#(Might be because afo raised him or his influence. Rather then being evil but it’s fucked up!)

[kitsunefyuu]

OFA is super sus as hell and as a quirk it basically a parasite to those that have quirks. It’s entire purpose is to be passed on by DNA so it’s possible that it always has the ability to copy quirk. But all it had was literally itself.

It truly became something special when All for One shoved stockpile onto Yoichi.

But without stockpile I imagine it something like this. Given to a quirk user, probably makes a copy while incubating, when given away it does like a check of person has a quirk or not. If no quirk then gives a quirk, if already has one it doesn’t do anything. It just makes a copy of their quirk.

It might be completely based on Yoichi’s Will too because that seems to be its other purpose. Yoichi is technically alive inside that vestige and All for One is aware of this. Even able to mention hearing his voice tho that likely because of stockpile making a copy of AFO when passed it onto him.

It basically a more convoluted form or All for One. A way to pass around quirks from people to people.

Now probably wondering if copies quirk regardless what the point of stockpile. Easy it makes the quirks and physical attributes INSANELY strong. So each generation because stronger and each copy more powerful then the last. Able to improve the original quirk of the old users.

Turning it from just a way too complicated way to pass on quirks and for Yoichi to live forever, to a powerful quirk. But there’s a catch if you have a quirk the strain of it will kill you at the young age of 40. So it likely comes with the impulse of the users to give them away.

But even when given away it already made a copy and shortened the persons life. Yoichi has been shown capable of talking to the users. He told Nana and All might it wasn’t time.

Yet he fails to mention the whole, btw this quirk will kill you part. He lives IN the quirk and it’s implied he’s aware I’m pretty sure that would be good knowledge for any user to know. Yet Izuku and All Might had to be the ones to find out from Al the users death.

Which honestly is making me feel like Yoichi purposely hiding this fact. Only when the users point it out does accept fact won’t be passed on again since the amount of quirkless is dwindling. Since it be against his ideals.

I don’t think Yoichi is Evil but he definitely seems prone to manipulation and is very parasitic. Even as a quirk the fact it detrimental to the users health if already has a quirk is insane. How do you go several generations and never implied it once after the fourth death?

The quirk is literally haunted! Maybe the others can’t interact with it but a spooky dream warning would have been nice. But then it would be hard to seem like a heroic quirk if they know it shortens your life span, _but I’m sure many would have appreciated that knowledge._

But guess it’s not something to worry about when your older brother tends to kill the users before reach that point.

[linkspooky]

This Thing

de·hu·man·i·za·tion 

noun

the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities.

This thing A meta on the dehumanization of villains done by the heroes in the manga My Hero Academia, if you’re interested read more underneath the cut.

Before saying anything else, yes crimminals are a group of people who can be dehumanized. People who break the law are still in fact people, and while this is mainly talking about a fictional work it’s worth remembering that dehumanization is a tactic used to justify violence and the taking away of human rights from crimminals and incarcerated people. 

People are still people. No matter what bad things they do they’re still people. And victims are victims even if they don’t present their victimhood in easy to digest ways. The conflict in My Hero Academia is one much more complicated than hero vs. villain because it exists within a society that generates its own villains through intentional neglect. I say neglect, because most heroes seem to be of the perspective that villains are either born evil, or choose to do evil entirely of their own free will and are never victims of circumstances or forced into the livelihood. 

Villain isn’t just what costumed crimminals are called in MHA, it’s a literal legal definition that are given to certain crimminal offenders. We don’t know what exactly the legal ramifications are, but the fact that you can literally be called a villain just for being a repeat offender shows the way hero society views it’s crimminals. 

Villain has different connotations, it means an inhuman evil, not just a person who has done bad things. Police also have much more power in comparison to our society as well, in the manga vigilantes when his sister Makoto brings up the fact that technically her friend who has been accused of villainry is innocent until proven guilty and formally charged. 

Tsukauchi gets physically angry with her. 

What’s important in this situation is the girl they’re arguing about pop step is an innocent victim. She was kidnapped by a man, had a parasite inserted into her brain and is being physically controlled. What she needs to be is saved not put down, but the law is so inflexible it’s only capable of seeing her as a villain not as a person caught in a bad situation who needs to be saved from that situation. 

And it’s much later revealed that there is technically a way to save her life, but because it requires breaking of the laws the police and heroes won’t ever do it. Beating her up won’t save her, it’ll just kill her as an innocent victim of circumstance, and stop her from doing any more damage to the people around her. Even if the police knew the way to save her life they won’t attempt it because it breaks the law. 

Being a by the book cop is all well and good, but when the law that exists doesn’t protect people there’s something wrong with the law. This isn’t an isolated incident either, we’re shown over and over again in the main manga as well this is always how villains are responded to, violent suppression. 

At the start of the manga Shigaraki says this, that heroes and villains are both violent but because heroes are categorized as such their violence suddenly becomes heroic. All Might just dismisses what he says as him being a madman.  

Not only that but in the aftermath of the break in the heroes all attempt to dissect Shigaraki’s character. They all make him out to be some kind of insane person that could have no possible rationale or reason behind his actions. 

They dismiss Shigaraki’s attack as him simply being a man-child who thinks he can do whatever he wants. There’s no possible way that he could have any kind of sympathetic reason or human rationale, because he’s a villain, right? Except we learn later that’s not the case. 

The words that Shigaraki is saying to All Might echo the words of his abuser. Shigaraki is like this not out of his own choice, but because he was deliberately shapped and moulded by someone. The reason why Shigaraki is impuslively violent is because as a literal five year old he was exposed to violence over and over again, and told this is who he was, this is what he was for. 

All Might later discovers that Shigaraki is not only the son of Nana Shimura’s son, a child he was personally responsible for when his mother died but decided to go along with his mother’s plan to abandon him (for his protection) and then also that All for One had specifically raised Shimura Tenko as a weapon against him. All Might knowing completely the manipulative kind of man that All for One is, and that Shimura must have been young when All for One took him in. Is still able only to see Shigaraki as a crimminal. 

He is literally told that he can’t see him as anything other than a villain otherwise his judgement would be affected. At this point it’s not even ignorance, it’s intentional neglect. All Might SHOULD know that something is up with Shimura Tenko and that he didn’t choose to become a villain and was most likely influenced by All for One and yet the heroes all choose to ignore that fact and instead put him down like any other crimminal. 

The problem with dehumanizing crimminals is that cops are not omniscient. Cops make mistakes. Cops are wrong, like... a lot. When you give people the power of law, there are people who are victims who were just trying to survive who are going to get caught up and treated exactly the same as people who are genuinely dangerous and out to hurt others like AFO. There are people who are perfectly innocent sometimes who will get caught up in it too.

People like Tsukauchi and Gran Torino may be good cops, they may be by the book cops, but that’s it. They’re the type that gets angry at the fact that due process exists because they believe that cops always suspect the right people, and that their hunches are never wrong or they could never possibly arrest someone who doesn’t deserve it. Neither of them acknowledge that the system is flawed and often makes mistakes, and because of that they end up believing that the police are always in the right, that the police could never prosecute someone wrongly, and those are dangerous beliefs to have for literally any law system, especially one with guys that shoot lasers out of their eyes.. The reason due process exists is not to slow the hand of justice, it’s because the legal system is really flawed. 

The problem with giving too much power to police is that we don’t exist in a perfect world where the police will obey even their own laws. Why don’t we just put cameras in everybody’s houses? People who aren’t doing anything illegal won’t have anything to worry about. Unless suddenly things like speaking out against the government become illegal because the police now have the power to enforce it. What I’m saying is the rule of law does not necessarily = good or evil. Rules are not always good, and they’re also not absolutes they change all the time, and they also don’t always exist to protect people they need to protect. We see this literally happen in My Hero Acadmia, the government uses it’s power to kidnap a child and erase his name literally the exact same way All for One did so he could be raised as a child soldier. 

The conflict in My Hero Academia is not good guys vs bad guys, especially when the good guys don’t even act as good guys, and a step beyond that rigid laws and adherence to social order is not ever going to solve the problems associated with villains like Shigaraki because those laws are fundamentally unjust. They don’t exist to protect the people who most need protecting, they exist to oppress a minority in order to maintain social order. 

Yes, violent crimminals are still a group of people. They are still human beings with rights. If they’re not guaranteed those rights they will be abused. We’ve literally seen this play out in action. 

Hawks corners Twice, and then says he’ll go out of his way to Save Twice because he personally likes him. The only one of the villains Hawks treats as a human and not just an enemy to put down is Twice, and only because he personally likes him. 

Twice brings up the fact that all of his friends deserve to be saved the same way he is. In fact, he even goes out of his way to say that he would die to save these people, and Hawks just ignores them because he sees no humanity in them only the one he personally likes. 

Then Hawks goes out of his way to mention that if Twice doesn’t stop fighting back, it’s his fault if they die. Twice is trying to argue with Hawks that the people he sees as a danger to society, and that need to be taken down are humans capable of being kind just as much as they are a threat. 

Twice murders him. He goes out of his way to murder him and stab him in the back. Hawks acting in a capacity as a hero, goes out of his way to dehumanize Twice again and again, completely ignore his own feelings and words, and then that conflict eventually escalates to murder. The point is not that Hawks had no choice but to kill him, but rather Hawks convinced himself he had no choice but to kill Twice. 

The problem with applying this extremely harsh and punitive, even war-like view of law and order is that innocent people like Twice who literally only wanted to keep his friends happy will get caught up in it. Hawks literally thought that Twice had a chance for rehabilitation, that of the league he was the one most likely to rehabilitate and he still murdered him.

Heroes aren’t interested in rehabilitation. They are there to beat up villains. For several of them, it’s not even that far of a jump to get to the point where they start justifying killing villains. Miruko is almost excited to murder the Nomu who are, you know, innocent victims of mad science. 

They want to take down Ujiko, but they don’t care at all about his creations which are all former people, and the heroes know this by this point. Finally, I want to discuss one of the most empathic characters in the manga. 

Aiawa is the current guardian of Eri. He participated in the mission to rescue her from Chisaki. He is someone who views Eri as a victim, and never gets upset with her or blames her for her out of control quirk the same way Chisaki once did. 

Not only that but Aizawa himself has had a friend kidnapped and stolen away by All for One. He knows personally what All for One can do to a person, by changing Shirakumo to Kurogiri he completely warped his personality and controlled him to the point where the person he once was was almost gone. 

He knows All for One is capable of having that affect on people, not only that but Kurogiri himself says that Shigaraki is like a lost kitten that he can’t throw away because he feels responsible. 

Aizawa has rescued a victim who is in similiar circumstances to Shigaraki. Aizawa has literally seen his best friend warped and changed by All for One’s hand. It should be obvious what Shigaraki has been through by now, and yet Aizawa doesn’t seem to care about Shigaraki’s circumstances at all.

Shirakumo has done bad things in AFO’s name as well. However, Aizawa decides to see Shirakumo as a victim. Even though Shirakumo is also complicit in the grooming and raising of Shigaraki for what he is, and almost certainly had a hand in manipulating him. 

Aizawa empathizes with Kurogiri because he knows him personally, because he wants Shirakumo back. He doens’t bother to care about Shigaraki, because he doesn’t know Shigaraki personally. It’s not only hypocritical, it’s also just plain ignorance. 

Aizawa is literally given every story reason to care. Shirakumo literally tells Aizawa that Shigaraki is a person he wants to protect and that he’s fond of. Aizawa believes that despite the terrible things he’s done, there’s still the boy who wanted to become a hero somewhere in Kurogiri, and he’s literally proven right. 

Shirakumo still has a chance and is given a chance to become a hero, because Aizawa cares about him because they were friends but that’s about it. It’s not like Aizawa is driven by a very rigorous and strict sense of justice. He’s clearly willing to make exceptions, even for people who have put his students at risk, or even personally attacked him. He’s willing to reach out and understand Shirakumo’s circumstances, so clearly he doesn’t have a completely black and white view of good and evil. However, Aizawa’s reasons for sympathizing with Kurogiri and only Kurogiri are ultimately pretty selfish. It’s because he wants Shirakumo back. He doesn’t care about the circumstances, or even who Kurogiri cares about now he just wants his old friend back. Therefore he has no reason to care about Shigaraki who was victimized in a similiar way to Kurogiri, just because he doesn’t know him. I guess you’re not obligated to care about anybody, but it’s the exact opposite of empathy, especially in a character like Aizawa who has always shown to be especially protective of children. Nobody tries to understand Shigaraki, nobody tries to empathize with him, even though he also once had the exact same dream as both Shirakumo, and even Deku. 

But Shigaraki’s just a monster that needs to be put down and stopped, there’s not a fragment of good in him like there was for Kurogiri, like there was for Twice. 

Aizawa even gets angry at Ujiko for the callous way he treats human lives. For the way they were tossed aside. He’s righteously angry for Ujiko’s victims, especially Kurogiri. But he doesn’t stop to think for a second that Shigaraki is possibly another victim manipulated by the likes of Ujiko. Once again because Aizawa doesn’t personally know Shigaraki, or because Shigaraki is a bad person, who cares if he gets hurt and manipulated by Ujiko. 

So we see by the heroes, Shigaraki referred to as a thing, Shigaraki referred to as an it. He’s just a monster to be stopped. It’s like he’s a boss in a video game the heroes need to kill. 

Even though they literally see him being experimented on by Ujiko, an actual abuser who has used his money and connections to commit inhuman experiments his whole life that too must be Shigaraki’s fault somehow. The heroes are repeating the exact same lines that Shigaraki’s abuser All for One did on him. 

By treating him as a monster. By treating him as a thing that needs to be killed, rather than a person who needs to be saved. They are doing All for One’s work for him by creating a symbol of fear and robbing a lifelong victim of abuse of his humanity. It’s like they want villains like Shigaraki to exist so they can remain heroes. 

[makeste]

Thank you responding to the AFO Vestige question. Assuming everything you said is true then the question that comes to my mind is why did AFO and the Dr waste so much time preparing Tomura and making sure he was worthy. They would had succeeded more completely if they just did the operation as quickly as possible. Also do you think that Tomura rejected AFO because he thought it was an illusion that he did not want to submit to, or because he rejects AFO in his enirtey? Have a good day.

I’m actually going to turn this question around and take it one step further. if AFO’s plan was to transfer his quirk all along, why didn’t he do it fifteen years ago? specifically, why did he choose the child Shimura Tenko as his vessel, rather than the already-grown Shimura Kotarou?

you see, this isn’t confirmed yet, but I suspect that the primary reason AFO decided to transfer his soul into a new body is because that’s essentially what his brother has been doing for the past nine generations, and AFO has hypothesized that that’s why his brother’s quirk has gotten stronger and stronger, to the point of him actually being able to put up a fight against him now. and so he applies the same logic to his own quirk, and figures that if it worked for his brother, it should work for him as well. we know that AFO believes his transfer into Tomura will enable him to finally steal OFA, but we don’t really know why he’s so confident of that. it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the reason why.

anyway, so if that’s the case, it would mean he’s had this plan for some time now, likely even before he was injured by All Might. this whole plan is basically based off of Quirk Singularity theory, and Ujiko confessed to Mic that he’s the one who originally came up with that concept -- right before he met AFO.

so it’s not too much of a stretch to assume that when AFO met Ujiko and heard his theories, that’s when he finally put two and two together that his brother’s quirk was becoming progressively stronger with each subsequent generation, while his own quirk -- powerful, but stuck at the comparatively weaker first-generation level -- was stagnating. it then stands to reason that this is when he first started putting the plan together to transfer his quirk into another body. not seven years ago, when All Might injured him, but decades before that. decades before All Might was even born.

after all, this is when he first started experimenting with the Noumu as well, researching how to prep another human’s body to be able to withstand multiple quirks. because it wouldn’t be enough to simply transfer his powers and be done with it; if Ujiko’s theories on the Singularity were correct, the transferred quirk would be exponentially more powerful, and so the new vessel would need to be able to withstand that. everything we know about the Noumu makes so much sense in hindsight if we look at it in the context of AFO researching how to create the perfect new vessel for his transferred, and upgraded, quirk.

but here’s the thing: if it is true that AFO started putting this plan into works years before he sustained his debilitating injury at All Might’s hands (and that does seem to be the case; Ujiko even said that AFO “foresaw his downfall”, which I interpret to mean that he knew he would eventually be outclassed by OFA if Quirk Singularity kept doing its thing), it’s all the more reason for me to believe that he fully intends to possess his “successor’s” body, rather than just going along for the ride. a healthy AFO would have absolutely no incentive to transfer his powers unless he was sure he would survive the process. that’s basically just suicide otherwise, and at the time he would have had no reason to desire that.

anyway. so if that’s true, it would also mean that when AFO tracked down Shimura Kotarou fifteen years ago, he likely already possessed the technology to transfer his quirk into Kotarou’s body if he wanted. this would have been only a year or so before Shirakumo’s death, and Kurogiri is an extremely advanced Noumu, indicating that their research had already progressed pretty far by this point. Kotarou is arguably just as good of a potential vessel as his son, and has the same devastating blood ties to Nana that AFO wants to use to torment All Might. he’s also fully grown, and AFO wouldn’t have to wait another 10-15 years in order for him to be old enough to possess. so why not??

and I think the answer to this question is the same as the answer to the other question of “why did he wait so long to transfer his quirk to Tomura”: because they weren’t ready yet. because AFO needed a perfect vessel, and the technology wasn’t read yet. they hadn’t reached a point where they knew the transfer would be safe. they hadn’t reached the point where they could reliably ensure that the new body would be able to withstand the quirk (hell, we’re seeing some problems with that now). they hadn’t yet gathered all the quirks they wanted, such as the regeneration quirk. they needed more time. and so AFO chose to kill Kotarou -- or rather, have Tenko kill him -- and take Tenko under his wing instead.

again, Tenko was “adopted” by AFO more than fifteen years ago -- before AFO was injured by All Might. and yet he went ahead with his plans to raise Tenko as his perfect little All Might-hating heir anyway. this means that whatever AFO’s ultimate plan is with Tenko, it’s something that was concocted before he was injured. or in other words, before he would have had any incentive to willingly sacrifice himself in favor of ~selflessly~ turning the reins over to his heir. he was putting in the time to raise Tomura up as his successor before he had any reason to. if all he wanted was a new body, he could have just locked the kid up for a decade or so until the transfer process was finally ready to go. so it must be more than that.

so I have a few stray thoughts/theories on this. first things first, AFO just really likes to fuck with people. remember that he in essence created OFA to begin with because it wasn’t enough for him to simply defeat his bro; he wanted to subjugate him. he wanted that decisive victory over him, mental as well as physical. for him, the psychological aspect of the victory is just as important. and so I think that part of him putting Tenko through all of this torment and raising him up into the perfect homicidal pawn was purely just to torture All Might and Nana and all the rest of the OFA users, because AFO is just kind of fucked up like that you guys.

second, is that as we’ve seen with OFA, even when one of the souls does have predominant control, it doesn’t mean the other souls just disappear completely. they’re still there in the background, and they’re still capable of influencing the user’s body, and possibly even wresting control. hell, we’re seeing this happen right now. if AFO can possess Tomura’s body, it’s reasonable to assume that if the situation were reversed and AFO had control, Tomura could still try to fight back as well. and so presumably, it would be much more desirable if Tomura was inclined to be cooperative with AFO, much as the OFA vestiges all get along with Deku. if you’re gonna invite a roommate to come share space in your brain -- possibly for the rest of all eternity -- better get one you’re sure you can live with, right?

and there are a bunch of other reasons I can think of; I’m just gonna list the rest of them real quick so we can wrap this up:

Ujiko says in chapter 222 that Tomura is “weak” and needs to prove himself. it could be that this was his way of setting up Tomura to “train” with Machia for a few months so as to gain the physical and mental fortitude to be able to withstand the four-month Noumufication process.

it could also be that he wanted Tomura to amass a loyal following in much the same way that AFO had before him, as a lot of AFO’s power came from the number of people who were loyal to him and/or feared him.

lastly, it could just be AFO playing the long game once again, seeing as his ultimate goal is to steal OFA back from its current bearer. OFA, which contains his brother’s soul along with all of the other bearers’ souls. (why he thinks this would be a good idea is beyond me btw, but that’s another topic for another post lmao.) and at that point Tomura’s soul will be reunited with Nana’s. except he can’t even allow them that little bit of peace, because he’s such a spiteful, miserable fuck. so he’s made it so that if they are reunited, either Tomura will hate Nana, or else alternatively he’ll be so torn over all of the evil shit he’s done that he still won’t be able to reconcile with her even if he wants to. but the point is, either way, AFO wins! because everyone is miserable except for him. :’)

anyway, so this is all conjecture; it’s possible there’s some other reason I haven’t thought of, and it’s also possible that I’m wrong about all of this, of course. my read of AFO’s character is that he’s too selfish to ever step back and let someone else have all the glory while all he can do is watch. everything about AFO -- his quirk, his name even -- is defined by selfishness, in stark contrast to OFA and its users’ selflessness. and so I’ve always believed that AFO would be the final villain somehow, so as a result my theories are all colored by this belief. but it’s possible I’ve misread the character or Horikoshi’s intentions, and that Tomura is in fact the final villain, in which case it remains to be seen exactly what is going on with AFO and all his psychic bullshit then lol.

but if not, then this is my best guess. and as for why Tomura rejected AFO, he said it himself; he believes he’s outgrown AFO and now wants to surpass him. AFO and Ujiko’s plans to make him self-actualized worked a little too well, maybe. or maybe not, and this is still playing into AFO’s hands in some other way I haven’t figured out yet. I honestly don’t know for sure. but I am fairly certain that by the time this arc ends, we’ll have a much better idea.