guy that Shinsou’s quirk should be viewed as less villainous than Bakugou’s.  It sounds like he was conflating heteromorphobia with the bias against villains/"villainous" quirks, and while there is overlap, they’re still distinct categories.  Shinsou’s quirk inherently subordinates one’s physical body, allowing him to force his targets to act against their will, or potentially take the fall for things they didn’t willingly do.  Of course people are nervous about it or think it’s more villainous than heroic!

Conversely, the Number 2 Hero has been attacking criminals with fire for decades now, so I think the BNHA general public is more than ready to accept a hero whose quirk lets him fire off explosions.  The commonly accepted idea in the fandom is that “flashy and offensive quirks” are the ones most valued in heroes.  I think that’s a bit oversimplified—Crust was the Number 6 Hero and his quirk was neither—but it’s certainly true that purely elemental quirks (fire, lightning, wind, earth-shaping), no matter how damage-dealing they are, don’t tend to get treated as villainous in nature.  The real “villainous quirks” in the series tend to be the ones that are more creepy, dark, invasive, or impure.  Even Dabi’s fire is that ethereal blue, like spirit fires, instead of everyday orange-red!

Bakugou’s quirk is much closer to the “pure elemental” category than anything very villainous and, indeed, when he got kidnapped from the training camp and that one journalist was suggesting that he might have turned to villainy already, he based that suggestion on Bakugou’s behavior, his conduct during the Sports Festival.  Nothing was said about his quirk at all, but rather his recent public demonstrations of violence and “mental instability.”  That’s perfectly consistent, I think, with the biases we see elsewhere.[5]

Tokoyami has the potential to get hit by both the villainous quirk bias and the heteromorphobia, but I think Japan seeing ravens as emblematic of wisdom rather than death and rot would mean his bird head is less ill-seen there than it would be in the West.  I don’t think it would take much more than the proverbial One Bad Day to get him to a very bad place indeed, though—there’s a reason Mr. Compress judged him a good potential recruit!  Tokoyami was rescued before it became an issue, but if he hadn’t been, I’m sure we would have seen the same journalist mentioned above making similar statements about Tokoyami and his dark quirk/mien.

Mina’s an interesting case study in not experiencing a lot of the same sorts of discrimination others in similar situations do.  She has three distinct heteromorphic traits—her skin, her eyes, her horns—as well as having a potentially extremely deadly quirk which, as I discussed above, could easily attract judgmental side-eye because of the cultural view of acid.  So why doesn’t she seem to face discrimination?

As I said in the post you’re replying to—and as you mentioned is a common headcanon—I think a lot of it boils down to her relentlessly chipper attitude.  If she had, for example, Mustard’s personality, or Muscular’s drive to violence, would people be quicker to say that her Acid is a “villain quirk”?  If she glared more, would people be more creeped out by her eyes?  It’s possible, I think, that we would actually see her facing some of this if we spent more time with her, but the narrative doesn’t make that time, at least not anywhere Kirishima can see it.

  

Well, if I had to guess, I’m sure you would say that would make her a more interesting character. You might get to be interested in her character, which then would probably mean you would be even more upset and disappointed with this chapter.

Ahaha, very fair.  Honestly, Class A would have benefited tremendously from more kids with bite to them.  A Mina whose competitiveness had some real fervor to it, or a Mina who had some heaviness in her backstory she was faking her way through dealing with, would have been a good contribution to that.

  

It really sucks that Horikoshi had to justify Shoji being the only one to experience prejudice by clarifying that heteromorph discrimination is only still prevalent in small villages. I feel like it robbed characters like Tsuyu, Mina, Tokoyami and Koda of being part of an actual narrative and get more depth and development.

Before I talk about this, let me clarify something: Shouji’s line about what his classmates know about heteromorphic discrimination is an example of very crucial nuance being wildly different between translations.

The fan scanlation suggested that Tokoyami and Koda, who grew up in cities, must feel like such violent heteromorphobia resembles something out of a textbook, with the implication that the textbook in question is a history book.  They’re presumed to think that blood-cleansing rituals and children with scars like Shouji are artifacts of a terrible past, not a modern-day concern.

The official Via release suggested that Tokoyami and Koda could know that stuff like this still happens in rural areas because they might have read about it in textbooks.  They’re presumed to know that such rituals and scarred children do exist as modern concerns, but only out in the boonies.

Those are completely different propositions!  Which one was accurate was far beyond my capability to judge, but the official translation did feel a little off to me, so, as I usually do in such situations, I brought it to my trusty Translator Sis.  For possibly the first time ever,[6] she told me that Viz had this one wrong—that Shouji’s implication, to her eye, was indeed that T&K would think such violence was limited to the past, not that it was limited to rural areas.

That established, I was actually talking about that line from Shouji with a friend the other day!  I was aggravated that the writing would portray city-born heteromorphs as so oblivious to the problems facing them in other parts of the country when that seems so counter to my (American) perception of the ways members of threatened groups communicate danger to one another.

My friend reminded me that silence is a much more common Japanese way of addressing (or attempting to address) minority discrimination: trying to make a problem go away by starving it of conversational oxygen, treating oppression like an infection that needs to be quarantined until it dies out on its own.  In that light, it’s entirely possible that Tokoyami and Koda might not know this stuff because no one around them thinks it would be helpful to tell them if it’s not a problem they’re directly dealing with.  A lot of people propose the same approach to burakumin issues in real life, for example.

Also, technically Shouji doesn’t say that Koda and Tokoyami don’t experience heteromorphobia at all, just that the idea of fear and hatred that extreme, that violent, must seem like something out of a textbook, rather than something that happens here and now in certain parts of the country.  Also too, Tokoyami and Koda are teenagers; I can forgive them not having much understanding of life outside their own circle of experience.

That all said, it still feels more than a little telling that Horikoshi thinks everyone in Shouji’s whole class, including and especially all the other heteromorphs, could never have heard in their entire lives about acts of bigotry-driven violence against heteromorphs being carried out in the here and now.

While it’s true that silence is a widely accepted way to address these sorts of issues in Japan, they’re hardly universal!  Activist groups are out there trying to raise awareness, trying to get their issues on the floor of the Diet in hopes of getting laws passed about them.  There’s not some kind of media blackout on talking about it, and, indeed, I’ve read any number of articles from Japanese publications online covering such topics.

In BNHA, however, silence does seem to be universal.[7]

No one but Shouji is from a remote enough place that they knew about violent heteromorphobia.  No one recognized it as a thing that e.g. disadvantages heteromorphic heroes in the public approval ratings.  No one tripped over a magazine article about it and got curious enough to look the topic up online.  No one’s heroic mentors or family members have talked to them about it (particularly egregious with Koda, given the fairly strong implication that his own mother suffered it).  No one had a patch of morbid interests (Tokoyami) that led them to dabble in reading about real-life horror stories of human hatred, or an interest in how their society came to be that might have led them to reading about the CRC and realizing it still exists in the modern day.

They attend a hero school, and yet Shouji seems to be the only one with an inkling that there are heteromorphs out there who need, and have been needing, heroes.

That’s all a lot to ask of the reader, but what really pushes it past plausibility to me is what happened with the Ordinary Woman.  How close to the surface must violent heteromorphobia be even in the cities if the current state of Japan brings it all right back into the open in a matter of weeks?  That none of the students other than Shouji have ever even imagined that heteromorphs can still be victimized in this way represents an over-the-top ignorance that I have to read as either a bleak condemnation of the shallow focuses of heroes or reflective of Horikoshi’s own beliefs about discrimination and the understanding of it possessed by those who aren’t immediately threatened by it.

Whichever is the case, and with Spinner’s higher brain functions out of commission, it leaves Shouji carrying the whole plot on his back and he just can’t do it, both because the audience hasn’t had enough time with him to buy it and because the answers the series uses him as a vehicle to deliver are facile, victim-blaming nonsense.

...And here’s where I admit that even if the hospital attack had climaxed with a whole bunch of heteromorphs from Class A and B and the Pro Hero ranks acknowledging the mob’s feelings while pleading with them to not give into hatred and to stand down, I would still have issues if the resolution didn’t involve concrete suggestions and promises about how the heroes would address the mob’s grievances going forward.  Which canon very much did not, and just adding more voices to Shouji’s wouldn’t have changed that.  But my whole rant about that can be found in the relevant chapter posts, so I’ll not repeat it further here.

  

How Would I Have Done It Instead?

Let’s be real here for a second. Even if Mina had been the one to stop Machia. How would she even do that? I remember back when people were talking about when Mina would get her moment to shine, and that it would involve Machia again, I had serious doubts about that idea ever becoming true because I couldn’t think of a single thing she could do against him. I thought for sure Mina’s moment was going to be relegated to fighting Midnight’s killer, since that seemed more within her capabilities. In the end her shinning moment did indeed involve Machia, and no one really had a confrontation with Midnight’s killer. I actually want to hear your thoughts, if you happen have a thing in mind that you think Mina could’ve done to be the one to stop Machia. I’d love to hear it.+ Btw, since you brought it up, in what way could she have defeated the Sludge villain that would’ve been witty, or skillful? If you don’t have any ideas you don’t need to answer. It’s not that important. I’m just curious of the posibility.

Okay, so, this is the part that hung me up for the longest, because there are a few wildly different possible answers here.

The real truth is, if I had been writing this whole shebang from the start, this confrontation would never have happened this way at all.  Just off the top of my head, I think there’s no compelling reason AFO couldn’t have sent Toga into the hospital to activate and retrieve Kurogiri weeks ago, and with Kurogiri back in play, getting Machia would obviously have gone differently.  I would also never have disposed of the MLA as comprehensively as Horikoshi did; I would have had at least one or two instances where an MLA member who didn’t get uncovered by the HPSC in time was in a position to shift the balance in the villains’ favor—maybe one would have been with the police somewhere.

Barring a top-to-bottom rewrite of the whole arc, however? Well, I'd still say that, feeling as strongly as I do about how morally dubious this whole second war has been, even if I were telling this scene with the same components, I probably wouldn’t be writing towards a hero success because I don’t think the heroes have earned it.  The baby steps the kids have taken towards Saving Villains don’t go far enough for me to want to see the villains defeated here.  The biggest changes there would have been twofold:

1) Shinsou’s voice changer play shouldn’t have worked on Machia.

Machia has a sense of smell so incredibly acute that, if I were trying to logically explain how it worked, I’d make it a psychic ability that just happened to manifest as scent-based.  We’re talking about a guy who could track down Shigaraki after a teleport of over 270 miles, who could smell AFO’s vestige stirring from almost fifty miles away.  There’s absolutely no reason he should think for even a second that AFO is standing right outside his prison.

Now, we do know replications of AFO’s voice has an effect on Machia—we saw as much as the beginning of MVA!  But I would contend that back then, he didn’t have a big loud response to the recording, just curled up around his radio and started loudly purring.  In the scene with Shinsou, he actually responds as though he thinks AFO is there, but again, I don’t buy that Machia should have fallen for that, especially since he was woken by Hose Face’s device emulating AFO’s voice, which would have given his unbelievably keen senses enough time to register that it’s only the voice, not the man, that he's hearing.

But, with Machia up and not immediately prey to Shinsou’s ploy, the other big change I’d make with him becomes apparent.  The series has proved willing and eager to shitcan everything Shigaraki gained in MVA, but not me.  Shigaraki won Machia’s loyalty at the end of MVA, and if Machia’s cranky with AFO for leaving him behind again,[8] that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still have loyalty to AFO’s successor.

Given that his loyalty to Shigs is predicated on his loyalty to AFO, it might seem logical that AFO squandering the latter would free Machia of obligation to the former.  That’s a fair take.  But if it were me, I’d capitalize on Machia’s keen senses and what he was present for in MVA—Shigaraki saying that his followers should do whatever they want.  Hell, if the endgame likes flashbacks so much, let’s have a flashback of Shigaraki and Machia actually talking in ways that would let Machia distinguish Shigaraki and AFO.

In other words, I think Machia’s loyalty should supersede his anger.  If he gets free, his first reaction should be to go to Shigaraki, not to focus on his anger.  That way, it’s not a hero win rewarding their gross sky coffin tactics, but AFO doesn’t get quite what he wanted out of it, either.  This would be one part of focusing the narrative back on Shigaraki and his allies, rather than ruining Shigaraki’s hard work by letting AFO take over and piss it all away.

Incidentally, I will concede that, just because Machia shouldn’t have responded like a dupe to Shinsou mimicking AFO’s voice, that doesn’t mean Machia might not have responded at all—he could have rebuked Shinsou for trying to emulate Master, and that would have worked for Shinsou’s purposes just as well!  So to avoid that, I would add one more element to a flashback showcasing Shigaraki and Machia’s relationship post-Deika: have Shigaraki showing Machia a picture of Shinsou and warning him to be on the lookout for this kid, and to not respond to anything he says.

Horikoshi loves to tie back plot beats to pre-established elements, and one such element is, as I footnoted earlier, that AFO and Shigaraki watched the U.A. Sports Festival together, so they should both know good and well who Shinsou is and what he can do.  Knowing Shinsou’s SF-era capabilities doesn’t predict the voice changer, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if the heroes are pushed to a point of desperation and they have access to a brainwasher, even a non-licensed one, they will try to use that brainwasher on whoever they think is their highest priority target.  Quite frankly, all of the higher-ups and key players should have known about Shinsou.

2) The kids shouldn’t have been tipped off that they were facing Midnight’s killer, or it should have come up in a different context.

Nothing interesting comes of the way the canon deploys it, thanks to Mina’s vengeful feelings having no grounding in the story, and the blunt way it’s brought up serves only to make Hose Face easy for the reader to write off.  As I said in the chapter post where he brought up “that U.A. teacher,” there’s no real reason for him to be focusing on Midnight specifically unless he has a personal reason to think she’s emblematic of the things about Hero Society he hates, or unless he was tuned in enough to U.A. personalities (knew who was teaching there, watched the Sports Festival to get a handle on its students, etc.) to realize that he was facing students he could potentially rattle by bringing up their teacher’s death.

The latter would offer a less awful read on Hose Face’s personality: He’s not bringing up the death out of pure sadism, but as a psychological tactic.  The former would give him some real characterization and motives while also giving the kids something to argue against, rather than the easiest possible reaction of, “Hay did u kno Might Makes Right iz bad?”

Alternatively, if Hose Face has nothing personal against Midnight at all, and doesn’t have an encyclopedic memory of hero wannabe high schoolers, he has no reason to specifically mention Midnight.  Even if the narrative must see her death “answered” in some fashion, it still doesn’t follow that the kids must get emotional closure for someone they lost to the undeclared war they were drafted into.  The audience can take some solace in perceived karma, but lacking a naturalistic way for Mina and the rest to connect those dots, the kids should just have to deal with him as they would any other opponent they come up against, because, surprise surprise, when you’re fighting in a war, you’re not guaranteed to see and know who’s on the opposite side of the gun that just shot down your best friend.

As another alternative, if we go with the idea that Mina was struggling with dark desires for revenge, maybe she should have brought it up!  Not as an accusation—again, she has no way of knowing she’s facing Midnight’s killer without him saying it—but just out of generalized fury with her opponents as a group, the same way Aizawa and Gran Torino hold the pain of their loved ones against Shigaraki when Shigaraki is not the one responsible for causing that pain.[9]  Maybe a more openly vengeful Mina could just freely state that her aim is to take down the PLF to avenge Midnight, only for the enemy in front of her to answer, “Midnight?  You mean that woman I killed in the woods on the day of Liberation?  Here’s your chance, then, girl.”  (Or whatever.)

Of course, Shonen Jump is not in the habit of validating heroes craving revenge, so Mina in that scenario would fail because rage would make her sloppy, same as with Deku, Iida, and so on.

So, in a scenario where Machia is up and not falling prey to Shinsou, but rather prioritizing getting to New Master Shigaraki, and the PLF is likewise loyal to Shigaraki and not AFO, I’d just let it work, because I’d be slanting this whole combat towards an overall heroic loss.  Give Mina a face to obsess over until next time but also let Kirishima get a good eyeful of it so he at least knows there’s a serious problem with his best friend and one of his hero inspirations.

Mineta would have a chance to weigh in, too, as he's a good middle ground: he's got his own anger about Midnight, who he adored, but he's also worried about how that anger looks on Mina. Mineta always worries about his classmates, but he's shared a pretty fair amount of incidental screentime with Mina specifically over the course of the series, ranging from her sweetly offering to put a harem moment into the band performance just for him to stuff like the Clockwork Orange gag, as well as more serious stuff like Mineta being the first one to ask aloud if Midnight's dead, with Mina warmly, and with a confidence it turns out she doesn't truly feel, reassuring him that Midnight's fine.

(I've said before that Mineta should have had more to do in the confrontation with Midnight's killer, but that's not just about his fondness for her. It's also about him being the first to question if the heroes didn't just make the whole situation worse, and, if Mina really took Midnight's death so hard it had her thinking about revenge, it should also have been about Mina and Mineta's shared experience surrounding that death.)

That all said, I suspect that what you really meant is, how would I have handled this scene if I had to use all the same pieces and be writing towards a heroic victory?  So let me at least touch on that.

As far as Hose Face goes, I actually think Kirishima might have been better suited to talking to him?  Like, Mina’s been friendly with people, sure, but I don’t really buy her most pivotal, “shining moment” scene being a bunch of talk about the strength of the weak coming together.  As best I recall—though do correct me if I’m wrong—it's never been shown that Mina regularly struggles with feelings of weakness or inadequacy.  It would be perfectly natural for her to do so after flubbing against Gigantomachia, to be sure, but the series doesn’t make the time to show it, so her lines about forming packs with others does not feel like a natural evolution for her arc.

Likewise, while she’s obviously been depicted as friendly and sociable from the beginning, her lines in 383 suggest that her sociableness has, and always has had, an ulterior motive: covering for her perceived weakness.  The lack of focus on her relationships from her own perspective makes that impossible to verify or even predict, so it just feels like it comes out of thin air, grabbed almost at random by the author in his attempt to find something, anything, Mina could say that would give Hose Face even a moment's pause.

Kirishima, on the other hand, has had a focus on his relationships, places where they’ve been pivotal to his own arc and the greater plot.  (I’m sure I don’t need to harp on this to you, rvg, but I’ll go over it to lay out my perception of these things.)  His relationship with Mina—the ways he’s trying to live up to her example, as well as his desire to support her when she falters—is a profound motivator for him, something we see much more explicitly and from his own perspective than we do Mina's feelings about him.  Meanwhile, while his relationship with Bakugou isn’t given that level of psychological exploration, it’s a critical factor in Bakugou’s rescue at Kamino, and we also get that bit of Bakugou specifically giving Kirishima some advice that leads to the latter’s Unbreakable mode.[10]

So like, we do get an angle on Kirishima and his sense of his own relationships with others.  That awareness allows him to demonstrate what is, I believe, the first unabashed moment of empathy for villains that a hero demonstrates in the entire series!  Specifically, I’m talking about that low-level gang mook he comes up against during his internship with Fat Gum.  That guy does a bunch of yelling about things that speak to Kirishima—fears of weakness, desire to be stronger, a need to help his “bros”—and Kirishima tries multiple times, even after being attacked, to express his understanding and sympathy for the man.

That being the case, if anyone were going to be able to make an impression on Hose Face via appealing to his sense of camaraderie and desire for strength, it seems to me that Kirishima has the better groundwork in place to sell the moment, regardless of whether he could successfully “reach” Hose Face in the way that’s being attempted with Shigaraki/Toga/Dabi.

As to the Sludge Villain, I’d probably either not have him there at all, given how much he claims he just wants to pretend to fight for a minute before getting the hell out of there.  He very much seems like he didn’t want to be here to begin with, so I can only assume that, despite AFO claiming the jailbreakers didn’t need to do anything for him but rampage, he very much did summon a bunch of them back anyway[11] for his final dramatic attack on Deku and Hero Society.

Assuming we’re stuck dealing with him, I’d probably let the Class B kids do it.   Have Mount Lady—who was there for the Sludge Villain’s rampage using Bakugou, and therefore knows what Sludgey looks like and that he can possess people—yell for people to stay away from him.  Let there be a moment of panic and confusion, where it looks for a moment like a repeat of the mess in Chapter 1 where no one had the exact right answer to deal with him, so no one’s willing to step up.

Then, in a 1-2-3 combo move that reminds everyone why Class B is said to have advanced more quickly than Class A, and just as Sludgey lunges for someone, have Yamagi use Poltergeist to manipulate him into a steel drum barrel being held by Yui, let her shrink it down to a good tight fit before dropping it, then have Juuzo soften the ground to half-sink it, top down, then resolidify the earth, trapping Sludgey for later removal.  Ta da, a neat demonstration of the next generation outperforming the old generation when it comes to on-the-fly teamwork and decisive action even when no one individual has the perfect quirk for solving a problem.

…This, of course, is assuming there’s no good way to actually get the Sludge Villain to talk in more depth about why he didn’t want to be here from the beginning and had to be threatened into doing it at all.  It would be nice if someone could broach that topic!  Maybe a quick not-too-serious handful of lines from Mineta, who has his own history of running in terror from fights he doesn’t think he can win.  But even with some sympathy, I imagine Sludge Villain would try to run away regardless, on the (well-grounded) suspicion that heroes are going to want him to go back to prison and finish his sentence, and that’s when B-tachi could step in.

So that just leaves Machia, Mina, and Shinsou.  And honestly, rather than having to power through it, I’d rather see Mina, in particular, talk her way out of it.  This draws on two things.  First, there’s the fact that she’s one of the kids who failed her Final Exams, with her and Kaminari being unable to figure out how to utilize their strengths to get out of Nedzu’s rat maze.   I’d love to see her demonstrate that she’s grown from having no plans but to brute force her way through obstacles!  Second, there’s this sequence:

This is a bit exaggerated, obviously, but the quick demonstration of how quickly and smoothly Mina is able to approach, scold, bond with, then deescalate people in tense situations is rightly portrayed as remarkable.  But where is that facility in real confrontations with villains?  Nowhere, really, save that airless stab at remarking on common ground with Hose Face and the PLF.

I obviously don’t expect her and Machia to wind up breakdancing together when the stakes are as high as they are, but Mina would have at least a bit of an opening—her encounter with Machia in middle school wherein she lied to him about where the Springer Agency is.  I don’t for a moment think that Machia’s forgotten her smell—I doubt he forgets anyone’s, though he may or may not care about them otherwise.

For this version of the scene, I’d probably play Machia as more ambivalent—tired of being abandoned over and over again by the people he’s tried so hard to be loyal for, so not immediately inclined to run off after them, open to a bit more dialogue.  He doesn’t fall for Shinsou for the same reasons I outlined above, so Shinsou and Mina have to talk Machia into acting—or at least stop him from just rumbling off to bury himself under a mountain for the next decade or two.

I don’t know how they’d go about making that argument.  Honestly, I don’t really think there’s anything in the story for Mina or Shinsou to fall back on (by which I mean earlier panels Horikoshi’s assistants can look up and copy/paste into the storyboard to accent a dramatic speech).  Maybe they could ask him why he’s so loyal to All For One and find some commonality, either through heteromorph discrimination or bias against villains.

Maybe Machia is torn on his loyalty, betrayed by AFO one too many times to want to help him but not sure where that leaves him on supporting Shigaraki.  Hearing this, Mina brings up that AFO is threatening Shigaraki right now, but also that a friend of Mina’s is trying to stop AFO/help Shigaraki,[12] so maybe Machia could help them with that and then decide?  Machia doesn’t trust her due to the Springer Agency thing, but that same experience does lead him to believe her when she says she just wants to help people, not hurt them.

That last bit has the benefit of providing an explicit reason for why Mina uses her quirk nigh-exclusively as a watery defense barrier or to take out inanimate objects: She long ago made an active choice not to use her acid against sentient people.  This would give her some room for a little motivation-establishing flashback of her own—maybe canonize that theory about her chipperness being at least in part a front!—and provide a nice alternative to the current state of Mina’s narrative, which has spent nearly 400 chapters refusing to allow her the same free hand people like Bakugou and Kaminari take with their quirks for no established reason.

This doesn’t give Shinsou much to do, but that’s okay: his moment comes against AFO instead.

I realize that Mina's fans want her to have a big badass moment, and simply talking down a confrontation is not the kind of thing that tends to get viewed as "badass" in a shounen battle manga. Sorry about that. She can still jump around and dodge a lot while giving her pitch? Maybe she could get a big badass moment later on? I dunno; that's just what I would do, and obviously my priorities for what it would be cool for the kids to do are not the same as the broader readership's.

I'm also not sure where that leaves the confrontation with Midnight's killer; I suppose that depends on how things go between him and Kirishima in this scenario. Maybe they leave without him when he tries to protest Machia accepting the temporary alliance, or maybe he's soldier enough to take the help where he can get it and worry about later conflict later. Obviously, at any rate, this is happening in a scenario where he hasn't immediately blabbed that he killed Midnight; that can come up as a nasty surprise later on.

  

But does that mean you think Midnight’s killer should totally get away with it scott free and suffer no consequences?

Hnnnngghh that’s a tricky one because I am an unabashed MLA stan and villain supporter and therefore deeply biased about this.  Like, I don’t think soldiers should be put on trial for killing enemy soldiers, no, even high-ranking officer-types.  Obviously it’s different if they attack civilians or are otherwise breaking the codes surrounding conduct during warfare, but I do think Hose Face killing Midnight was basically a soldier killing someone he perceived as another soldier, with no undue cruelty or misconduct.

However, obviously the series itself—and the state authority the PLF is openly trying to tear down in-universe—would disagree with me!  In that context, I can’t even really call the guy “a high-ranking officer” because that would, as mentioned earlier, convey more authenticity to his position than his government wants to grant him.  As far as they’re concerned, he’s probably more like “a key figure in the recent anti-government actions carried out by the terrorist group calling themselves The Paranormal Liberation Front.”  People like that tend to get executed in prison a few years after their short, perfunctory trials.

I suppose the problem for me is that the series wants me to believe that the MLA is Very Bad and they all deserve to be Locked Up Forever, whereas I want more nuance from them than that?  Even setting aside the probable cult upbringing, I have significant trouble unabashedly blaming the PLF for their actions because the series has done nothing to convince me that less drastic avenues for change are available or even survivable for them.

This was a huge issue with the hospital attack sequence, but it applies to all sorts of the setting’s problems: Other than, “Insist that victims of oppression should focus on providing a good example to future generations,” what methods for addressing inequality does Hero Society have?  I want to know what the villains should have done, what they could have done, about systemic inequalities and repression that would have been effective against a government that employs agents like Lady Nagant and Hawks.

The picture Nagant paints is of a society waging a war against anyone who sought to change the Hero System, a war that many people who sought change never even knew they were already in.  The examples she provides of her targets are, of course, corrupt heroes and would-be terrorists, but what her HPSC President said was even farther reaching: that the purpose of her killing was to “preserve hope and faith” in heroes.

The HPSC legitimately does not seem to believe that any system other than the current one is feasible for maintaining stability, and that any attempt to shake or besmirch that system is no different than throwing the country back into the chaos of the advent of quirks.  What’s a few missing activists or tragic accidents compared to that?

Horikoshi seems desperate to have us pretend he never told us that the government his protagonists are defending actively grooms assassins to enforce the status quo, but that’s not a genie he can put back in the bottle.  I see the current events of the series as, in some form or another, basically inevitable because of Hero Society’s active, even violent resistance to change.  Midnight’s death for that cause is thus something I have tremendous difficulty thinking of as a crime that needs to be punished.

Does that mean I think Hose Face should get off scot-free?  Eeehhhhhhhhnnnngh I hate to say it this plainly, but…

Maybe it does?

The thing is, I know that Hose Face is, canonically, a quirk supremacist trying to violently overthrow the rule of law.  In real life, I have no sympathy for people trying to institute fascism, regardless of whether they’re using legal mechanisms or armed force.  But in the fictional world of BNHA, I have nothing but disdain for the way the MLA has been turned into a caricature of themselves in this final arc.  In that sense, my dissatisfaction with Hose Face’s treatment is really based on the ideal version of him and all the rest of the MLA I have in my head—the MLA that’s allowed to have nuance behind their extremism, the one overflowing with members motivated by their lived experience with the flaws in Hero Society, with a generous helping of radicalization from the fact that they’re a cult as much as they are an army.

BNHA has scrapped all that potential and left us with nothing but naked quirk supremacy to fill the void.  In an endgame that’s trying so, so hard to sell the readers on Saving Villains, that’s just poison to the story’s themes, and my villain stanning comes directly from that issue: demanding consistent treatment for the characters whose tragic backstories we haven’t been permitted to see.

Hose Face is clearly a bad person—heck, I was headcanoning him as a hard-edged, ruthless killer even when all we had to go on was him killing Midnight, long before he showed up to espouse open quirk supremacy and gloat about killing a schoolteacher, so it’s not like I ever thought he was a super nice dude or anything!  But I guess I just have trouble with the idea that the current system deserves to be the one to decide his fate, when it has, to all appearances, gone to extreme lengths to stamp out any perceived threats to itself, to the point that the narrative itself is now openly delegitimizing everyone who might otherwise offer cogent critique.

It would be different if we had never seen the dark side of the status quo and the villains really were all just shallow, two-dimensional monsters.  It would be different if the narrative had shown us legal, nonviolent and effective avenues for protest and change.[13]  It would be different if Hose Face had killed some rando uninvolved civilian.

As it is, though, Midnight was a combatant for a terrible, terrible status quo.  She might not have been using lethal means herself, but she was defending a demonstrably lethal, openly acknowledged as repressive, system.  I just can’t find it in myself to demand justice for the fact that she died for it.

But with all that being said, I also don’t think Midnight is a bad person.  She never knew about the government assassins, after all; she’s a member of the system she grew up in, the same way the kids are.  She presumably never saw the extent of the system’s flaws because she was never victimized by them.  At the end of the day, she still deserved to be properly mourned and remembered and it is a crock and a crime that we never got to see her funeral.

If anything, I think Midnight’s funeral would have been an excellent setting for a scene where the protagonists start asking questions about how things came to this, what went wrong and where, that their teacher had to die.  What is it about Hero Society that’s led to tens of thousands of dissidents, and why haven’t they ever heard of this discontent before now That would have given us considerably better set-up for a nuanced PLF, an opening to talk about Shouji’s experience of heteromorphobia, foreshadowing for Lady Nagant, and, to bring this back on-topic, the opportunity to really show Mina struggling with everything that happened as set-up for her later confrontation with Midnight’s killer.

  

Tumblr, How Does That Work?

Honestly I was expecting some sort of notification about your answers if and when you replied to me. Is that not a thing?

Making my reply a fresh post, or just posting replies in the comments section of the post you originally commented on, would not have notified you without me specifically tagging you, which at the time Tumblr wasn’t letting me do.  This problem seems to have cleared up, so you should have gotten a notification about this post going up because of your name being tagged at the very beginning!

What you see for people answering asks depends on a few things. If you send asks anonymously, you won't get a notification if/when the person answers them; you'll just have to keep an eye on their blog. If you send them with your name attached, as you did originally for me, I could choose to answer those asks privately, sending my replies back to your Inbox, or answer publically, posting my replies to my blog. Either way, you'd be notified!

For this round of responses, if I'd just replied to your reblog in comments as you did with my original post, or reblogged your reply with a reply of own instead of staring a new post, you’d have gotten notifications about either!  But I don’t want to put this much wall ‘o text on my followers’ dashboards without a cut, so I haven’t been responding directly, for which I apologize.

(Disclaimer: Notifications can be configured in your Settings menu; you can toggle them on and off for loads of stuff! You might wish to check what you currently have them set for rather than just taking my word for it.)

On the topic of cuts, I mentioned at the beginning that the cut option is hard to find on mobile, but just for reference, it looks like this in the post editor on desktop:

It's the same icon on the mobile post editor, it's just on the far right of the bar of icons along the bottom of the app. My screen cuts it off, so I have to scroll the bar over to find it.

Like I said, the Expand dropdown button Tumblr instituted a little while back has reduced the need for this somewhat, and you can certainly do whatever you prefer, but as I believe having the Expand dropdown automatically clip long posts is still an optional configuration in Settings, I'd feel better about reblogging from you directly if you put the bulk of your reply under a cut.

  

Don’t know what “blorbo” means. Kinda sounds like a demeaning term, but I’m going to assume it’s not.

Sorry, it’s not intended to be demeaning!  It’s just a slangy affectionate term for “character you really like.”  In my experience, I’d say it also has a connotation of protectiveness or self-identification, though I can’t speak for the whole of the internet.  I like plenty of characters, but I wouldn’t call them all my blorbos, just the ones that I really and truly love and want to explore/share/defend their honor to the death.

  

Thanks...? Is, is that a compliment?

(Re: my telling rvg that we seemed to have similar issues with the way Mina was being handled, but they were more willing to do the mental legwork on her than me.)

It’s mostly just an observation, but not a critical one!  As someone who’s very ready to read into the canon every little drip of information the canon will give me And So Much More, I have a tremendous amount of fellow-feeling for people of like minds, even if our taste in characters is different.

    

Buried At The Bottom, Why Kaminari Is A Worse Character Than Mineta, Yes I Said It And I’ll Say It Again

>>I have observably positive feelings for about a third of Class 1-A and only particularly negative feelings about Deku and Kaminari. What’s up with Kaminari?

My irritation with Kaminari boils down to two main things—and forgive me, I know you didn’t ask about Mineta, but Mineta’s pretty important to my feelings on Kaminari being what they are, so he’s a part of this answer.  This is all going to be pretty openly dismissive of Kaminari, as a fair warning, on top of being based on not-exactly-rigorous familiarity with the student material, so apologies to anyone who likes him and finds him an enriching, valuable character. But man alive, that is not me.  And but so:

1) Kaminari is a watered-down Mineta, with watered-down versions of all of Mineta’s flaws, but because he’s watered down, the growth he experiences stands out less than Mineta’s.  More on this in a second.

2) Despite Kaminari being a redundant character who brings virtually nothing to the table that other characters don’t do better—with the only things that are unique to him going underdeveloped in canon—fandom loves Kaminari.  (Disclaimer: I obviously don’t spend much time in the hero-fan circles of the fandom, so this is just my perception.  I’d be curious to get your perspective of Kaminari’s relative popularity, rvg!)

To hit the second point first, Kaminari has a more conventionally attractive cute anime boy face than Mineta, so Kaminari’s pushing of his female classmates’ boundaries gets mostly ignored, while Mineta gets so many fics written about him dying that there’s a dedicated Dead Mineta Minoru tag on AO3 with almost 350 hits. 

Fandom built a whole tottering edifice of fanon about Traitor Kaminari despite the howling absence of compelling evidence in the manga[14] for, so far as I can tell, the sole reason that people wanted the cute anime boy to have crunchy angst.  Then, when the actual traitor reveals landed (first the fake-out and then the real one), fandom deemed Hagakure an ungrateful bitch and Aoyama a whining coward.

So like, the fandom discrepancy is what pushes me over the edge from the bottom end of neutral into active dislike.  But I would be awfully close to it anyway for the whole “redundant-ass character who contributes nothing to this story we couldn’t get better from someone else” thing.

Kaminari being kind of leery and unpleasant about his female classmates would be a lot more glaring if it weren’t stacked up against Mineta’s actual sexual harassment, even though Kaminari is a frequent co-conspirator!   

Kaminari has a brief tussle with fear at the beginning of the war arc, but it’s neither as sustained nor as convincing as Mineta’s frequent wrestling with cowardice, present from USJ all the way up through his terrified confrontation with All For One.   

Mineta is frequently, openly envious of his classmates, a whole extra flaw that Kaminari never demonstrates in more than fleeting glimpses.   

Kaminari’s quirk is redundant next to the other high offense types in the class.   

Kaminari’s personality is not distinct enough to add anything irreplaceable to the classroom dynamic.  That’s not to say he brings nothing to the web of relationships amongst the students or the ways the class as a whole reacts to the events of the series, just that what comes to mind for me is mostly extra layering to existing dynamics, not anything truly original and unique to him.  Which would be fine—I love extra layers!—if he were contributing more as a character on literally any other fronts.

I can think of only two things that Kaminari uniquely brings to the table, but both of them are mentioned once and then never come up again.  Firstly, he’s the only one in the class to voice open admiration for Stain, a willingness to admire cool traits in Villains that never leads him to any interesting conflicts with people (classmates or otherwise) who hew to the more standard flat refusal to consider that a Villain might have or express positive aspects.

The other thing is less about Kaminari himself and more about how he’s one of three places where the story brings up the idea of people using their quirks for non-hero jobs and then refuses to develop that premise.[15]  It’s interesting worldbuilding, but as far as I’m aware, it’s never directly shown—everyone we see using their quirks (legally) in the series is doing it as a hero.  We never get much sense of what other options there are for quirk use because heroism and villainy are the only contexts we ever see it in!  This would be a little annoying on its own, but I also find it undermines a lot of other established facts and characterizations.

(Bear with me and I promise I’ll loop this back around to Kaminari.)

My interests being where they are, the biggest problem for me with the fuzziness about the legality of quirk use is that it leaves Destro and the MLA with no coherent cause.  They want free quirk use, but are they really so incredibly averse to just getting a license that they’re willing to become terrorists over it??

You could argue that naked quirk supremacy is what the MLA is currently after, and that’s obviously incompatible with the laws as they stand, but Destro Classic is never really framed as a quirk supremacist, so why did he so virulently despise the quirk use prohibitions if all they really did was require people to get a license to use quirks in public, no different than a driver’s license or a permit to serve alcohol?  Sure, you get small clutches of people sometimes with that kind of “any government oversight is bad government oversight” black-and-white thinking, but the original MLA was a powerful enough force to stand against the government for years, which doesn’t exactly scream “a handful of malcontents” to me.

Rendering the MLA’s cause mindbogglingly asinine is my biggest problem with the “other jobs can get quirk-use licenses too” tidbit, but there are also things like how totally invisible the entertainment or sports industry is.  That would make perfect sense if quirk use is illegal in those fields—people want to see cool superpowers getting used, so industries that bank on public attention dollars but can’t have their celebrities use their quirks are going to decline when they can’t compete with industries/celebrities that can.

If quirk licenses can be gotten for all sorts of jobs, though, then why have sports and entertainment become so invisible?  If “frivolous” fields like those are not aren’t seen as “contributing to society” enough for quirk use permits, then which fields do?  Why does HeroAca!Japan still mostly look and behave like IRL!Japan if quirks are in use in “all manner” of industries?  And if it isn’t the case that heroism—a dangerous job which sometimes gets people killed and which generally requires cultivating a socially demanding public brand/identity—is the only path to being able to use the special power you were born with to earn a livelihood, why does every single middle-schooler in Deku’s class and countless other classes across the country want to become a hero?

I just feel like the way the world looks and operates, the kinds of repressiveness described by even the heroes, the structures that drive people into heroism and villainy alike—the former because they don’t see any other viable way to achieve the happiness they’re looking for, the latter because they can’t become heroes but still have desires that their quirks could help them achieve—all of that makes much more sense in a world that has super powers but has tightly restricted their use to a single job class of person.

So, tying back, obviously that’s not a fault of Kaminari’s, but he is the character where that gap is most apparent.  If there aren’t many lightning heroes because lightning is in high demand in other industries, it would shed significant light on who Kaminari is as a person if the manga would tell us what those other industries are. 

What other paths could Kaminari have chosen?  What’s so much better about those other industries that people with quirks tailor-made for heroism,[16] in a society that worships popular and powerful heroes, are so willing to choose those other industries instead?  Why did Kaminari not make that same decision?  What does heroism mean to him personally that he chose it when so many others in his situation did not?

Kaminari could present a huge in on that angle of the worldbuilding, but instead he’s a complete dead-end.  Mineta’s motivations are base as hell, but at least we know what they are!  Further, it tells us interesting (uncomplimentary, but interesting!) things that people like Recovery Girl and Deku hear said motivations from Mineta’s own mouth, and shrug and accept them as perfectly valid.

And that’s just his professed motivations!  His final exam scene actually drops an early hint about the admiration for Deku he’ll later wholeheartedly declare in the 1-A vs Deku fight!  I don’t remember Kaminari ever getting anything a fraction so revealing; he just coasts through the story contributing nothing unique or meaningful.  He’s hardly the only 1-A character with that particular lack of depth—Sato, Sero, Hagakure and Ojiro are all similar blank slates in terms of their motivations or histories—but then, none of them are a fraction as popular as Kaminari is in the fandom as I experience it, either.

So to sum up, I dislike Kaminari because he’s a wishy-washy nothing of a character, a generically Inoffensive Anime Cutie Boy adored out of all reasonable proportion compared to more compelling and equally underdeveloped classmates alike.  Mineta is, by any measure, more problematic, and it's even worse that U.A./Aizawa are so blasé about him, but, at least from where I’m standing, he’s still more layered, more compelling, more dynamic, and speaks in more interesting ways to the world around him than Kaminari ever comes close to matching.

(…Kaminari’s thing with Jirou is fine.  Perfectly reasonable character relationship building material.  I just don’t count it one way or the other because it’s a self-contained relationship dynamic that has no bearing on the way either character engages with the broader world/system the series’ overarching narrative is challenging.  They motivate each other in small ways, but that motivation doesn’t lead them to truly grow or change as people, only to overcome modest internal confidence hurdles blocking them from things they already wanted to do anyway.)

--

And that's it! Thanks for forging through, good lord, over twenty pages of this, rvg and anyone else who did! I hope you were at least moderately entertained, give or take my blatant Kaminari slander. See you next time, and enjoy the Footnotes.

---------------- FOOTNOTES ----------------

[1] We’re not shown any personnel or drugs or anything, but I assume they’ve been keeping Machia drugged since Jakku, same as Kurogiri in between interviews.  It’s the only thing that worked on Machia before, so why wouldn’t they have more on-hand?

[2] Despite watching the Sports Festival with Shigaraki, natch.

[3] I would like it if he would do that with a lot less insufferable power scaling bullshit, you understand, but I’m spotting the comic its plot arc here.

[4] Outside of, say, the Persona games, where the MCs can change ability sets by swapping out what companion spirit they’re packing, but even that doesn’t make them specialized for status effects, merely capable of using them.

[5] Interestingly, while Bakugou fought off the villainous sales pitch with as much verve as he brings to all his fights, if he had fallen off the righteous path there, we might have observed that his pridefulness was explicitly fostered by the people around him giving him excessive praise for his powerful quirk and ignoring his resulting violent arrogance.  That is to say, Bakugou would have fallen under the same, “Villains are created by the failures in their society,” pattern that BNHA applies to all of its sympathetic villains.

[6] There was one other instance, but iirc it was an error in the translation C.Cook had done for the BNHA databook.  It would not surprise me that he was being less careful or was more pressed for time when translating the reams upon reams of text in one of those.

[7] At least until the fifteen-thousand-strong mob shows up.

[8] Which frankly should be all he’s sore about.  As others have pointed out, Machia’s anger about being abandoned is kind of incoherent.  Yes, AFO left him on the battlefield, but he didn’t exactly leave him to rot in prison forever.  The moment AFO made his big push, he sent people to spring Machia, so in what sense exactly does Machia think AFO abandoned him?  If it was just the last straw after a string of abandonments from both AFO and Shigaraki, the manga could have stood to make that much clearer.

[9] AFO and Ujiko created Kurogiri out of Shirakumo—as a babysitter for Tomura, yes, but Tomura didn’t choose that.  And as to Shigaraki’s very existence trampling on Nana’s memory and causing All Might pain, well, Shigaraki didn’t ask to be brought into the world, abused by his father, neglected by his family, and then raised by a supervillain, did he?

[10] And speaking of Unbreakable, compare how explicitly we’re shown Kirishima’s growth and the foundations of it with how the inspirations for Mina’s attacks are relegated to passing mentions, not direct depictions.  She just casually tells Kirishima that his Unbreakable inspired her Acidman, and likewise only internally reflects on asking Bakugou and Todoroki to teach her their training method, which let her develop her Max Power Acidman Alma move, without so much as a single scrubbed in doodle depicting said training assistance.

[11] Somehow.  The story is unclear on whether he disseminated threats, contacted them directly, or just used the combination of Search+Warping to drag them all back into his presence, and that last option in particular runs into complications given the limitations of both quirks.

[12] In this AU, we would have gotten to see the class have an actual discussion about Saving Villains, prompted by the way the reveal about Aoyama solidified Deku, Shouto and Uraraka’s desires to help their respective villain foils.  The class would carry that resolve forward not only for those three villains alone, but also Shouji for Spinner, Kirishima when talking to Hose Face, Mina, here, with Gigantomachia, etc.

[13] None of the things I can think of that might be considered evidence of protest meet all the criteria.  The original MLA became violent, Harima Oji was a lawbreaker and also ineffective in the long term, the small group that yells at Endeavor and the rest in Chapter 311 is not portrayed as linked to any broader efforts to unseat “fake heroes,” and the group that “condemned” the newscaster Miyagi Daikaku was ineffective and didn’t even seem to rise to the level of open protest.

[14] "His grades are poor but he namedrops a Hemingway novel! He must be concealing the fact that he's actually super-smart!" "He's doing a Liberation salute! He must be the traitor, even though the Liberation salute uses the other hand, and Kaminari has been using finger-gun gestures to fire off his lightning attacks since at least the License Exam if not earlier, and the League had no connection to the MLA at the time when the traitor was most active!"

[15] A blurb about Kaminari in, iirc, one of the volume extras, Suneater’s flashback to a teacher telling his class that they can “make fine use of their quirks at any number of jobs,” and Uraraka’s early mention that she’d considered “getting permission” to use her quirk to help with her parents’ construction business.

[16] See the previous discussion about the kinds of quirks that are popularly accepted as “good hero quirks.”

#bnha #stillness answers #-ish #my writing #pink alien on parade #plf advisors #grape expectations #bnha minoru #gigantomachia #plf arrests #heteromorph discrimination plot #horikoshi stop ignoring the villains' perception quirks challenge #hero society #bnha critical #ethics of heroism #bnha endgame #double-duty brainstorming for the rewrite AUs #randomvongenerico

[kelin-is-writing]

Since we hate hawks, imagine after he killed twice, he’s fighting Dabi but it goes differently from canon. He’s telling Dabi how the league will be arrested, he and the heroes will put a stop to the plf, and THEN has the audacity to say, “and I’ll be taking your girl too ‘cause she deserves better than a lowlife villain”

That’s when the kill bill sirens go off in Dabi’s head

OHMYFUCKINGGOD YES!!!!!! anon you a real one lemme tell you 😌🤌🏻

dabi was already pissed to his limits even before that garbage opens his annoying and hypocritical mouth, but he’s holding back for the sake of his plan, it doesn’t help that fact that he hates him to the core like– he can’t even see the heroe’s ugly face from how much it makes him hurl.

what makes him snap completely though is when that piece of trash dares to spit out from his filthy and shitty mouth that he’s gonna take you, make you his and even going as far as to say that he’s gonna satisfy you more than a lowlife like him would, dabi is seeing red.

ohh this m*therf*cker doesn’t values his life at all, he thinks scoffing a breathless laugh letting his head tilt down.

suddenly dabi is glaring up at him with the darkest glint he has ever had, mouth curled into a spiteful grimace as the villain’s voice dropped low “a piece of filthy trash like you? with her? don’t make me laugh.”, and in a second the whole room has already went ablaze, blue flames roaring inside those four walls hotter than usual, as he walks closer to the wounded ‘hero’ and stomps mercilessly with his boots onto his face, smashing the sole of it against his cheek until he didn’t start to bleed “ohh you did your numbers so wrong, hero, after that crap the only way you gonna get out of here is in ash, bastard.”, and dabi is a man of word.

because his princess deserves way better than garbage such as that.

#kelin responds #answered #anonymous #bnha headcanons #mha headcanons #dabi headcanons #touya todoroki heeadcanons #bnha x reader #mha x reader #dabi x reader #touya todoroki x reader #lots of h🤮wks slander so be aware if you are a fan of him~ #yeah... i'm sorry but in this house we do not like hypocritical killers disguised as heroes 🥺 #he got lucky tokoyami got there otherwise dabi would've killed him off like the king of taking out the trash he is tsk 😒 #sorrysdjsjxjskxjskxjskxjskxjk my period makes me go wild hahah

[satancopilotsmytardis]

If either Dabi or Shigaraki got sick, how would the other care for him?

Shigaraki taking care of Dabi (pre-relationship):

Dabi hasn't been sick in years. It's taken a considerable effort, but given how fucked up his body already is, the terror of getting any kind of infection usually kept him meticulously checking and trying to maintain his health. He did not want his skin to fall off again.

So getting a cold a week and a half after taking over the PLF is not an option.

"Dabi, you are literally sneezing sparks, please go lay down." Shigaraki sounds less annoyed than he expected, but he doesn't have any room to fucking talk given that he literally had three fingers amputated yesterday and his other arm is still completely bandaged, and he's got a broken foot, but he's still at this meeting.

"Fuck you, I'm fi--" he interrupts himself having to pull down his mask to sneeze into a tissue, his quirk flaring higher like it's going to somehow turn the sickness into ash in some fresh way his low fever can't.

Duster sighs, "Compress,"

"Don't you--!"

"Sorry, friend, but this is for your own good." And he's gone before he can get his flames ignited.

He's not sure how long passes before he's let out, but he does find himself on his bed, in his room. There's a box of cold medicine on his nightstand, a large water bottle, and two thermoses. He ignores those and goes over to the door to give his cohorts a piece of his mind and finds it locked from the outside. As soon as the handle rattles, Shigaraki's voice comes from the other side.

"Go lay down and rest. I need you at your best. If you can't do that here, then I'll send you to stay with Ujiko."

"I'm fine, let me out!"

"Dabi, you have a 42° fever."

"I have a fire quirk. I run hot."

"Not above 38°, normally. The doctor said if you go up to 44° you have to go see him. Compress made you tea, Spinner made you soup, Toga left you some shower and bath melts that are supposed to help with congestion, and the rest of us and the organization can handle anything else. If you try to leave through the window Gigantomachia has been instructed to eat you. If you set the villa on fire Geten has been instructed to freeze you solid. Rest. If you get bored I left you an e-reader."

Dabi gapes at the door. He cannot believe he is being put on--on house arrest because of a stupid cold!

"I'll come check on you in a few hours, and if you need anything-- other than being let out-- before then, just text me." There's a very slight pause, and then Shigaraki's voice comes again, a little softer than before. "You've done more than enough in helping prep for the merge. Take as much time as you need to rest and feel better. We don't want you to burn yourself out, Dabi."

Can't find his words at all around how tight his throat has gone.

"I'll see you in a little while, Firefly."

And he does move away from the door, he can hear him moving back down the hall. Dabi could probably melt the lock and get out, but after another second he goes over to his closet instead and puts his pajamas back on. He takes some medicine, has a drink, and curls up on his bed with a huff. The e-reader is plugged in on the other side of his bed and he reaches for that. Fine. A day of rest to get his fever down, and then he can get back to work.

He picks a book at random and is about twenty pages in before he has to start over as he realizes he has no idea what's going on, his soupy over-heated brain just constantly getting tripped up on how Shigaraki's voice had sounded calling him 'Firefly'.

#tanco speaks #ask #asks #shigadabi #my writing

[ainomorimichi]

Okay. Theory time.

So in recent chapters, I’ve noticed Rei… shrink a little.

In these panels, she appears to be a little shorter than Fuyumi, cool, makes sense right.

But compare that to what we’ve seen from her before…

Now, whichever you go with as her canon height, it implies that Rei either shrunk at least a little, or one heck of a lot.

Because, the canon heights of the Todoroki’s are:

Enji: 195cm

Natsuo: 181cm

Touya: 176cm

Shouto: 176cm

Fuyumi: 160cm

If we take image one as her canon height, she’s shown to be slightly taller than Shouto which could place her anywhere from about 177-180cm (this is a rough estimate, and it could also be that she’s the exact same height as him, they’re standing weird).

If we take image two as her canon height, her height would be about 170cm, the same height as Elsa from Frozen (that’s not relevant, I just think it’s funny). The reason why THIS could make sense, is because image one could be chalked up to Rei being drawn taller for ✨symbolism✨ purposes, show she’s grown as a person, and because she seems to be most consistently drawn that way:

Now, you could dispute this by saying Enji’s drawn taller than her to symbolize the power dynamic, and her growth spurt in the “Keeping up with the Todoroki Chapters” is supposed to symbolize her gaining control and power over a situation, and I WOULD be into that and agree, BUT.

After all that, she’s drawn shorter than FUYUMI, who’s anywhere between 10-20cm behind Rei’s height estimate (her height difference with Natsuo also makes little sense, but I digress).

Which leads us to my three main theories.

1. Horikoshi just… forgot

So if you missed the entire point of this post, Rei doesn’t have a confirmed height. That’s because she is the ONLY member of the Todoroki Family without a character profile, which is still so baffling to me.

Rei is just as, if not more, plot relevant than Fuyumi and Natsuo, and I feel like the time for her character profile should’ve come about 40 Chapters ago, but alas.

And I feel like, if you don’t really have a set height for a character, you’re gonna mess up that characters height quite a bit. I’m not necessarily angry at Horikoshi for this, that would be a little a weird, especially if it was just an honest fuck up. However. I do feel like he should’ve AT LEAST set a height for her, for one it would stop dumbasses like me from making shit posts like this.

2. The heights in BNHA are fucked

Theory 2, basically the heights in BNHA have always been very inconsistent, and I’m just reading way too deep here. This is the shortest one, and the one that makes the most sense, let’s get into the nonsense now :)

3. That’s not Rei

You might be wondering why I’m spewing such nonsense, but bare with me here.

The reason why Rei’s shorter is because that’s Geten.

So to refresh everyone’s memory, Geten has recently been arrested, and while admittedly, I am still depressed as fucckkk over that, I would also like to argue how easy it is for him to escape.

Thousands upon thousands of Villains were arrested post the PLF War, and I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that would absolutely fuck over the Japanese prison system. My point is it would be very easy for one to slip by.

That brings us to my two sub-theories for this one, all of which involve Geten and Rei being related, so be warned.

1. An Us style switch took place and no one noticed.

So this theory basically involves Rei going to visit Geten in Jail, to like help interrogations or just to be there for a weird family member, and then boom! Switcheroo! This would mean Rei is being held against her will in some Prison at the moment, which wouldn’t be too far off from where she was through 99% of the series. Now, this could imply that Geten’s collecting intel at UA to assist the Villains in destroying society, which story wise would be insane, but so is everything else in BNHA now, so I don’t CARE. This would also mean that Geten has just been chilling at UA patiently waiting for the right moment to strike this whole time, and I feel like that moment would be coming up right about now. Also just imagine the drama, like UA starts going to shit, with Sk*ptics hacking and shit, and just when a hero is calming everyone down, BOOM! Avalanche. And then Fuyumi and Natsuo would get to be like “…mom…what???” And then Geten’s like “I’m not your mom and I can’t believe you fell for that for MONTHS”. It’d be so fucking funny, and I don’t even think it’s that out of place for this current arc, like if BNHA is gonna be dumb, it might as well be insane.

Theory 2: they’re switching willingly because Rei is a twist villain TM

Theory 2 involves Rei and Geten’s combined one Braincell just continuously fooling the prison guards by switching places every couple weeks. Does it make sense? No but it’s funny. Like imagine Rei stepping in an overcrowded cell like “family drama is killing me, you can clock in early this time” and then she pulls out a jail suit that’s her size and bonds with the other MLA members in jail by braiding their hair or something while Geten has to deal with Shouto venting about Dabi. This would also imply that they straight up don’t notice whenever their mom shrinks and becomes increasingly angrier and feral, which happens like every two weeks. My argument to that is they think it’s a mental health thing, Shouto probably assumes it’s a period thing because he’s a moron. “Oh mom shrunk and bit Mr Aizawa again, must be her time of the month :|”. It’s also funny to think that they get mixed up and like both end up going to a piano recital at UA simultaneously or some shit, and just no one notices. Like they’re standing next to each other like “the fuck??? You should be in JAIL, it’s MY day out” and class a’s just standing there like “woah did fuyumi dye her hair like natsuo? :0 wonder what they’re fighting about”. it involves a lot of suspension of disbelief, but like what else is new. I feel like I’m this context Rei would also be an MLA member, and have provided them with intel during her time in the mental hospital. like endys entire private life. also y’know stock standard “she’s geten’s mom” thing lol.

Anyway, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter which theory it is, because it would get us to the same place. That is, Geten, this like 17-19 unhinged, feral child pretending to be some middle aged mom and it WORKING. Why? Because the Todoroki family is illiterate when it comes to mental health and they’d probably just be like “well moms been in a mental hospital for a while, maybe this is just her personality now, she tore into dad back there so :p“.

At the end of the day, is any of this canon, no. Would I like to see it because it’s absolutely unhinged? Yes. I need this in my life guys. Horikoshi is unfortunately a COWARD, and will not make this happen, so I’ll probably just make an AU out of it and call it a day. Would be fun.

#what the fuck am i ON #this has been in the works for a while :) #it’s as incoherent as all my other posts #apologies #rei todoroki #rei himura #todoroki family #enji todoroki #shoto todoroki #fuyumi todoroki #touya todoroki #dabi #natsuo todoroki #geten #bnha geten #meta liberation army #plf #bnha theory #i am on cRACK #bnha villains #bnha heroes #geten is a todoroki #geten is a himura #height analysis #no proofreading we die like men

[salvagesmha]

MHA Villain Speculation - The Curious Case of Trumpet

Now for another reason why I made this seperate blog: to post my just weird, gut feeling-ish theories concerning the Villains and their roles in the MHA series! No real evidence, just me speculating based upon how they were handled in the series.

And for our first entry we have everyone's...well, someone's favorite politician Villain! Representing the Meta Liberation Army it's Koku Hanabata AKA Trumpet...

And what I think of his weird treatment and what the 'original plan' in my eyes was supposed to be.

So I'll put it out there right off the bat: I do not think that Trumpet was supposed to live past the MVA Arc.

Now, that is a pretty big thing to claim and don't blame people for being skeptical. After all Trumpet's faction, the Hearts and Minds Party, is a major aspect of the PLF if they were to win, being the driving force to steer education, and thus the future more towards what the organization wants after Shigaraki destroys everything. It's even brought up again after his arrest and how the party was dismantled...

Yet, with that in mind, I can't help but feel this is something akin to a band-aid meant to involve someone who wasn't supposed to last as long as he did.

So why do I feel this way. Well, from the get go, MVA ends with a bit of an awkward note when it came to the MLA executive side. No matter how you slice it, the fact that Hori planned only for Curious to die out of the named five is just very weird in hindsight. After all, if the plan was for the MLA to join the LOV, then why not have her stick around as well? Why just kill one? It's just an odd detail, I'm sure everyone else would think so as well.

Well, what if she wasn't supposed to be alone? Given how much of a forefront he played in the Revival Celebration, from spurning the MLA soldiers to attack and even welcoming the League when they come to Deika City with Curious, (especially in the image above), I feel as though he was supposed to die in the event as well. If I were to be specific, I think the initial plan was for Spinner to prove Trumpet's view of him and his 'weak Quirk' wrong by using the strengths of his Quirk to get close enough to kill Trumpet. In turn, Spinner is able to lighten Shigaraki's load since Trumpet's death removes the effects of his Quirk to the soldiers of the MLA and makes them fall even easier for Twice's Sad Man Parade to handle.

But something happened. I think, ultimately, the plotline had to be scrapped as Hori went into Shigaraki's ordeal with Re-Destro. Perhaps it was to preserve the pace or maybe its because there may have been pressure from editors or the like to hurry the arc up, whatever the reason was, the fight was scrapped and Trumpet was spared as a result.

If that's the case, then it goes a way to explain the oddity concerning his placement in the PLF. Namely, the fact that he doesn't get to be a Commander of a Regiment (which is bizarre when you consider that Twice was the sole Commander of the Black Regiment, even though Trumpet easily could have been a Co-commander of it). Re-Destro made sense since he was the leader of the MLA as a whole up until Shigaraki, so he's pretty much the Vice Commander of the entirety of the organization as a whole.

But Trumpet? He just gets nothing, and while you can argue It's because he's a working politician, keep in mind Skeptic was a Commander while also being an executive of Feels Good Inc. He could certainly have been both, and likely be a good fit for Brown or Black. It's odd, but if you consider he wasn't supposed to live past MVA, then it starts making sense. He was supposed to be dead, so Hori didn't really have a set Regiment to give him, and by the time the First War came around, he opted not to really bother with it.

And on the First War? If you consider he was supposed to be dead at this point, than his involvement makes his role in it star to click...or rather. Lack of it. He doesn't do anything. Geten, Re-Destro and, especially, Skeptic had major roles to play in the War and Trumpet easily could have had a part in leading the army about or boosting them with his Quirk. Turning 16K people into a very dangerous force to contend with the Heroes! Yet-

He's taking out off-screen without affecting a thing. But why? Well, another reason I think Trumpet was supposed to be bite it in MVA, beyond giving Spinner his moment, has to do with Incite.

It's one of those Quirks that would fall into 'One-Shot Villain' tier on the latter of how tricky it is to write around. Think of Mustard. His Gas, while it worked for the Training Camp arc, would have been a nightmare to use in later arcs if he were to stick around given how effective it is as neutralizing enemies, require someone to be there with gas masks, and he can't really work with his allies since he could knock them out too - as much as I love Mustard, its very understandable why he couldn't stick around.

Trumpet also fits the bill since his Incite can very easily stack the favor in the Villains without much effort. With one speech, those thousands of soldiers can be buffed to prove an even more dangerous threat to the Heroes by being so caught in a frenzy they refuse to go down, and if worked in conjunction with Gigantomachia, I could see them even pushing back the Heroes to have even more escape!! Add that to having powerhouses like Geten and RD around, the aforementioned Giganto, Advisors (in theory), and the League (especially Shigaraki) fighting and the cards become too stacked for the Heroes to win. But if Trumpet were dead? The canon story becomes a lot more smooth as the soldiers have no one really giving them that boost to be as dangerous as they would be in MLA, and makes most of their capture make a lot more sense.

But, since he was left alive? Well, Hori's answer to that awkward fact, seemed to be just 'pretend he's dead' and just stick him in a panel for later, and be done with him. Which...was an option XD

On the matter of the Hearts and Minds Party, I also argue that the PLF could still use it even without Trumpet being around. He can just be a martyr for them to promote Liberation even more, which makes sense since Trumpet did that with Curious himself. Heck, a cool thing I think could have worked out is for both Trumpet and Curious to have successors in the MLA since their spots are vacant. For example,

Chrome and Diva, for lack of names (Hori please give these guys names), could have been selected to take up the mantle left behind by their predecessors, having been part of their party/Shoowaysha, respectively. That being said, given the PLF reshuffling, at the current moment, they were stuck as just #1 Advisors to the Commanders until a proper time to name them could be met. Give a bit of depth to them.

But that, seemingly (they haven't shown up yet after all), isn't the case! What we are left with is just Trumpet being the most 'there' Villain in the PLF until he's beat which pretty much has him at the bottom of the heap of MLA effect on the story. Yes, even Curious beats him in my eyes since her vestige/ghost still haunts Toga even in the Second War. At best, Trumpet got a passing mention of his own party being dissolved...which is even worse since now since its just confirming it can't be used any more XD

Now, do I wish Trumpet was dead in story? Not really, I wished all five of the MLA executives not only lived, but got some sort of story to head into the Second War - instead of just Skeptic (even though he is the GOAT~). There's a lot you can do with politician villains in stories, so seeing him pretty much reduced to the side was disappointing. But that's life, maybe he can appear in the jail that's holding Compress and Geten? But that's just hope on my end!

Though anything is better for Trumpet than essentially being a Walking Dead determinant character~ 'Yeah, this guy lived....but aside from some minor dialogue doesn't do much and is fated to be gone anyway'. Poor guy!

#koku hanabata #mha trumpet #meta liberation army #paranormal liberation front #salvage speculation #league of villains #redestro #geten #mha curious #mha skeptic #my villain academia #plf advisors

[cuspidgoddess]

😇 about Usagi? 🤗

After further discussion Chronic asked about what led to Usagi taking Keigo up on his offer to join the PLF. So I give you a short blurb (674 words).

The First Virtue

Content warning: nongraphic mention of sexual assault, quirk discrimination, de-humanization and sexualization. Viewer discretion advised.

Being a hare is hard. Being prey isn’t even the hard part, he’s used to that. What he isn’t used to is the attention he’s started receiving since he turned 16. By the time he's 18 hands constantly trying to grab his tail, people trying to touch his ears have become his normal. A polite step away and a "please stop" usually earn an irritable scoff but the hands will fall away.

Rabbits- bunnies- hares- they're all the same to the world around him- have been a sex symbol for so long that people have stopped seeing him as a person. As soon as he started running for fun- for training the last of his baby fat fell away making way for toned calves, muscled thighs and a round ass- he became just another dumb bunny. They’re pests, and it shows when they try to poison produce at farmers markets, when he passes the prostitutes that look so much like him, when men leer at him from darkened alley’s.

Laying in the gutter, staring at the filthy bricks in front of him he can’t help but wonder dully how he got here. How can I be Usagi, the red light rabbit, the vigilante with the most sexual assault saves and serial rapist arrests and still become a statistic. I didn’t even scream… I didn’t fight- I just froze. How could I have frozen like that? His eyes burn almost as bad as the scrapes on his palms and knees. His cheek feels bruised from where his face was shoved against the cement and there’s an ache at the base of his spine that he will never ever forget the feeling of, a burning shooting pain that radiates through his tail and makes his eyes burn worse, but he can’t move, he’s still frozen, heart beating way too fast. His heart is going to give out, he’s going to die alone in the gutter, just like so many others, too frightened by the terrible world they’ve been born into, too afraid to live. He tries to keep his sobs quiet, terrified of being found so vulnerable. It doesn’t matter that he’s been used, that he’s dirty and bleeding, he’s seen enough of the evils of life to know that to some those things don’t matter. 

It takes every bit of strength he has to crawl out of site, to wedge himself beneath the nearest stinking dumpster, out of sight, out of danger, his instincts promise. Hinata wishes he was a rabbit, wishes more than anything that he had a fluffle to go home to. The thing about hares is they aren’t rabbits. Rabbits are social creatures that live in groups. Hares are not, and leverets don’t get to stick around once they reach maturity. He’s been on his own since he was 17, hasn’t been able to hold a job because when management or the owner finds out he’s uncooperative they turn him loose. He lost his apartment last week and now more than ever he wishes there was someone that would notice he hadn’t made it home. 

He closes his eyes trying to block out the horrible, angry scent that clings to his skin, tries to conjure up anything else to think about then how fast his heart is beating, how all he can smell is blood and cum and around hear how life around him keeps moving as if his whole world hasn’t shattered around him. 

His mind brings him to red wings. Red wings and a lop sided, sharp toothed smile and the most faultless predatory eyes he had ever seen. 

“If you change your mind, need a place to go, or you need help,” Keigo sends one of his smallest feathers to the hare. “Talk to the feather... I know it’s hard being a mutant in this world, my old image didn’t really support that fact, but we have to stick together. There aren’t nearly enough mutant heroes out there, and we all need a flock... or a colony. Give me a whisper if you want to fight for change.” 

With a shaky hand he pats at his pocket and promises himself he’ll find a place where he belongs. 

#Hi Chronic! #cuspids ask game #the virtues #the flock of villain #Usagi the red light rabbit #He's technically a hare #but he didn't make the nickname #He's a vigilante for a reason #Usagi whump

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 340: Now Where Were We

Previously on BnHA: Deku and Iida were all “hey Mei, I know you don’t have a lot of spare time in between constantly launching yourself at people boob-first, and singlehandedly MacGuyvering U.A. into the fucking Death Star, but we were wondering if you could lend us a hand in fixing our costumes.” Mei was all, “sure thing, here’s an upgraded pair of Movie 1 Gloves for you, anyways off you go and have fun saving the world!” Mt. Lady was all, “can you kids keep a secret?? so uh, just between you and me, I’m not a real teacher, and I’m not actually sure what I’m doing here hanging out with you guys right now.” Class 1-A was all, “don’t worry, your secret is safe with us Mt. Lady, well anyways time to assemble our CLASS 1-A SEARCH SQUAD!” The chapter ended with A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE getting ready to DO and/or TALK about A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT THINGS. Classic cliffhanger ending. lol this chapter really did not hold up on a re-read. I’m so sorry BnHA 339. You meandered so that future chapters could hopefully get to the damn point already.

Today on BnHA: All Might is all “time to reveal our shocking and completely unpredictable battle plan of splitting up all the villains for more easily digestible mini-boss battles, using our newly acquired trump card, the handy dandy U.A. traitor!” Aizawa is all, “[cracks knuckles] time to drop some motherfucking love and compassion onto my traumatized student in order to talk him into doing this INSANELY DANGEROUS TASK for us, except that somehow I manage to do it in a way that’s genuinely moving and heartfelt and somehow not manipulative at all lol.” Shinsou is all, “hello, it’s me, making my miraculous return after three whole years of plot inactivity, so anyway what have I missed.” Well shit. Glad I’m not the only one, Shinsou.

---

(just a handful of quick notes here since it’s been a while! (1) as always, these are my completely blind first-time-reading reactions to the chapter. (2) as of today, I am very much NOT caught up with the manga, but will keep you posted on my progress. currently I have read up to chapter 340, a.k.a. this chapter right here lol. and (3), I have been spoiled about one major thing (explained more in depth here) which will happen later in the series, and while there are no detailed references to said spoiler in this post, there ARE a couple of vague throwaway lines because I have absolutely no self-control. so just giving you guys a heads up for that! if you absolutely don’t want to risk getting spoiled, I would highly recommend catching up with the manga first before reading any further.

anyways, onward!)

OH MY GOSH IT’S SOME BUILDINGS!!!

WHAT A THRILLING WAY TO KICK OFF MY FIRST NEW CHAPTER OF BNHA IN ELEVEN MONTHS. TRULY HIT THE GROUND RUNNING

lol they literally just thumbtacked a handwritten “LOV/PLF COUNTER-FORCE HQ” sign on a wrinkled piece of paper next to the door. how far we have fallen from the days where the heroes were holding their war councils in huge NASA ground control rooms filled with hundreds of TV screens

okay good, at least they went out and recruited Hawks to be one of the people presumably planning this whole thing

one of only two people (the other being Momo) whom I actually trust to be able to come up with a reliably smart plan. fingers crossed this turns out better than his last big Ultimate Hero Final Battle Plan, though!

interesting! I assume they do still know about the whole Aoyama situation though, seeing as they even told Mt. flippin’ Lady lol

OH MY GOSH, RAGDOLL? heck yeah. great to see her finally back in the thick of things again. even if she can’t participate in the actual battle, she’s still a fucking hero goddammit

wow this entire next page sure is something

“every pre-cat-ion” breaking news, we’ve just been informed that there is a warrant out for Caleb Cook’s arrest

MEOW

MYEAH?

NOT YOU TOO, HAWKS

EVIL MEOW

I know that last part is just her randomly tacking her cute dattebayoisms onto the end of this entirely unrelated sentence, but unfortunately the damage has already been done. now all I can think about is the League of Villains out there rampaging in the streets and meowing menacingly at people

anyway, so on to the planning and stuff

lmao wait, what

DID YOU PAINT THESE BY HAND, ALL MIGHT?? DID YOU BUY THEM LAST MINUTE ON ETSY AND PAY A FORTUNE IN EXPEDITED SHIPPING. surely it must be the latter. but can you just imagine All Might sitting at his kitchen table at 3am, hand-painting a refrigerator magnet to look like an adorable chibified version of HIS MOST HATED ENEMY

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

I’m actually on the fence about this lol. I mean, it makes sense on paper. lord knows they had enough trouble taking on just one massively overpowered final villain, so who even knows what would happen if they added a second one to the mix

but the problem with the “just take them down separately” plan is that it means they’ll also have to split up their OWN forces, which are already heavily depleted. not to mention that the BnHA heroes are always at their best when they’re all fighting together. so anyways, yeah, I’m not too sure about this

so blah blah blah, Tomura is now stronger than crusty!potato!AFO, big surprise. and they’ve also figured out that the two AFOs can communicate with each other via radio waves or whatever. okay yeah, but doesn’t that mean that even if you do split them up, they’ll still have a big advantage? unless you figured out some way of jamming their telepathy somehow

“should they attack together, we have no hope of victory” lol if you say so. I’m pretty sure all of the U.A. kids combined with all of the remaining A-list heroes could hold their ground fairly well, but clearly I’m not supposed to be questioning the authority of this statement so ALL RIGHT THEN

OKAY BUT DOESN’T THIS JUST PROVE MY POINT THOUGH

“if they’re so powerful together then why didn’t they team up against S&S?” “because they definitely would have definitely lost.” ????????

anyway so now All Might is saying that they need to separate TomurAFO and Potato AFO (PotAFO, if you will) by at least 10km. so is that the max range of their telepathy or something then? that’s so oddly specific though

“oh and we also need to split up Dabi from them as well” ah okay lol, I see where this is going. it’s finally time for the final battle, meaning we need to assign each of the main characters to their personal final villain, yeah? great. awesome. except that they only JUST got reunited all together as a class again sob. you’re really going to do this to me again now?? just like that?? goddammit

LMAO I completely forgot that Nao’s right hand man is an actual literal fucking cat

oh my god. what I wouldn’t give to have seen his reaction to all of those puns and MEOW shenanigans from a few minutes earlier. just standing there in the corner with a disapproving frown. “I’ll have you know I find this all very demeaning and culturally insensitive” sorry about that Sansa

anyway so now All Might is all “YEAH EXACTLY, WE HAVE TO DIVIDE AND CONQUER ALL OF THE VILLAINS ONE ON ONE! WHAT DO YOU THINK WE SPENT ALL THAT TIME PAINSTAKINGLY BUILDING THEM UP FOR?? IT’S THE FINAL BATTLE FOR FUCK’S SAKE, WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU HAVE US DO, MAKESTE” okay okay fine I’ll shut up now, geez

oh shit lol

somehow I momentarily forgot all about Aoyama. possibly because I haven’t seen him in eleven months!! so this is where we’re finally going to get into the nitty gritty of that “let’s use Aoyama to set a trap” plan that Aizawa shamelessly stole from Kaminari all those moons ago

All Might is all “it’s actually pretty messed up of us to be using this poor boy when he’s already basically spent his entire life being exploited and manipulated by people” and he’s not wrong though, damn

but Nao is all “very true, but to be fair this is the literal apocalypse, and he did technically make his own bed, and also our backs are REALLY against the goddamn wall here,” which is also true. still leaning more toward All Might’s side in spite of that, though. poor Yuuga

OH SHIT, SPEAKING OF???

OH DANG

do they really have to keep him tied up like that?? he’s just a kid for fuck’s sake. and it’s not like they aren’t capable of handling things if he does try to escape, I mean this is Aoyama we’re talking about here, he’s not exactly an all-powerful criminal mastermind

man they both look so fucking sad. Yuuga looks so ashamed. this is every 1-A child’s worst fear. they can go toe to toe with the scariest villains out there and not be fazed. but a disappointed dad??? have mercy, sweet jesus

“so after going back and forth on it a bunch, we finally decided that he’s probably not going to blow up.” thanks for the update, doc. meanwhile I just had a completely unrelated thought about certain spoiler related things, oh fuck. but now is not the time to start speculating about that! not when we have the world’s saddest detention session unfolding right before our eyes

Aizawa Shouta is sitting here wearing an eyepatch and a hospital gown and probably hasn’t showered in like three days, and despite all this he is STILL somehow the hottest character in BnHA and it’s not even close

okay but there are like a thousand reasons why the threat of imminent murder would be infinitely more useful than an actual murder, though. like this doesn’t really make any sense. “why would AFO bother to threaten Aoyama if he could simply blow him up if and when he betrayed him?” uh, gee, maybe because he would much prefer if Aoyama didn’t actually betray him in the first place?? what, do you think U.A. traitors are so fucking easy to come by? in this economy??

awwww

I mean, of course he is? :( man, and now I’m wondering if there’s been a single day since his enrollment at U.A. that Aoyama has not spent being constantly terrified about a whole damn slew of things. this poor fucking kid. Horikoshi please be kind to him oh my god

oh my god, yes, exactly

he’s afraid that deep down he’s a bad person. he’s afraid that AFO will kill him. but interestingly, what he’s most afraid of, is BEING afraid. he’s afraid that if the others put their trust in him again, that when push comes to shove he’ll still be too cowardly to do what’s right

talk about ironic though. because to me, that’s a sentiment that basically confirms that he does have the heart of a hero deep down. I’m telling you guys, every single time you show me a character who is flawed and afraid, but is trying so hard to overcome their fears, and trying with all their might to become better, you will reel me in hook, line, and sinker every. single. time. seriously, how could you possibly not root for this kid now

OH MY GOD YUUGA NO

holy shit. hey Horikoshi, this is me, a certified angst-lover, asking you to tone it down just a little here, goddamn. yes we get it, he is tormented by years’ worth of accumulated fears and regrets and feelings of worthlessness and he doesn’t see any way that things can possibly get better, holy shit, we get it okay??? THIS IS MY FIRST CHAPTER IN ELEVEN MONTHS! THIS SHOULD BE AN OCCASION OF TRIUMPH, SO WHY THE HELL ARE YOU OUT HERE MAKING ME CRY

HOLY SHIT

somehow I forgot just how utterly ruthless this man is capable of being for the sake of his students. this is a dude who literally expels kids on a regular basis just to put the fear of god into them. also he is seriously so goddamn hot. it’s straight up ridiculous

oh wow this whole page just came straight for my heart

Yuuga’s fear as he tries to talk himself into what he fully believes is a suicide mission. Aizawa’s blunt assessment of the heroes being no less ruthless than the villains when their backs are to the wall. but then the way he just HITS him with that “you’re still my student and I’m still your teacher” line, and how he says it with such finality. and then the face Aoyama makes in response!!

OKAY, WOW

ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS IS FAIR YOU KNOW!! YOU CAN’T JUST HIT ME WITH THIS BRUTALLY SIMPLE PANEL OF THE TWO OF THEM JUST SITTING THERE WITH ALL OF THE OTHER VISUALS STRIPPED AWAY SO THE FOCUS IS ENTIRELY JUST ON THEM, AND WITH THE WALL BETWEEN THEM ALSO SYMBOLICALLY REMOVED JUST LIKE THAT

AND YUUGA BEING SO SMALL. AND AIZAWA BEING SO STRONG AND SAFE AND STABLE AND FIRM, AND HIM HAVING SUCH UNCONDITIONAL LOVE AND COMPASSION FOR HIS STUDENT DESPITE EVERYTHING. “FUCK THAT, YOU’RE GONNA HAVE A HAPPY ENDING BECAUSE I FUCKING SAID SO AND I’M YOUR SENSEI AND THAT’S FINAL.” okay yep. tears coming now. thanks a lot, Horikoshi. wow. just wow

lol I truly believe that if Horikoshi ever did truly try to kill off one of the 1-A kids, Aizawa would literally come to life and emerge from the pages and straight up murder him

welp. there you have it. absolutely no room for argument there. SENSEI SAID YOU’RE GONNA LIVE, YUUGA, SO I GUESS YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT!

fsdljkf

yep. that’s right. deal with it. dlfkj don’t mind me I’m just gonna sit here dissolving into sobs again

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS WARM FOND EXPRESSION GODDAMMIT

I AM ALREADY A PILE OF MUSH, HOLY HECK!! CAN I LIVE. CAN YOU JUST LEAVE ME BE HERE ALREADY HOLY SHIT

wait what

uh. the path of “none of you problem children are allowed to die on my watch, are we fucking clear on that”? that path?? or the path of marching headfirst into very real danger because they have no other choice, because they’re one of the lynchpins in the heroes’ desperate plan? because that latter path is one that I’d prefer to have as few children walk as possible, ngl

-- OH MY GOD

“HELLO, SHINSOU HERE” UH, EXCUSE ME, MISTER, DON’T YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY TO ME? AFTER BEING MIA FOR LIKE A HUNDRED AND TWENTY CHAPTERS AND FOUR AND A HALF ARCS?? YOU’RE JUST GONNA HANG HERE FROM THIS FUCKING TREE ALL NONCHALANT, WITH YOUR FANCY NEW HERO COSTUME AND YOUR SPIDER-MAN POSE THAT YOU STRAIGHT UP RIPPED OFF FROM YOUR DAD?? WHILE SAID DAD SITS THERE CHUCKLING OVER HIS “NEVER FEAR, WE’RE TOTALLY PUTTING SHINSOU IN AMPLE DANGER AS WELL” REVEAL? “DON’T WORRY AOYAMA, WE’RE NOT JUST RISKING YOUR LIFE, WE’RE RISKING MULTIPLE CHILDREN’S LIVES, BUT WE’RE DOING IT ALL TOGETHER AS A FAMILY” truly the most heartwarming of sentiments lmao

well damn. that hype and anticipation is definitely starting to build now. I am so damn fearful for all of these fictional kids’ safety, especially now that I’m watching the War arc play out again in the anime and remembering just how brutal it was. but at the same time I can’t deny that I’m super excited to see the culmination of everything. like, this is IT, though. this is THE moment, THE battle. no more safety arcs. no more training. we are done holding back, and that is as terrifying as it is exhilarating. I am so not ready for any of this, but IT IS HAPPENING WHETHER I LIKE IT OR NOT, so I guess I’ll just do my best to enjoy the ride

-- oh and lastly, I almost forgot. before we wrap up, there’s just one last thing I wanted to add here...

so it begins.

#bnha 340 #aoyama yuuga #aizawa shouta #shinsou hitoshi #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #pleasantly surprised to see that tumblr's image limit is still generous enough to allow me to do my thing here #'preciate it tumblr

[class1akids]

The whole plot line with midnights killer was so badly handled and rushed. Its whatever that mina didn't want to take revenge but at least take him down so he can be arrested. All she did was use talk no jutsu on him lmao. I guess midnight didnt mean that much to her. Also using mina for this plot line wasnt even good to begin with, momo had more of a connection (which still wasn't much) with midnight than mina ever did.

Yeah, so far it doesn't really feel very impactful. HK used Mina to blitz Machia, the Slime Villain and yell at this killer guy.

But it sort of feels unfinished for the moment. So it's quite possible we haven't seen all of it yet.

What I find quite intriguing is that there seems to be the "main plan" as conceived by Aizawa, All Might and Hawks, which is not terribly different from the PLF War plan, except there are more transparency among the hero side and that they are using previously unused resources (like the support course or the reformed villains).

But there seems to be a kind of "convergence of intent" among Class A, which goes beyond this, and which tries to reach the villains. I thought that this change of heart will be the plot for the "saviour squad" (Deku, Ochako and Shouto), but it seems to be really for all of Class A. Moreover, it feels like they talked about it (or at least Mina mentions Shoji's approach - which I guess could be from the big cuddling flashback).

#c1a asks #bnha manga leaks #bnha 383

[transhawks]

I've been wondering about this for some time now, but how did Dabi figure out who Hawks' mother was? I'll admit i don't remember the details of the manga very well, but when i watched the new season that came out, it seemed to me the plan Re-Destro came up with to plant spies into the Comission failed after the HPSC lured him out and he killed its president. Is that explained in the manga at all? Or perhaps i misunderstood it?🤔🤔🤔

Please take this with a grain of salt. I have a feeling we'll be actually told why eventually, because Hawks remarks on it manga-wise.

For now, here's my best guess:

Dabi was obsessed with his own father. I have no doubt that he was incredibly obsessed with watching his father's fights and likely did so after his death, though this would have been when he was still young, likely when Natsuo was a very young baby.

It seems that the Thief Takami fight was like...memorable somehow. And given he was a murderer, not just a thief, it's clear that Keigo's dad had notoriety.

I think Dabi might have recognized the red feathers as similar to the feathers on Takami's arms and just decided to go on a hunch because Hawks's lack of biographical info is weird, actually. The thing about investigation and any avenue of trying to gather info about a person's motives, it's important to leave no unturned stones.

Anyway, so, when you have a hunch, you look into it, right?

Let's be a bit clear on some stuff:

Thief Takami was a two-man team. Tomie was clearly helping him in certain ways. It's implied that he relies on her for finding jobs and this might be linked to her quirk. There's other strange wording around that whole chapter that make me suspect she had absolutely fascinating propensity for tracking people.

We're also not sure what he did prior to having to hide with her. Perhaps he had a team, etc. Dude wasn't like a one off criminal, clearly, and that means he had connections.

So, uh, what does this mean? Well, let's think about it this way: Dabi has a lot of reach now. Giran, the many PLF members, etc. Imagine he starts asking about Thief Takami, seeing if Giran has any contacts who knew the man prior to his arrest and maybe even after, in jail. Maybe Takami mentioned in trial documents or something that he had help though never elaborated, etc.

There's just a lot of possibilities and areas where someone might have found out he had a criminal partner and possibly a first name.

The thing is, and the HPSC were kind of dumb for this, it doesn't seem like they changed her first name. There are quirk databases. I doubt the tech skills of the PLF wouldn't able to get into one of these. Then you look for anyone who matches - eye quirk, surveilence, age range, etc. Of course if you have a name, you put it in even if it seems it's a long shot that she'd still be using it.

(she was)

My view is the HPSC simply didn't cover their tracks well-enough when it came to Keigo's background. Likely it was just a bit less important than the other shit they do cover up. Tomie's quirk was in a quirk database, her first name likely the same, if you knew what you were looking for, cross enough names in your list to check them out. It's possible she wasn't the only woman approached by Dabi and Dabi's people, by the way, but he eventually found her.

Until we get confirmation otherwise, that's been what I think might be the most understandable explanation. When you are able to have a wide reference point of info and willing to dig deeper, you can find out a lot. I'm fairly good at social media stalking stuff myself through this sort of method myself.

#asks #takami keigo #hawks #ukai tomie #thief takami #takami tomie

[intersexdabi]

post war dabi being put under house arrest with the todorokis in the new home (minues endeavor ofc). doesn't really interact with anyone. he ends up reluctantly tagging along to go to the old house to get some more things (under supervision with now-Pro Hero Shouto) while enji's out. there's honestly not a lot of touya's personal effects, nothing that he cares for anyway, so he just dismisses shouto when he asks if there's anything touya wants to bring back. 'till the end, anyway, when he suddenly requests they bring back the altar his family set up after he "died." shouto tells him he can't set it on fire in the house and touya snaps back that he's not gonna burn it and shouto agrees (though he's lowkey sus lmfao). touya keeps his promise and doesn't burn the altar but he does take everything that endeavor put on, including the picture of himself that makes him sick to look at) and chucks it out the window to burn that shit later. endeavor balks when he finds out they took that thing and that touya specifically wanted it brought back.

anyway. touya keeps it in a room adjacent to his, bare. won't let anyone touch it. forbids anyone from entering the room (and they relent, because they're trying to make things work). touya does light incense, but not much else. fuyumi mindlessly wanders in there one day when thinking about what to do, realizes where she is, and goes to duck out before touya sees her when she notices a torn and beaten up cigarettes, with a smattering of scarlet across the front.

she mentions it to her siblings later. shouto remembers reading through reports, documents from the PLF ranging from top tier secrets to grocery budgets. he remembers reading through pages listing specific requests from the original league. he'd read it with earnest because he'd wanted to find out what his brother requested (not a whole lot, as he found out, definitely nothing interesting). he asks his sister if they were american spirits and fuyumi is rapidblinking.gif and confirms it.

shouto starts searching around but he finds out that twice didn't have any family and not a lot to his name. all he can do is grab a picture from the internet, an old picture taken years ago after some sort of motorcycle accident. he prints it and puts it in a frame, sets it where touya's picture one sat.

touya never says anything. doesn't mention it, doesn't get angry at the intrusion. but when shouto peeks into the room days later, he finds incense still lit and bubaigawara's picture still there.

#dabitwice #aaaaanyway #thinks about the league finding out about this #and somehow sending dabi little things they still have from twice #to put there with his picture #toga sends the handkerchief and keeps the (empty) vial with her #the vial isn't just a reminder of jin it's also of dabi since he gave it to her #ok i'm done now i prommy

[itsnothingofinterest]

So I know that the heroes still likely have this war in the bag unless something drastic happens but I must ask, have they all just collectively forgotten the phrase “Don’t corner a Rat”? They keep being surprised the villains keep coming back and I’m just thinking to myself how silly of an idea that is. Of course they wouldn’t, especially since they’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. But I guess they never expected to face much resistance so it must be hard to conceive the shoe being on the other foot for once. After all, there’s a reason the trope Villainous Valor exist.

I mean this arc's been relying a lot on "fake tension"; where (outside the hospital attack) the heroes have had every fight in this war in the bag at every step of the way, but keep acting like any setback, any secret move that Tomura, Toga, or Dabi has, is the thing that could spell their doom when it never, ever has a chance of doing that. (Until Spinner woke up Kurogiri anyway. We’ll have to see how much that’ll shift things, but it could shift a lot. But everything else they’ve kinda been overreacting too.)

The reason for this is 1) if anyone ever acknowledged that the heroes have the forces needed to crush the villain army and all it’s heavy hitters 250+ times over, the tension (artificial as it is) would evaporate, but in fairness there’s also 2) the heroes aren’t working hard just for “victory”, but a total 100% 0 casualties victory to restore faith in heroes to get things back to normal. Like, the heroes won the last raid decisively; 99.88% of the villains captured with minimal casualties. Pretty good for what we keep calling a war. But that’s not 100% captured with 0 casualties and we all saw the consequences of that.

So AFO pretends like he’s got this whole war in the bag, and the heroes just kinda humor him because the actual worst damage he could do (killing just 1 hero before his army’s inevitable arrest) is actually pretty devastating in the short term for them.

But the fake tension is still a problem. It really takes me out of it when AFO acts like he’s got this, and we see world leaders talking about kowtowing to him and I just want to say to them “Idiots, this guy and every threatening villain he’s got on payroll are each surrounded by a tenth of a country’s hero population, probably at least 100 each, including several main characters. From what possible angles does it look like he’ll still be a threat this time tomorrow?”

Which is why I’m really hoping for that ‘something drastic’ to actually occur. Like I keep asking for Kurogiri to breakout the captured PLF army to bolster the villain forces by several hundred times. Now the heroes have already beaten the full PLF army in the 1st war, but they’re also at half-power from then. It’s still a fight they could win, but they could also lose, and they could lose the war with it. And the sense that the heroes could lose this war has been missing from this arc.

#ask & reply #bnha #all for one #hero society #shigaraki tomura #toga himiko #dabi #spinner #kurogiri #league of villains #lov #paranormal liberation front #PLF #I imagine you probably wanted an answer more focused on the heroes disrespect to their opponents #Just judging by your wording #But this problem feels too rooted in the writing itself for me to give that answer; sorry.

[stillness-in-green]

Project Update/Survey of Interest: The AFO Retcon Essay

Having cleared out the inbox, I thought I'd let everyone know where I am on one of the big projects I've been alluding to for a long while now, the big meta post/essay arguing that the possession plot (and therefore AFO as primary endgame villain) is, in so many words, a big stupid retcon. That essay is - for reasons I'll get into shortly - on the brink of a major change in focus, so I'd also like to gauge how much interest people have in its potential new form. Because it would be another huge one, make no mistake.

(Hit the jump.)

So, I recently started dabbling with a new word processor program and thought I'd try learning the ropes with the retcon essay; I then spent the better part of two weeks combing through chatlogs and my blog archive trying to compile all the evidence I'd want to consider to make that argument. Two nights ago, I looked at the list I had - almost fifty bullet points! - and had the horribly demoralizing realization that...

...You guys, I just don't think I believe it anymore.

Now, that's not to say I've come around on the possession plot, because I definitely haven't! Rather, my trust in Horikoshi as a writer has been so badly eroded by the state of the writing in the endgame that I no longer think even the earlier material is reliable evidence for where the story was going.

To pick the most prominent example, I always regarded AFO telling Best Jeanist at Kamino that his quirk "wouldn't suit Tomura" as one of my strongest pieces of evidence that the possession plot had not been in the cards at that time. After all, who in hell cares what quirks would or would not suit Tomura if AFO's plan, as stated in Chapter 380, was that he would wholly subsume Tomura's will?

Now, however - and Chapter 380 is a big part of this, too! - I look back on that moment and just think, wearily, "Was that ever true, or was Horikoshi just lying to us already, and the only difference between then and now is that back then the lies could hold for hundreds of chapters, whereas now they're revealed within a matter of pages?"

A chat friend letting me vent suggested that perhaps the line was just intended to foreshadow Shigaraki getting All For One (and therefore all the quirks held within it) and Horikoshi just didn't think through all the implications AFO's phrasing had on how that plot was going to go. That may be true, and it's a more generous read than I could muster at the time, but the end result is the same: If I can't trust that the writing was ever an accurate reflection of the characters and their intentions, I can't in good faith construct an argument relying on that writing.

What I think I can do, however, if people are interested, is broaden the overall thrust to something much bigger than just AFO.

I'm currently toying with the idea of a treatise-in-four-parts about the problems in the endgame. Each part would cover one major branch of related issues - they might need to be broken down into sub-parts themselves, if they run long enough! The whole thing would likely be much longer and more involved than my chapter posts; think something more like the PLF mass arrest essay. Following are my current ideas for how those four parts would fall out, as well as some example talking points for each:

Part 1: Shigaraki and the PLF. Would cover Shigaraki as a villain and what he and the forces he'd amassed circa the end of My Villain Academia stood to bring to the endgame, both ideologically and tactically. Would also cover where they actually wound up and some considerations as to why.           Example Subpoints: Demanding accountability from Hero Society rather than just focusing blame on singular evils; Shigaraki as representative of all previous Villains; the MLA's shift in portrayal between MVA and the endgame; the ludicrous string of nerfs Toga was subjected to; whether the MLA was only ever intended to be a mass of numbers to whittle down the equally massive numbers of the Heroes or whether they were reduced to that after poor reader reception.

Part 2: All For One's Impact. Would focus on the sharp drop in moral complexity AFO both suffered himself compared to his pre-Tartarus characterization and inflicted on the endgame both himself and with the caliber of minions he brought to the story.           Example Subpoints: AFO's inconsistent characterization; the moral reductiveness of the Demon Lord as endgame Villain; AFO and Yoichi's personal history; Vestige mechanics; the impact of AFO's inconsistency on Ujiko's portrayal; the Sekoto Peak Problem; the characterization and handling of the Tartarus escapees.

Part 3: Team Hero Is The Fucking Worst. Would focus on the multitudinous problems with the presentation and methodologies of the Heroes in the endgame. Might be two parts if it gets long enough that I decide to split it up into, like, one part on the adults/Pro Heroes and one on the kids or something.           Example Subpoints: The story's bad faith attempts to portray agents of government authority as scrappy, determined underdogs; why it's impossible to believe that the current heroic cast will be able to enact a satisfying resolution to all the structural problems the story has raised; That Stupid Fucking Mech Fight; the constant refusal to let consequences stick to the Heroes; the way the story both undercuts and oversells Deku as a protagonist, and the impact that has on the broader narrative; One For All and more Vestige Mechanics; The Problem of Hawks; the hospital riot; the Todoroki family's inaction.

Part 4: Other Issues. A catch-all area for anything else I trip over that doesn't fit in any of the categories above, or problems of a more meta-narrative sort.           Very Preliminary Example Subpoints: The lazy portrayal of civilian characters; meta-narrative examples of the unreliability of BNHA's late-stage writing, from simple errors overlooked in the highly demanding grind of Shonen Jump serialization to the much more damning abuse of the reader's expectations of the comic medium; idk probably lots of other stuff, I Have Many Problems.

That said, I now have to ask, how interested are you all in a project like that? A fair amount of it would be recycled from my chapter posts, but obviously it would cover stuff I never got to in those, and would be able to be written with more hindsight (especially if it's written mostly or entirely after the series ends!), as opposed to the constant problem of reacting to the story week-to-week.

I basically stopped writing the chapter posts for reasons of incessant negativity, and obviously, this would be more of that, but I mind the negativity a lot less when it's A) able to be more comprehensive and focused than meandering and piecemeal and B) in the form of a large project I can work on as I have the energy for it rather than a brand new project every single week. And, as I trust stuff like MVA In Memoriam and On Heteromorphobia make clear, I do like the idea of putting together a good, comprehensive, easy-to-reference tract on all those problems, as opposed to just letting my issues remain scattered across multiple years of chapter thoughts and bnha critical tags!

That said, it's a big project, and I do vent about these issues pretty constantly with chat and irl friends, so if there's not much interest from followers here, I would not find it hard to just let the whole thing go and turn my eyes to less intimidating fare instead.

(Current other projects include the usual roster of BNHA fic, another mid-length meta piece in the mode of the BNHA vs. Helck comparison from a while back, this time on Mamoru Hosoda's Belle, and a horrible temptation to try and write something thoughtful and even-handed about demons in Frieren: Beyond Journey's End to combat the reductive-ass takes on both sides of the argument I've been seeing all over the internet since its anime started. Also, every week I go without seeing a single damn MachtxGluck fanfic on AO3 is a week I get closer to trying to figure out a way into writing it myself.)

Do let me know! Also, feel free to chip in with anything you'd like to see me specifically talk about in an endgame analysis!

#bnha #my (prospective) writing #bnha critical in the same way the last verse of the cellblock tango is about artistic differences #i could be the bigger person here but #bnha indeed has it coming

[problemswithbooks]

Gonna be honest. It doesn't even feel like the manga wants me to think Hawks made a bad choice. Even now. Its just feels like a cliffhanger about the destruction that would have happened back then if Hawks didn't make the hardest choice. And then the heroes would have been utterly crushed.

Oh, yeah, I can totally see this interpretation of those scenes with Hawks and AfO, but I think that shows the poor writing of the story in and of itself. There are stories where the point is that it can have multiple interpretations, but the way bnha is set up that doesn't feel like Hori's intention (and if it is, he's not doing a good job writing it that way).

Part of the reason I saw it as the more Hawks Critical way was because of how other fans were talking about it--clearly a lot of people see it as Hawks past coming back to bite him in the butt. All I saw were people cheering it on and happy that he was getting his punishment for killing Twice, and of course ignoring how poor the writing was for this set up.

Because, yes, your interpretation is more plausible given how Hori wrote past events. Hawks killing Twice didn't do anything but save a a lot of people during the first war. The villains might have still retreated but Twice would have continued to fight for his friends and given the lack of care any of the LoV show for Shigaraki's condition and still blindly follow AfO, it's easy to assume Twice would be 100% fine with taking orders for him. This would have lead to a Sad Man's Parade anyway, and perhaps and even worse one that included cloned nomu and AfO's.

If Hori wanted Hawks to be wrong and this be his comeuppance for his actions there were one of two things he should done to pull this off at least moderately well.

Have Hawks actually straight up murder Twice. For all that people say Hawks killed Twice on orders and acted due to giving into his brainwashing from the HPSC, that's just not true. Hori went out of his way to show that Hawks only killed Twice after he had lost most of his feathers to Dabi and Twice was escaping in order to use his Quirk. Hori even had Twice kill a Hero in order to save Toga, proving his intentions were violent. If he wanted Hawks to be wrong and following orders similar to how Nagant did, all he had to do was have Hawks stab Twice in the back without even a second thought, or trying to talk him down at all.

Show Twice being unsure/ concerned about the PLA's plans and the part they want him to play in it. Something that Hori absolutely refuses to let any of his villains have is doubt or remorse for their actions. If we'd been given a few panels of Hawks and Twice bonding where Jin voices that he has some reservations about the plan. He joined the LoV for the feeling of family and he still feels that, but with the added MLA members he's worried that things are changing. He wants his freinds to be happy but isn't sure if trusting the MLA is a good choice. Plus, he doesn;t trust the doctor and is worried for Shigaraki, who he thinks the doctor might be tricking or hurting in someway. At the end he just fiuguires he's not a smart guy and he should trust his freinds, but it's clear the idea of using his Quirk to possibly level Japan still weighs on him.

Either of these would have helped show Hawks as wrong. The first one has Hawks do something actually morally wrong. Even if Twice his fine with the plan as he is in canon and as seen by Deika he's still willing to level cities for the LoV, it'd still be wrong for Hawks to just stab him in the back without even trying to arrest or talk him down as he does in the manga.

The second has Hawks knowing Twice is having conflicted feelings, giving him something to try and change Twice's mind about using his Quirk, and bring in doubt that Twice would 100% act like he did in Deika City and help the PLF destroy all of Japan and kill innocents lives just because his friends say so. It also could be used to foreshadow AfO's take over of Shigaraki and how the LoV feel about it. It makes Hawks wrong for killing Twice because there's a chance he might not use his Quirk to deadly effect, yet Hawks kills him anyway. It also means that Sad Man's Parade being used against the Heroes is his fault because now Twice/Toga is using it for revenge. There was a chance Jin would have changed his mind, but Hawks betrayal makes sure Jin uses his Quirk for revenge.

Using both together would be even better.

But as it is Hawks wasn't wrong for taking out Twice, and if Hori plays it off as if he was, it's not going to work very well. He made the villains way to remorseless and over the top violent, showcasing multiple times how much Twice was willing to do for his friends. On top of that if Twice's Quirk does turn the tides, it only proves more how right Hawks was to kill him during that first war. Because it's 100% certain that Jin would have used his Quirk had he lived, that Heroes losing major ground to it or people getting killed by it, only shows how the first war would have been a loss had Twice lived.

#ask #thanks for the ask #takami keigo #Hawks #Hori writes really weird #where it's impossible to know what he's trying to write/say #like he clearly wants the Heroes to be wrong on some level #yet refuses to actually make them fuck up that bad or do unquestionably bad things #and the Heroes that do (Endeavor) get a redemption #like it still boggles my mind people read the Hawks fight and still consider it cold blooded murder #and totally seem to disregard the fight after Dabi shows up #like saying he didn't to kill Twice because he had him subdued--as if Dabi didn't have him cornered and Twice was escaping #or disregarding that Hawks inner monologue states that he never intended to kill Twice #so that means the bit when he looked to be stabling Twice in the face was actually just to kill the clone coming off Twice #and should really be angry that Hori used it as a cheep ploy/ cliffhanger to get more readers #something he still does to this day with things like Bakugou's death #bnha 374 #bnha

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Fuck yeah, demon Dabi!

I really like that he got adopted by a community willing to take care of him. I believe that people will always seek out community and I just adore this detail here. The fact that they find a starving child and take him in.

On another note, seeing a feral Dabi would be pretty hot, actually.

Oh, Dabi. He's starving himself for other's approval. He's hurting himself again. And sure, it's different, but is it really? He's hurting himself to prove that he is strong, that he should be taken seriously. My boy :(

"There's [describes how all of the LoV are very unhinged] and Magne" I love this line.

And the found family starts! Shigaraki doesn't want any of his crew to be in less than the best shape they could be in. I really like how you write him as a good boss.

He booked a room at La Venus. Yeah, I'm sure that won't lead to him running into Shigaraki at all. Totally.

And the lingerie shows up! Also, Dabi keeping money tucked away in all of your stories for worst-case scenarios is really nice. Especially since he uses them to help the League after AfO is arrested. It just adds to his character nicely, I think.

Ooooh, flustered Shig! We don't get to see that often. Also, uncomfortable conversation for the win when Shigaraki is very much attracted to Dabi and knows that Dabi can smell it. Lol.

"He isn't supposed to be nice, or god forbid, understanding." Dabi. Dabi, have you ever thought about the fact that you had to deal with the literal scum of society for so long that you have gotten used to being treated as less than human? Because Shig is treating you like a human (well, demon) right now and that is actually the bare minimum. Oh boy.

Dabi is jealous~

That other succubus obviously noticed how interested Shig is in Dabi and felt threatened because they have slept with him before (probably more than once?). Also, the fact that Shig is not at all interested in them while being very much interested in Dabi is amusing.

Shigaraki: "I am going to be professional about this and give Dabi some space so my presence won't make him uncomfortable." Dabi: "You want to fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid."

I wonder if Shig had the scent blockers installed before or after he met Dabi for the first time? Was it just a general idea to use scent blockers in his villain costume as to not get tracked down or did Giran tell him one of the people who want to get in contact is a Succubus and Shig tried to make sure Dabi won't be uncomfortable?

"What if I want to eat you tonight?" "What are your rates?" Shigaraki you are such a simp. "More than worth triple." Oh, do you also want to offer him your still-beating heart on a golden plate? Simp.

Of course Shigaraki would find a way to be sweet even high on venom. He would never want to hurt Dabi by accident.

I really enjoy how you write oral. I think those are some of my favourite fics from you.

Last third of the fic and things are going downhill fast. I'm guessing Dabi only managed to last two months because he was eating so regularly before. Oh, I wonder if the fact that he can't get his fill from anyone else has to do woth the fact that he called Shigaraki his mate? Nah, couldn't be it. Haha, immediately got confirmation for that one.

Okay, but that venom-turned-to-gas attack is cool as fuck. Also, Compress immediately asking to turn taht into marbles just shows how the League is used to having Dabi around. Compress is practical when it comes to stuff like this, he won't judge Dabi when this can be used to give them an advantage (not that he would judge Dabi otherwise, either).

The fact that Dabi has managed to go hungry for this long without going feral really speaks for his self control. I don't remember if you ever answered this, but do demons typically have quirks in this universe? What is the PLFs stance on succubi?

Oh, oh poor Dabi. He was hungry for so long and he tried so hard and he held on for so long. It's no surprise he's slipping. Though taking a chunk out of an already injured Shigaraki does seem counterproductive. Also, that injury is going to be difficult to explain. Especially if there are succubi around, or people who know enough about succubi to know about them going feral.

The abandonment issues are hitting hard again, aren't they? And Shigaraki is such a simp. He had Dabi take a bite out of him and all he can focus on is that Dabi was hurting.

Well, that's a twist. Interesting though! Also, the fact that Shigaraki just immediately ignores everything else to make Dabi feel good. My guy, you are missing part of your shoulder.

Ah, that was a sweet ending. Well, as sweet as you can get with these two. I wonder how the rest of the League reacted? They definitely noticed that Dabi was oit of it for a long time. And I imagine they took the time to read up on succubi, at least on the basics. Did they know he was starving?

Also, an immortal Shigaraki is terrifying, actually. Once heroes find out how he did that, I'm pretty sure they will use the fact that he "owns" Dabi to turn the public even more against him.

Thank you for the story!

Fuck yeah! A long comment!!

Dabi's daddy issues really take a backseat in this one, but they are absolutely still here being a driving force behind his actions in a way I don't even think he's capable of recognizing.

I truly believe that Magne is the most normal member of the League. Oh, she has 47 attempted murders and a temper? Yeah? So what? I would too if i had to deal with transphobia that far into the future while an anthropomorphic washing machine got to run around being one of the top heroes!

Shigaraki has definitely slept with Reo at least twice, however, even if he hadn't slept with Dabi that night, he never would have taken them to bed again. He does not like that Reo tried to stake their claim over him when as far as he was concerned, anything that happened before was just a transaction.

The scent blockers were a part of his costume since his debut! When there are heroes like Hound Dog, it's important to keep things like that covered. But Shigaraki didn't know they were just as effective on demons which is why he said he would be reporting that back to the doctor.

READ HIM FOR FILTH! Look, Shigaraki is so blunt already that I just think if he ever cared enough about something other than his goals, be that another person or just sex flat out, he would be incredibly blunt, earnest, and cringe about pursuing that as well. He does not have a subtle bone in his body.

So in this universe, full-blooded demons do not have quirks, but they do have innate magics and abilities that can sometimes mimic what humans think of as quirks and that can help them stand toe-to-toe with humans even after their evolution. I never had a good chance to bring this up in the Incubus!Shigaraki story, but in the first installment Dabi mentions that he told the rest of the League Decay was a mutation of his ability to eat lifeforce, however Shigaraki was not aware at that time, that was a lie. In actuality, he was born human with demonic blood in his ancestry, and when Decay activated as a child, he was scooped up by AFO who then had Ujiko do a lot of medical experimentation on him until the demon genes activated. From there they waited for him to hit puberty, knowing his memories would be fucked up and gaslighting him the entire time to make sure he thought he was a born demon, to see what kind he would end up being. The fact he ended up being something as weak and low-born as an incubus is why AFO treated him so poorly and encouraged him to starve/feed only on nightmares, since he had already put so much effort into Shigaraki and didn't want to waste him. The fact that Dabi very openly and blatantly has a quirk signals to the world he was human first.

The PLF is a very large organization so it would range from "not racist at all" to "extremely racist" concerning Dabi's and (to a lesser degree) Toga's heritage. In general, given his position in the organization, Dabi would not have to deal with the particularly racist members-- except Geten who, after the incident in Deika, and with his own family's obsession with 'blood purity' would be thoroughly disgusted by Dabi. He would still ask to be put on a squad with the popsicle though, because Dabi is used to that kind of treatment and he wants to keep a close eye on him to make sure he doesn't' ever try to start something.

Shigaraki continues to be a simp, but the fact that he ignored the bite and just kept fucking Dabi is 100% down to the venom. He couldn't have stopped even if he wanted to at that point, and he was just glad that Dabi didn't tear out a vein or artery.

The rest of the League would know they're dating, and kind of had their big reaction to that before the group headed to Deika, but no one else would be able to tell that Shigaraki owns Dabi now unless they tell them, or until it becomes very obvious that Shigaraki is not aging anymore, which he might actually continue to do until he's around 25 or so if the bond determines that's when he would be at his most physically healthy. Overall, I think that they would be happy for them, but be very confused about how in the fuck that works, because the succubi-granted immortality is a very well-kept secret in demon circles to avoid succubi being enslaved again.

So on that same note, the heroes would have no way of knowing what was going on between the two of them for a very, very long time. Especially if Shigaraki does naturally unlock the regeneration quirk of All For One, which would make the longevity Dabi is giving him and his healing look like one and the same. They would also have a theoretical eternity to do what they need to, even if Dabi has already decided he's not going to kill himself to kill Endeavor anymore. Now he gets to take the time and plan for a new revenge. (I'm thinking fighting Shoto and forcing him to use his flames until he accidentally turns into a demon too and forcing Enji to see his perfect prodigy is now a demonic race the whole world looks down on)

Thank you for the comment!

#I had to type this TWICE because the app crashed as I was trying to reply the first time :'( #tanco speaks #ask #asks

[kiegotakami]

A Shining Light For Everyone: A Study on Purpose, Moving Forward, and Unity Explored Through Hawks and His Relationships

For reasons that can only be found in my love for this character, I was inspired to write this essay after receiving this ask. I’ve been writing for a few months, the majority of it having been written prior to Chapter 354 being released, and all of it written before the release of Chapter 356. It matters as far as predictions go, but this is an analysis of more than that.

One of the clearest lessons in the story is of the effect that unity can have. From the rescue of Bakugo, to the Yakuza, to the Meta Liberation Army, to the League of Villains, and to One For All. It's Hawks himself who said, "One For All... is a network of power that links people's hearts. It tied All Might... to Midoriya. Then Class A kept Midoriya in the game. And Uravity... linked these people to Midoriya. If everyone... if all of us... are even a little bit capable... of seeing each other as united as one, then... I see a future where heroes have time to kill." They have to unite in order for them to win, for the future to be better. Such understanding is interesting coming from someone who has been avoiding all contact with the person who saved his life, right? It's not like it's a moot point in the story since we see Tokoyami complain about being ignored by Hawks multiple times, which is also a running theme in their relationship. So what is that about? And why is it significant that Hawks is ignoring this kid he happened to mentor while he’s much too busy helping in any way he can after Japan was devastated by destruction?

Hawks did make a joke and tell Tokoyami he chose him in order to gather intel on the LOV. However, Hawks later explained during the work study that while he wasn’t “much for training the next generation, or whatever,” he also wanted to see Tokoyami reach his potential because he could relate to him.

In a similar vein, as Endeavor fought the High End, Hawks thought amid the action, “I was watching you this whole time. I get it. There was nobody else out there... really trying to surpass [All Might]. Only you! You were the one working to surpass him!” He understood and admired Endeavor’s drive.

Even when Hawks was infiltrating the PLF, he understood that Twice had been dealt bad hand after bad hand, that he was a genuinely good person who wanted to be helpful. He was another person Hawks built a relationship with and could relate to.

So what makes Hawks extend a hand toward these people? What shaped him into the kind of hero he’s become?

Keigo Takami was born to broken people. They considered him a burden and let him know it. However, one act of reluctant kindness from his mother gave him something to hold onto: hope. Through every verbal and physical attack from his father. Through being forced to live in a shack, forced to stay hidden. Through homelessness. Through his mother questioning his worth... he had hope.

When his father was arrested by Endeavor, Keigo finally saw proof that things could change for the better. His father couldn’t hurt him or his mother anymore. And it didn’t stop there! The HPSC ended up finding him on the street, giving him a chance to avoid his parent’s fate. He wouldn’t be broken. He wouldn’t be worthless. He could help people. He could become a hero.

They named him Hawks, and Hawks would be fast enough to save anyone in need before it was too late, just like how he was saved. Heroes could enjoy freedom because everyone would already be saved.

Hawks sees potential in everyone. His optimism is born of the hope he had to maintain for himself in order to survive, in order to not follow in his parent’s footsteps. Not everyone can manage that. Like Lady Nagant said to him, “My soul couldn’t take any more... so how... do you still have that look in your eye?” He truly believes that things can get better, that people can do better if they want to, and that they should be given the chance to do so. When he sees that desire—that drive—in others, he lifts them up.

Hawks knew that Tokoyami was capable of greater things, but he needed Tokoyami to show him that he had the determination to keep up and learn. Once he did that, Hawks made more of an effort to show Tokoyami that he could see his potential.

Hawks and Twice kindled a friendship despite Hawks being a spy. Hawks failed at getting Twice to back down for several reasons, but a major one was that Twice had finally found a place to belong with people who accepted and even depended on him. As someone who found his purpose through helping others, Hawks could understand the kind of drive that could give someone after being alone and made to feel like they were a burden.

Endeavor is the embodiment of his hope, so Hawks projects that idea on him even now. He wants to help Endeavor—as a hero and as a father—as long as Endeavor is willing to try. Hawks feels guilty about breaking ties with his family, but after seeing how the Todoroki children are facing their past and their parents, he realizes he can help make a difference for another family.

Hawks has spent his life trying to answer why he was born with his wings. His sense of worth being tied to what he can do for others was perfect for the HPSC to mold him into a hero who’s willing to do anything if he thinks good can come from it. Under their direction—the same direction that threatened Lady Nagant’s life and put her in prison so she wouldn’t talk—he ignored injustice, killed someone he said he would help, and was nearly killed himself in order to get information to the heroes about the PLF and ensure they could be stopped.

Hawks feels a significant amount of personal responsibility to make their society a safe one as fast as possible. It’s a promise he’s determined to keep, no matter how badly he’s injured, and even if he needs to dirty his hands to do it.

There are other heroes with a savior complex. The greatest example is All Might, who “was the act to follow, and everybody cheered him on! But along the way... people forgot about the heart and soul that made the man. The stage is gone now. The theater’s knocked down [...] Think about it. Those ones who’re still left, still fighting... whaddaya think they’re fighting for?” All Might lost all of his power in Kamino fighting AFO, but his lowest moment finally came when he couldn’t help Deku, who had become his whole reason for living. When All Might was convinced that he could only get in the way of others, Stain—a fanatic though he was—forced him to realize that heroes and citizens still looked to him for guidance, still believed in him.

All Might “couldn’t sit back” as people suffered, and neither can Hawks. They both determine their worth by their ability to help people. And Hawks, finally free from the power of the HPSC, given back his name and the burden of judgement that comes with it, is at a crossroad of destiny. He no longer has to hide his true identity nor his true feelings. There’s no need to work around the requirements of the HPSC. And at the end of it, he’s the same man, who wants to make society safe as fast as he can, at any cost.

Hawks just wants to make a difference, and since losing significant credibility among citizens, he resigned himself to keep working toward his goal regardless of whether he had their support. Now, Hawks has nothing to lose except his life, to put it bluntly. While his mother was caring enough in the letter she left him, that tie was severed long ago. He doesn’t have loved ones or a support system (particularly one who doesn’t base all of his worth on whether he’s useful to them). No one even knew his real name until Dabi broadcasted that and more. There is one person, however, who has shown particular concern for Hawks since the war.

Tokoyami, while typically serious and reserved, is defined by his heart. As a hero-in-training, he’s strategic and dependable, and as a friend, he’s fiercely caring and loyal. When Shoji was injured by a villain at the training camp as a result of protecting Tokoyami, “...he just couldn’t take it... the quirk he struggled to contain... started to rampage.”

His quirk becomes more powerful in darkness, but it’s also connected with his emotions. So when he sees his friends get hurt—particularly when it’s because of him—it can become overwhelming, allowing Dark Shadow to go into a frenzy.

The disingenuous façade Hawks masked himself with made it difficult for Tokoyami to like his mentor after his internship. However, once Hawks began to recognize the effort Tokoyami was putting in to keep up with him as well as acknowledge that he hadn’t actually been looking down on him, they started to form a bond. Despite them having starkly different ways of expressing themselves, Tokoyami looks up to his mentor and Hawks cares about his student. After a complicated start, they went on to build sincere respect for each other. So when Tokoyami realized that Hawks might be in danger at Gunga Villa, he didn’t hesitate to help him.

Tokoyami found Hawks in a burning heap on the ground, proving his suspicion of true. Despite Dabi attempting to use psychological warfare in order to distract Tokoyami, if heroes were supposed to save, then Tokoyami had a job to do. When Dabi asked him, “Who is it who really needs saving?” Tokoyami shielded Hawks as Dabi blasted flames at them, making a run for it.

Emotions welled up in Tokoyami as he expressed his steadfast belief in Hawks during their escape, willing his mentor to live through his severe injuries. He intended to help Hawks through whatever came next.

When Hawks woke up less than two days later, he immediately went back to work despite his burns, heavily bandaged and barely able to speak. And through the coming weeks, he avoided all attempts made by Tokoyami to reach him.

Other heroes went right back to work as well, but each hero’s sense of duty was driven by their own motives, accumulating toward one goal. There were also heroes who quit, like Death Arms, who said “...I’ve never felt like this before. I thought I was different. Better. I’m sure we all did once. But nah, I’m no hero. Only human.” And while we can think less of this character for his choice during such an intense time for everyone, his statement echoes the tragedy that affects everyone in their society: Heroes are put on a pedestal. That means an assortment of things, and there are a plethora of reactions to this reality in the series, but I specifically want to focus on how this places great expectations on heroes.

Let’s consider when Deku returned to UA after his solo villain hunt. When Uravity pleaded from the rooftops for the citizens sheltering at UA to understand why Deku should be allowed to rest, there was hesitancy. Could they afford to let such a huge target in a safe haven? Could they trust someone so different from them?

Deku was exhausted, covered in filth from weeks of fighting alone while searching for AFO, but he’s only human. With significant convincing, Uravity opened the door for citizens to recognize Deku as their neighbor, as just a high school kid, as someone just like them.

Deku hadn’t intended to return to UA for rest, nor had he intended to work with his friends, because he feared that would put them in more danger. However, they managed to save him just when he had burned out, and convinced him to stay while a plan was formed for defeating AFO and the rest.

This incredible act by Uravity made Hawks realize that the future they sought could be possible. He saw it in front of him! But Hawks as a hero is different. Groomed as a soldier rather than a typical hero, he doesn’t take the luxury of rest. Hawks is driven by the seed of a savior complex that’s been watered by the adults around him since his childhood, and it has grown strong roots in him.

If evidence in the writing weren’t enough, the truth can be found in the art. Hawks was often drawn with a trait familiar to those afflicted with particular sadness or exhaustion: visible bags under his eyes. Not every panel included them in his design, particularly those in which he was smiling or putting on an act. However, they could often be seen in more detailed panels. This trait has become significantly more visible post-war. Moreover, Hawks is now being drawn almost exclusively from his left side where his burn is visible. However (as I initially saw this pointed out by @/svrcererspidey on Twitter), when this is the case the burn itself is often hidden. One moment it wasn’t was when Hawks jumped to help Deku save Lady Nagant from falling to her death, where his burn could be seen as he affirmed his belief that she still had the heart of a hero.

Hawks has had a significant amount of dialogue lately but his ability to work was hindered greatly by the damage done to his wings. He focused on being support for the other heroes. When a moment came to jump into action, he did so without being certain that his wings could help him, his burn appearing just as he exhibited the hope he has become well known for. Hawks has stopped masking his feelings, but he’s ignoring his own pain and exhaustion. His decisions, however noble his intentions, are reckless to himself. He is ready to die. This behavior is not unlike Deku when he left UA, and later left All Might.

Deku was—and is—stronger than his peers. As long as he was near them, or All Might, they would be in danger. It didn’t matter what state he was in because he had a mission that needed to be completed as soon as possible. He wore a threatening mask that hid the exhaustion and fear he truly felt. Deku and Hawks are similar in this way.

When All Might called Hawks to update him on the hunt for villains, Hawks identified with Deku’s strategy. He understands the responsibility Deku feels and the pressure to get the job done as fast as possible. Tokoyami may have rescued his mentor from being burned alive, but Hawks hasn’t truly been saved yet.

Endeavor was the catalyst that set Hawks and Dabi on their paths toward heroism and rejection of it, respectively. As they used and fought each other in order to secure the futures they sought, the story revealed how Endeavor’s actions as a hero gave young Keigo hope while his actions as a father isolated his eldest son, Toya.

Where Hawks focused on giving back to a society that had saved him from abuse and poverty, Dabi focused on tearing down the same system, which had rewarded Endeavor’s arrogance and showed Dabi that he wasn’t enough, whether he was alive or dead.

Both of them have spent their lives searching for purpose to the detriment of their own needs because of how they were taught to understand their worth. Their paths, though in opposition, reflect the other.

But is it too late? Can they be saved, or have they been destined to fall as hero society falls, representing two extreme ends of its failures?

Endeavor lit the fire in Toya that made him want to surpass All Might. By teaching Toya that he was born for a specific purpose and later withholding his love and attention in an attempt to stop him from hurting himself, Endeavor showed Toya that he would have to prove himself as worthy in order for his father to love him, to be proud of him, to see him.

Dabi made it his purpose to make Endeavor pay for that by taking away everything “that thing holds near and dear.” He’s willing to die for it. However, the way to save him can be found in the words he repeats over and over.

Shoto didn’t have a relationship with his eldest brother, but he understands him. Toya was isolated, given a purpose, told to give that purpose up as the affection he’d come to know through that purpose was withheld, then left to fester in his anger. But what had devastated Toya the most was believing he was left behind by his family.

The struggles of the Todoroki family won’t end by defeating Dabi in battle nor with his death because those things alone won’t bring the Todorokis closure over how their family came to be. By stopping Dabi from sacrificing his life to get revenge on Endeavor, by showing him that his worth isn’t up to Endeavor’s expectations but rather that he has unconditional worth regardless of him—something he should’ve always been made to feel—and the love of his family, they can come together to save Toya. He can be saved.

Endeavor became a shining light for Keigo, giving him hope that he could avoid ending up like his parents. However, the behaviors they exhibited and how they’ve treated him still have an effect on how he understands and manages relationships. Keigo’s father demanded the obedience of his partner and child in order to avoid capture. Representing the paranoia of their household, Keigo and his mother had quirks suitable for surveillance, of which were made necessary for monitoring the man they needed for survival—as Tomie did not have the wherewithal to survive in society—and for avoiding his violence.

When his father kicked him aside for turning his back, Keigo instinctively apologized. It was a strategy he developed with the knowledge that his parents were wrong but, as he was blamed over and over for things he wasn’t responsible for, he learned to take responsibility anyway.

When the Takami Thief was captured, Tomie Takami was left with minimal prospects for survival and a child to care for on her own. Reasoning that the authorities could come after her as well for harboring a fugitive, she chose the only logical option she could find for them: “Gotta run away.” When Hawks went to investigate how Dabi came to know the secrets of the Takami family, he found that his mother had been confronted for the information. Tomie left him the letter in which she apologized and stated that she was once again leaving.

The first time, Tomie had meant to avoid confrontation with the authorities, but having potentially cost Hawks so much that his life as a hero had afforded him, her decision to leave this time had a different motive. Tomie knew she couldn’t provide for Keigo and she even threw the blame of their suffering on him when at their lowest. Broken. Now, having been provided for, separated long enough from both poverty and her son, she could see. Hawks was better off without her, he didn’t need her—if she was there, she would cause him trouble—and if she wanted him to be safe, she’d need to go. It was based in selflessness. It was the only way she knew how to do right by her son. But that lesson is a dangerous one. By leaving, Tomie reinforced the idea that running away—or being faster than everyone else who might want to catch up with you—is the right choice to avoid getting other people hurt. Unfortunately for Hawks, Tokoyami would never abandon a friend who is in danger, particularly one who is a danger to themself.

Keigo’s desperation to have value was exploited by the HPSC. Having grown up without the love of his parents, dedicating his life to public service through which he could give something to the world brought him the closest he could to feeling like he could make up for the absence of it. Helping people was the only thing that made sense, and like many things in his life, the quickest and cleverest choices were the ones he used to achieve that.

As someone whose quirk comes at a great risk to those around him if he can’t control it, Tokoyami could easily understand Hawks’ motivation to keep people at a distance who may get caught in the crossfire with his ventures. However, someone as loyal as Tokoyami would never allow Hawks to face danger alone if he could still help him.

The war against the PLF was the first time we saw Hawks nearly die. Guilt flooded through him as he desperately uttered instructions to his mentee to flee. As he came to see it, Tokoyami nearly became a victim of his inability to fulfill his life’s purpose. He nearly caused the death of the one person who he allowed close enough to teach and try to inspire. It was this sense of failure that moved Hawks to detach himself from Tokoyami.

Hawks is the man who’s a bit too fast. He’s used to working alone, used to dirtying his hands so no one else has to, prepared to sacrifice himself for the greater good. So when the students, especially Tokoyami, showed up to help in the fight against AFO, the guilt Hawks harbored rose in him again.

Hawks fears failing Tokoyami again... feels like he owed it to his student to leave him behind. Tokoyami made him realize that this isn’t the case. He still believes in his mentor. He still values everything he taught him. He knows people are not all black and white. He understands now that even his mentor, whose cleverness was always apparent, is capable of great weakness and darkness. But he also knows Hawks is capable of warmth and empathy.

When Hawks heard that Tokoyami still wanted to work together with him, Hawks was snapped out of his fear. “Am I really... that pathetic?” He knows what Tokoyami is capable of. It’s why he chose him out of everyone in his class.

Hawks accepting the help offered to him is a huge step toward moving on from his propulsion for self-sacrifice. When he rescued Hawks from Dabi, Tokoyami told the smiling villain that, amidst the turmoil, he was “just... concerned about [his] mentor.” While he values Hawks as a hero, no one else knows him better for who he might be without the title. He has known his kindness and his friendship. He values Hawks outside of his quirk, outside of what he can do for society. This isn’t to say at all that Hawks’ well-being should fall on Tokoyami’s shoulders now, but that bit of acknowledgement and understanding—the kind Hawks has never known even from the people who should’ve always given it to him without condition—is a significant step toward healing from his desire to dedicate his life to heroism over living for himself at all. Making Hawks see himself as someone worthy of unconditional acceptance is how he can be saved.

Tokoyami believes in Hawks. Endeavor may be down, but Hawks doesn’t feel like he’s alone right now. There’s a lot to lose in this fight, including their lives, but for the first time he feels the support he’s always giving to others... the unity he believes wholeheartedly they need to win. And in that way... maybe he’s already changed for the better.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #keigo takami #hawks #fumikage tokoyami #dabi #tomie takami #mha meta #bnha meta #bnha manga spoilers #mha manga spoilers #kyra speaks #this doesn't even feel all encompassing of his character (or the others) and it isn't meant to be #I just started thinking and making connections and I wanted to understand him as much as I could for even just myself #and the other characters I talk about #also I tried to put alt text but it's not letting me :/

[villain-sympathizer]

Can you do something where redestro falls for someone, but ends up finding out their a pro hero/ works at UA but agrees with the MLA goal.

🥹

ohhh this is interesting!!! sure thing!

────── ･ ｡ﾟ: *.☽ .* : ｡ﾟ･ ──────

»»—— S/O is a Pro-Hero / UA Teacher ——««

I have no doubt that Detrenat has worked with or supplied UA with support gear supplies in a partnership or donation of sorts, so I believe that's how he'd come to meet his S/O in the first place!

It likely happened during a monthly meeting to go over shipment and stock details, as well as other specifics.

His crush worked alongside Power Loader within the support course, and is one of the most notable Heroes in the business.

Intrigued by their support gear knowledge, Rikiya strikes up a conversation with them after the meeting when everyone else is being sociable.

He asked the basics, of course: "What drove you toward the support gear business?" and "What's your quirk?"

One thing led to another, and they were on the topic of quirk liberation, and slowly inching towards the moral of his ancestor's book.

Rikiya was worried he'd upset them or give his position in the MLA away by diving in too deep, even if they had moved away from the rest of the staff to talk more privately. It was treading on eggshells if he wanted to continue the topic of conversation, but if he could recruit another Pro Hero into his ranks? Well, the risk would be worth it!

Luckily, he didn't have to dive deeper, because his crush did that for him! They talked about their viewpoint and how the feel on the matter, and it all aligns with his own groups views.

So of course, he did what his rapidly beating heart had been demanding he do from the beginning: he asked them out on a date.

One date leads to two, then three, then seven... Rikiya knows at this point he needs to confess his position in the MLA, and risk exposing his coworkers and their shared plans. But once again, luck proves to be on his side, as his partner approaches him themselves on the topic. Caught off guard, Rikiya panics and admits his position.

Thankfully, thankfully, his partner didn't arrest him and the others on the spot, and instead expressed interest in becoming a member. Rikiya felt over the moon! Elated!

Their position likely becomes similar to Hawks, minus the backstabbing. (terrible pun, I'm sorry)

He only hopes that when the time comes, they'll stay loyal to the MLA/PLF, regardless if they win or lose. Rikiya may not like the idea of them being imprisoned alongside him, but it's better than believing their relationship meant nothing.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #redestro x reader #bnha #mha #rikiya yotsubashi x reader #redestro #rikiya yotsubashi #dame writes #x reader