sasuke-shway

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oh noooooo mr hero don't interrogate me in the alley

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birdie

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hawks sketch

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You've written about Overhaul in the past. Any tips on writing him accurately?

Overhaul's actually one of the most complex villains in the story that's not a part of the league of villains, however since he's pretty unlikable and has mostly negative and unsavory character traits he's not discussed as often. However when it comes to writing him, there's a lot of rich material to mine here.

So my starting point whenever trying to write a character and make them as in-character as possible, is to figure out what the author intended for them in story. What role are they supposed to play? What function do they serve? In my opinion, Chisaki was an attempt by Horikoshi to twist a lot of traditional "good guy" traits into a villainous character that the audience would despise.

One of my biggest ways of doing this is to compare them to other characters, especially haracters who aren't given as much screentime because there are lots of cogs in a story and often the purpose of one character is to highlight a personality trait in another character because they share it.

Now I'm going to explain Chisaki's characterization by comparing them to another character, but here's the curveball here: I'm not going to use Shigaraki. Because I can explain it real quick with Shigaraki, the purpose of Chisaki is to show how Shigaraki's leadership differs from Chisaki because Shigaraki sees his allies as more than just pawns to be utilized. However, to come to understand why Chisaki wholeheartedly believes that everyone exists to be used thoroughly to further his own ends, we're going to look at a different character.

Hawks and Chisaki are both bird-themed. They are both orphans who were taken in by an organization at a young age, Chisaki by the Yakuza and Hawks by the hero commission. They are both also extremely fanatically loyal to that organization and do everything possible to ensure that organizations survival, in part because they feel they have to repay being taken in.

They are both characters who were introduced to the league of villains, trusted by Twice, only to turn around and kill a member of the league. For Hawks it was literally Twice himself he killed. They were also initially presented as cooperating with the league, but when they reveal their true colors it shows how they view people in stark contrast to how the league views and treats it's own members. Which like, Hawks does not come out looking pretty in the comparison.

Hawks doesn't actively abuse children so he has that over overhaul, but he does drag them onto battlefields that are basically an active warzone where the villains are fighting to kill. Which means that much like Overhaul, he tends to treat children the way he was treated: Ie, weaponizing them.

If you are familiar with Hawks mindset, "I am a pawn, so therefore everyone else is a pawn that I can maneuver around to obtain my objective" then it's easy to extrapolate the same onto Chisaki. Hawks talks about dirtying his hands, Chisaki is literally a germaphobe who has panic attacks if he gets blood on his hands (I'm exaggerating only slightly).

Chisaki is introduced with a deep psychological need to stay clean and avoid everything he considers filth, dirty, or diseased a rampant paranoia of his which spreads to his hatred of quirks. We never get the reason why Chisaki hates quirks, besides the fact that the advent of heroes threatened his home in the Yakuza, but if we're going to extrapolate here it's probably due to the grotesque nature of his own quirk. He literally targets Eri because their quirks are similiar and he finds hers to be incredibly disgusting, and justifies his abuse of her with that logic.

My pet theory is that he was either abandoned by his parents because of hsi quirk, or that he was taken in by AFO at some point and deliberately targeted by his quirk like Toya was (people have pointed out that the wallpaper here and the children playing int he background resemble the house that Toya was taken to).

So, what we get here is Chisaki hates quirks, and he likely hates his own quirk possibly because of how he was treated in childhood because of it. He was definitely exploited by the same man who took him in due to that quirk, considering the fact he's a yakuza enforcer and has probably been committing violent crime since childhood. Once again, a Hawks trait, to be born with a prodigious quirk and yet find that quirk incredibly filthy.

Hawks and Chisaki are a study in how characters can be painted to have "good guy" and "bad guy" traits, when really they're only being painted that way because of circumstances or surroudnings. Hawks in a lot of ways acts the same as Chisaki, he just happens to be manipulating people for the heroes, not to restore the Yakuza. Chisaki values no one, everyone including his childhood friend, the people he takes in off the streets, are pawns to be utilized by the best of their aiblity. He even tries to teach Shigaraki to play Shogi (Shigaraki not knowing how to play probably signifying how much he views people differently).

So, Chisaki's willing to utilize everyone around him in service of a goal, the worth they have is to how he can use them to benefit his larger goal in mind and he's got no qualms about it.

Villainous trait, villainous trait, you say but Hawks does the same thing basically maneuvering everyone on the battlefield in the first and second wars the way Chisaki does, he just does it for an entirely different goal. He's even willing to personally betray and mutilate someone who trusted him in order to achieve that goal. Chisaki's point of no return is him completely massacring Nemoto in order to fuse with him when the tables started to turn against him in his fight against the hero. Hawks stabs Twice in the back in order to prevent him from using his quirk to stop the raid. In both cases it's a personal betrayal of someone who was good to them and trusted them.

You could say Hawks did it for the greater good, but for CHisaki who only knows his Yakzua way of life he's doing it for the survival of the only life he knows. Which is why I say they're so similiar, Hawks isn't really protecting innocent people, he's protecting his role in the hero commission. He takes what he was raised to do to the extreme.

Which is another central character trait they share, Chisaki's biggest defect is that he never, ever gives up on anything ever. A traditionally heroic trait especially in the shonen manga where the character never gives up ever, but his determination is twisted into something hideous because he has no qualms about making sacrifices to get what he wants.

Since childhood Chisaki has done absolutely everything to protect the family's dignity, to the point where it was disturbing. He never changes his mind, never backs down, even when the man he's trying to repay goes against him, but it comes from the same source as Hawks.

He believes he owes the person who took him in, and does everything he does in service of that debt.

So the last part is Chisaki's germophobia himself. Now Chisaki is a man completely divorced from his own sense of guilt who doesn't really hesitate before making heinous actions, but I wouldn't say he feels nothing,the man's clearly not mentally well. If anything I'd say his own germophobia is a metaphor for the guilt and self-loathing he feels and chooses to ignore.

He usually has breakdowns shortly after using his quirk as well. He'll absolutely brutalize people and then have a breakdown about the blood that they've gotten on him. Which suggests he you know, probably does not enjoy bloodshed in any real way. You could even compare it to Shigaraki's statement that he always feels like there's a constant sickness no matter what he destroys, which is likely his repressed guilt that AFO played off as some kind of urge to destroy, or the way Shigarki carries his hands of his family on him so he'll never forget his own self-disgust at murdering them.

Chisaki is living completely divorced from his own sense of guilt, until he's not. Once you remove him from his position of power, when he's away from the mission and forced to sit in his prison cell in tartarus he's reduced to a shambling mess that just constantly apologizes over and over to his boss and begs for the chance to see him again.

Which means that Chisaki represses all of his emotions to perform a task, and when he si not performing a task or functioning in a role he falls to pieces, because he doesn't have any sort of life except for serving in the yakuza. He's even referred to as a "gangster without a heart" because he literally has nothing else and no identity.

Chisaki's gotta be a gangster and he'll even throw a coup and put his boss in a coma for fear of losing that place in the world, because what else is there for him?

He even hates being called by his real name, much like Hawks, so his central issue is really a lack of identity because he was raised in a fishbowl with no other place to belong in the real world. Except we saw Chisaki when he was taken out of his fishbowl, and all he did was flop around like a magikarp.

As for general guidelines on his voice:

The germaphobia is a constant thing with him. Don't put your shoes in my table. Don't breathe in my direction. Hey stop bleeding on me your blood is filthy.

He talks down to people in general. He's extremely condescending with Shigaraki right off the bat, and states to his face that the only worth that Shigaraki and the League will ever have is pawns to be used as a part of his plan.

He flips between being detached, and extreme anger. Basically he's able to act cold and detached when things are going his way, and when people resist his plans or manipulations he then switches to browbeating, bullying or just otherwise lashing out in anger. If the square peg won't fit in the round hole, then just hit it harder until it does. He's cold and calculating until his calculations fail then he just brute forces it.

He's generally pretty good at negging people, he's got Eri convinced that her quirk is disgusting and she's the source of the misfortune around her. He's also got a bunch of street rats incredibly loyal to him by convincing them they can literally do no better in life than being used as a part of his plan.

He also has a softer and more polite side that only comes out in front of the boss. This is his childish side too. When he's fighting Deku and has basically lost, he flashes back to his boss patting him on the head and thanking him for protecting the family's honor. He literally just craves validation from the closest thing he has to a father figure. He'll go to any lengths to get it.

In general Chisaki should be disturbingly inhuman too, not just in his actions, but in his rationale and how far he can go and how little he considers other people in the equation. Even his own childhood friend and fellow yakuza finds him to be offputting. His boss asks him point blank, "What are humans to you?"

Basically, he's creepy, weird, anti-social, uses everyone around him, and is also completely divorced from his own feelings and sense of guilt which lets him run roughshod over other people's feelings.

So, y'know. Hawks.

Except Hawks puts on a charming and likable personality, whereas Chisaki's personality is having no personality.

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optimism : a way to sad hopefulness

[a short meta on Hawks' optimistic nature]

Let's begin with this scene from the english dub:

He stated 2 reasons for his perseverance:

1. Someone has helped.

2. He is optimistic.

When he was stating the first reason, his voice was low, monotonous, and desperate, while in the second one, he used a higher voice and slightly energetic tone.

As he pronounced the word "also," he raised his voice, declaring that he's not finished yet, then paused a second, drawing her attention to hear the rest.

The remarkable thing here is that when stating the second reason, there's a gradual drop in his tone, to the extent that the reason behind it is revealed as he says the last word: guy.

This implies that optimism is his natural quality, which he's been using to cope with tough times from a very young age.

But since he is a practical person, he knows well this is not enough to save him nor others from darkness. Because of this, you can feel the disappointment in his voice, that he hides it behind optimism and hope. When you want to be hopeful about the future, but your circumstances are pushing you to the edge of pessimism, you begin to feel torn in between; a feeling I like to call sad hopefulness.

This is who Hawks is. The one who puts on a mask of being fine in the midst of the world's cruelty. You can interpret this in countless ways, but let's see some evidence instead:

When he was almost knocked out by Dabi, he was thinking of a way out to save himself and Tokoyami from his flames.

Or when he was trying to buy time for endeavor and gather first-hand information about the true intentions of All For One.

But the most noticeable one was Ochaco's speech.

You can see its effect on Hawks here. Beaten up, barely conscious, and only hearing her name was enough to remind him of what encouraged him to fight in the first place.

Yes, there are other occasions where he had this hopeful attitude, but I chose these for a reason. The common thing between all these manga panels is how dire the future looks in everyone eyes while Keigo still finds something to cling on to, thus not abandoning his choice to be a shining light for everyone.

Among all that negativity, he still could see the glass as half-full. So, how was he really able to maintain this hopeful attitude? This is where his intelligence steps in:

First he broadens his perspective by gathering facts about the status of both sides (heroes and villains), comes up with different possibilities of how things might turn out (including both of the positive and the negative ones), sees the potential for things to go better and then decides the best course of action to realize it.

He's realistic about what to expect from future outcomes, but he still wants things to turn up better for everyone and that feeling of hopefulness clashes with the bitter reality regardless. I'm putting more emphasis on his emotions in such difficult times when many people could be overwhelmed by the feelings of despair resulting in letting go of their seemingly unachievable dreams, he persevered to look for small things he could actually work on and make a tangible change, despite how he's feeling inside.

What I think Hawks can teach us is to follow the small traces of potential, potential to make a difference, those which will keep us optimistic toward the future, and by working to realizing that potential, we may reach our dream.

This article will occasionally be modified.

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So given that it seems AFO is growing a bunch of heads, which more than like seem to represent his own quirks' vestiges (hi Hawks):

I think my theory that Tomura has his family’s quirks just got a lot more likely:

I mean we must admit, between meeting with Tomura in his mental world and growing their bodies out of his mutating body, the Shimura family sure had been doing a lot of things quirks vestiges have recently been shown doing.

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I don't really like endhawks and it's not so much because of the age gape or the fan/idol relationship (la brava and gentle have some age gape and bakudeku are the pure description of fanatization/idolization trope and I like both of those ships), but more because endeavor literally embodies what Hawks hate the most.

Hear me out on this one, they have cute interactions but for me the fact that Hawks stayed by endeavor's side even knowing what he did to his children is kinda out of character. I mean the whole thing why keigo wanted to be a hero was to help people and make them smile because he went through abusive behavior all his life. Endeavor do save people but doesn't make them smile, not directly anyway. Hawks wanted to help the new generation, but endeavor traumatized the generation he gave birth to. Hawks wanted to be free, but endeavor stole freedom from his children (at least until he becomes number 1 and shoto comes to UA).

I understand hawks forgiving and accepting endeavor even after what he did, because hawks is so optimistic that he wants to believe eveyone can change for the better, but I don't understand him staying by endeavor's side. I mean, how traumatic would it be to discover that your idol who saved you and gave you a dream to follow did the exact same things as the person who traumatized your childhood? I see some narrative problems here. Or maybe it's just that hawks is too optimistic for his own good.

The thing is, I think Hawks so desperately needed a symbol to give him hope that he didn't even try to look more profoundly into endeavor's mistakes. Like he tried so hard to convince himself. Here we can see that hawks says he could keep up with training and abuse by the commission because someone supported him, probably implying endeavor. But it wasn't even true, hawks just chose to idealize enji because he saved him, but enji didn't know hawks before metting him as a hero, so he couldn't actually support him in his dream. I know it's only metaphoric, but it does mean that Keigo just needed something, someone to hold onto because of all the suffering he went through. And he chose endeavor, who was the only person indirectly "caring" for him.

Now maybe it's because I adore Hawks and I hate endeavor (the man and his actions, not the way he's written), but I can't imagine them in a romantic relationship. How could Hawks give his trust and love to the exact same profile as his father? How could they live together without hawks remembering the abuse? I think that even enji himself wouldn't trust his own reactions and feelings, hunted by the past. "The past never dies", and it's true for everyone in this story.

Look how similar they are. Honestly I don't really understand horikoshi on this one because if he wanted to give enji a loyal sidekick, then why give Hawks an abusive father?

Or if horikoshi wanted to give us grumpy x playful duo, then do it with dabihawks? They had so much potential to be our favorite bickering duo, and their drama would've been so good if they both knew each other before touya's death, became close during hawks undercover mission and then went through a heartbreaking breakup during touya's reveal.

(look at them they could've been soo good as a grumpy x playful duo aah)

Instead, we got Hawks indirectly supporting the same abuse he went through and the destruction of dabihawks' potential with the biggest absence of interactions ever after the first war.

(Also I want to add that I respect everyone's opinion and I don't hate endhawks shippers at all! It's just my point of view on the ship, everyone is free to ship whoever they want if that stays legal 🙏)

Maybe I'm going too far into the analysis (someone stop me please I'm talking too much-), but I really think that endhawks couldn't work, for hawks as much as for enji. Now the interesting thing to ask would be : would dabihawks actually work in a romantic relationship? I guess we'll never know.

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reposting this twitter thread here in case their twitter account gets nuked

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watching gen z and millennials make fun of gen alpha has been torturous. "But they're actually stupid" 1. theyre middle schoolers 2. isn't that what older gens said about us? don't you remember being 11?

it truly is just "impulse reaction to cringe <- has not yet unlearned shame"

the cycle continues let me out of here

guys. guys I think we should kill cringe culture

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Hope for the democratic party?

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I’m 2016 I had a shoplifter role play blog because to avoid getting deleted all the shoplifting blogs claimed it was just to rp. Mine actually was though but I’d post shoplifting content and reblog tips and my “hauls” were just stuff I borrowed from my much more fashionable sister. I had a decent amount of followers and I got a lot of hate but I’d be like “ok buddy I’m just goofing around lol” and then post $150 of Sephora products legally purchased by my sister with the caption #gettingawaywithit. this did not improve my life but it did get me talking to people more often which, obviously, I needed

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Sad that Hawks went straight into being the commission president instead of taking some time to live his fucking life

Not only from a personal standpoint but that’s how you become what made you

He’s even more removed from the citizens than he ever was, he hasn’t had time to unpack any of the shit he went through, to be away from the toxic predatory system that made him

Just seems like a recipe for disaster

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Fic where President Takami makes the Commission even more fucked up than before and nearly crashes it all into the ground (Again) despite his Best Intentions because so many of their twisted practices were Normalized to him and he never had a chance to Unpack it all because he was Moving Too Fast

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