#LoV meta

[polpol333]

Bnha with LoV be like:

Introduce new villains

Make them interesting

Let them interact with each other in a found family way, let them care about each other, showing that they're not monsters

Give them sympathetic, tragic, and understandable backstories

Show through these backstories that they became criminals not bc of their flaws but bc of circumstances and trauma

Raise serious topics through their backstories like child abuse & neglect (real world problems) and detrimental quirk counselling & mutant discrimination (bnha world problems)

Let them occasionally make great points about the hero society (which would be instantly ignored by the heroes)

Give them parallels with the heroes

Don't let any of them kill anyone the audience cares about, don't let them commit anything truly unforgivable and gross

Let (a few) heroes connect with them

Make saving them the main goal of some heroes

Kill almost all of them 👍

[gradelstuff]

Tomura Shigaraki's character pages in the Ultra Age fanbook

[ace-touya]

I really like how important friendships are in MHA, especially as an asexual person. And like - you can romantically ship whoever you want, I have my own headcanons about romantic ships that aren’t canonically romantic. But when looking at the canon, it’s nice to see how important platonic friendships are.

The league of villains are a found family.

Katsuki and Izuku are childhood friends (to enemies to friends) who mean the absolute world to each other.

Rooftop trio and the Pussycats are so close with their friendship groups that they made/planned to make their hero agencies together.

All of Class 1-A have a tight-knit bond.

The Bakusquad and the Dekusquad exist.

Ochaco, Izuku and Tenya became really good friends really quickly.

Having friends saved Shoto.

Aizawa and All Might go from being work colleagues to bring friends, and this makes a huge impact on All Might’s life.

Like Idk, I know the fandom tends to focus a lot on the shipping aspects, but I would love to appreciate the friendship more, because it’s so important to the characters, and, as an aroace person, it’s really important to me too.

[valenteal]

Honestly I just really want to know what Horikoshi was thinking…

Like at the beginning MHA was obviously leaning towards more society critical ideas and undertones, with most of hero society being blatantly corrupt from the audience’s perspective and the Villains slowly being humanized until a lot of the audience is actually rooting for them.

And then like… one sub-plot at a time the underlying message does a complete 180! It doesn’t make sense! I can’t quite pin down one specific moment where it changes but by the beginning of the last war arc everything is flipped!

What caused such a change? Was it just that Horikoshi’s own perspective on the world got more conservative over time? Was it pressure from some kind of authority that wanted him to stop spreading anti-establishment ideology disguised as a superhero manga? Was it audience feedback?

Someone tell me what happeneddddd 😫

[irontragedyreview]

I was waiting for the official translation of this chapter because I wanted to know what meaning they were going to give to this phrase and since I don't know Japanese the most accurate thing I will get is the official translation.

At first I was going to take just Shoto's panel but in the end I decided to also take the previous one because the phrase "there's sure to be a period of chaos the books don't talk about", this phrase plus the way Shoto talks about the lack of a symbol and how a person like Afo born or emerges from them, it’s something that left me thinking and a little uneasy, because while I understand what Shoto says, it makes me wonder how much these kids know about their history.

What I'm trying to get is that the concept of Horikoshi's pre-Quirk society isn’t original, in fact it can be found literally in the X-Men comics, I would even say that you don't even have to go to the comics, The X-Men movies of the early 2000s showed us the pre-quirk society of bnha, the first scene of that movie is Jean Gray speaking in front of Congress against the anti-mutant registry, throughout this debate the question that makes Jean's words lose power is "Are mutants dangerous?", the question itself is unfair because Jean answers is that everything has the potential to be dangerous, even a teenager driving a car, the reply is that those cases can be regulated but mutants are an unknown and therefore a danger as they can’t be controlled. The original trilogy has this presentation to a society fearful of mutants, the end of the trilogy is the invention of a cure against the X gene, which is discovered through the experimentation of a mutant child (Chisaki arc). This is later taken up in the films that focus on being prequels, in X-Men days of future past where we meet Dr. Trask whose introduction is him explaining how the evolutionary chain of the human being was, how those more evolved ended exterminated their less evolved ancestors, the mutants here are the next evolutionary step and all those born without the X gene are the least evolved, who in Trask's words will only follow the same path as their ancestors before.

Now, whoever reads this will say "why is this story important and what does it have to do with Shoto's words?" Well, it's that Shoto's words, plus the panel that refers to those events that are outside the books, they make me wonder how the UA students know history, because they live in a society where the supremacy of the quirk is what is imposed, they didn’t live in first stages and we know little or nothing about how this stage is told to the generations that followed. Afo, Yoichi, Kudo and Bruce were born in the first glimpses of quirk society, however there is something that is interesting and that is that Kudo doesn’t represent a front against discrimination to people with quirks, they were a revolutionary army againts Afo, Yoichi himself never thinks about the discrimination and mistreatment of quirk people in the society in which he grew up, which is incredibly strange considering that he witnessed his brother killing a group that planned to kill them for recognizing that Afo belonged to that new generation of people. The pre-Quirk society carried out practices of discrimination and perhaps even death of people they considered dangerous, the majority of quirkless people in the old society were terrified of the quirks and their response was to attack the unknown. Ofc, we can only talk about Japan since we don't know what happened throughout the world, from what we can see the glowing baby was not considered dangerous in China, or perhaps there were certain quirks that were less inconvenient than others but in Japan we can see that there were groups against people with quirks.

Now, returning to Shoto's words, the big problem of the society in which Afo was born is not the lack of symbols, the chaos of pre-Quirk society was based on fear and discrimination of an unknown other. The times after the first stages are unknown to all readers, we only know what Horikoshi said, we also know that the society where Toshinori grew up and decided to become a symbol of peace was also very different. All Might is presented to us in the manga as the first symbol not only of peace but also as the first symbol of society, although Banjo is one of the first group of heroes who aren’t what we know as vigilantes (please correct me if I'm wrong). ), it isn’t until All Might and his long career that the society of heroes as we know it now is consolidated. All Might is the symbol and only pillar where this society stands and that explains how weak a symbol that shapes society can be, because once AM can no longer act as such, that is when society breaks down. In the movie Catching Fire there is a very interesting conversation between Snow and Katniss, where Snow tells her that Katniss' behavior cannot be ignored, because if people thought they could face the Capitol without fear, eventually the system would collapse and Katniss responds "what a fragile system if it collapses because of a few berries"

With all this I’m trying to say that having a symbol or not does not end up being a factor of true stability, AM or rather Toshinori renounced every aspect of his personal life to become the symbol of peace and bear the weight of society, but his figure was the only thing that kept society in order, the symbol of peace was fragile and only hid a broken and corrupt society, this isn’t AM's fault, the problem is that when Shoto talks about the lack of a symbol doesn’t finish internalizing that society with a symbol didn’t work either, because the symbol was only represented in a man and when he could no longer take his place, Endevor could have been the number one hero but he isn’t a symbol at the level of AM, no hero could fill that place.

So, is it the lack of symbol that allows chaos to be generated? Or is the function of a symbol to create stability? What happens when the symbol is more revolutionary and generates chaos or confrontation? This is where I may sound controversial but Afo could have been a symbol for the people he "helped", in a twisted way he was a symbol of refuge for people who were rejected and found with him a place to belong or even a solution to be found, someone that could take away the quirk that made them different in that society, Tomura is a symbol for those who didn’tt fit into society, we saw that when in the previous chapters he said that he wanted to be the hero of the villains, when we saw panels of people who said "Yes, Shigaraki destroys everything", Spinner is a symbol for the discrimination of heteromorphs even though Horikoshi neglected the issue.

So, in bnha there are symbols, the problem is that the heroes lost the symbol that gave stability to the society that they know, the society was sustained by covering its problems and creating its villains through the rejection and indifference of those who didn’t fit. The society of pre-quirks didn’t become chaos due to the lack of symbols but due to the systematic mistreatment of a minority where fear led to violence, Afo knew how to take advantage of those expelled at the time. It’s for all this that I wonder how much the UA students know about history and the formation of society, of course there could have been sides represented, for example like Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, who could be symbols in that pre-quirk society but these wouldn’t have avoided chaos, since it’s formed by the discrimination of others considered different. The society of heroes in bnha doesn’tt need a symbol embodied in a person, it isn’t the lack of a symbol that generates chaos but the system, symbols can often be functional to the perpetuation of the same, instead of corrections to their shortcomings.

[darkonekrisrewrite]

The Lov are the protagonists of this series

So spoilers.......Deku got (will get) his arms back in less than 10 minutes (not an exaggeration) after losing them.

And it occurs to me, that between the heroes and the villains (specifically the Lov) of bnha, only one side has gone through the full spectrum of what shonen protagonists usually go through in their journeys.

The tragic backstory:

The character development:

Forming positive emotional bonds with a tight group of found friends/family:

Physical harm that is not fixed and has lasting consequences:

And the loss of close friends along the way:

All things that the the whole core Lov has gone through and is still going through now, and all the things that most of the heroes don't have.

The focused group of the hero kids, being deku, ochako, bakugo and shoto have gone through character development and some arguably have a "tragic backstory" (mostly just shoto's could be considered tragic), but everything else listed above?

Not so much.

They haven't really ever lost anything, definitely no friends killed, and haven't had any kind of lasting consequences throughout everything.

And the rest of class 1A is in the exact same place as they were at the halfway point of bnha, nothing has changed for them.

That applies to the rest of the hero side too.

Mirio lost his quirk?

Rewound, back in business.

Aizawa lost his childhood friend shirakumo?

Back as a nomu and the open-ended possiblity of healing/some form of recovery. (Though aizawa did lose his leg, with Eri's quirk power being left ambiguous, who knows?)

The only heroes who have lost anything with any sense of pertinence are endeavor and hawks.

Having darker back stories and tangible consequences.

But they're also the only heroes that narratively had it coming, and even then it still doesn't reach the level that the Lov is at.

Hawks doesn't have any bonds with anyone, despite whatever's going on with him and tokoyami.

They worked a hero internship together and hawks said some vaguely inspiring advice to tokoyami, that's pretty much it.

And endeavor seems to have gotten everything that he ever wanted, just the opposite of how he wanted it.

To be the number 1 hero, to make his son(s) powerful masterpieces, to protect the next generation.

There's not an instance of the heroes in bnha taking a true loss, at least not a loss that wasn't then gotten back later.

Bakugo was lost/kidnapped but they got him back.

All-might lost his power and couldn't be a hero anymore but then he was given an Ironman suit with power that could rival All for one.

Everything is walked back.

But with the Lov, whenever they get hit, it always leaves a mark that stays with them, and they change because of it.

Their injuries don't just go away, leaving very visible effects.

Their back stories left scars on them that they still struggle with in the present.

And their present situation isn't great so they find comfort in each other and the bonds they made together to get by.

Lastly when they lost their friend/comrade, it was treated with the same weight as if it were a hero losing their close friend, including the rage.

The "hero's journey" that shonen heroes usually move through seems to be walked by the villains in this story.

The Lov.

[helga-grinduil]

Saw the most insane take on this chapter today, and I feel like I need to say something.

Toga decided to die… NOT because she accepted Ochako’s feelings and her ‘healthy love’. If you were to actually read the chapter with your eyes instead of your ass, this is what you would see:

The structure of Toga’s monologue (and the monologue itself) here mirrors Jin's monologue. The narrative is basically throwing it in your face that Toga is copying Jin, even if unknowingly. Her entire 'sacrifice' is a parallel to Jin, who also decided to sacrifice himself for the people who accepted him (The League in Jin's case, Ochako in Himiko's case) because he didn't really care about himself anymore and didn't think rehabilitation was possible for him. She's not doing this because she accepted the 'healthy' concept of love, she's literally copying Jin's version of love - self-sacrifice.

Toga literally gives us an actual reason for why she's doing it: she doesn't believe (yet) that the world can change for the better and that the society would try to work with her instead of completely supressing her. She doesn't believe that she would have a future if she'd allow herself to be captured by heroes. This entire thought process is coming from the core ideology of the League of Villains. Not believing that the world can change and help them so the only thing left is to either destroy it or die is Tomura's ideology.

(Destruction is the main point. Destroying as much as they can and feel like before they're killed off or before they're left with nothing but ashes is the real purpose behind this entire war.)

And even when Toga speaks about the League creating an easier world for her to live in, the flashback shows them before MVA - alive and well. Twice is dead. Touya (as she thinks) is dead. Compress was captured. Currently, as far as Toga is aware - only Shigaraki (who isn't even Tomura anymore, the last time she saw him), Kurogiri and Spinner are left standing (and Spinner is actually currently laying on the hospital floor, dying). Ultimately, the League creating that world for her is an impossible, unachievable dream by now - and she knows it. It's not something that is going to happen. She gave up on that idea. She doesn't believe that she has a future if heroes capture her, and she doesn't believe that she has a future if the League 'wins' (and she knows they won't).

She believes that dying is the conclusion all of them are heading towards, the League came there prepared to die - that's why she chooses to save Ochako (the person who accepted her and made her happy) and kill herself instead of getting locked up or dying in some other way. Dying on her own terms, dying by saving the only person who actually accepted her (like Twice did) is the only way she can see herself going out happily now. There is no other option left in her mind.

And hey! There is actually another huge factor at play here, which I feel like some people forget for some reason? Toga thinks that Touya is dead. Moreso, Toga thinks that Touya killed himself. Dying on her own terms, killing herself while smiling?

She is following in his footsteps.

That's why she 'asked' Touya if he'd managed to smile/laugh before dying, because *that's* what Touya's entire speech about laughter was about. Dying while having a fucking blast, dying while doing whatever they want and laughing at the world, accepting the fact that they will die, but at least they'll cause as much harm and pain to the world that hurt them as possible before that. Himiko has decided to kill herself while doing what she wants (sacrificing herself to save a person who made her happy) with a smile on her face.

It's not love & justice that lead to self-destruction, it's self-depreciation and inability to believe that things can get better that do.

P.S. She’s not dead btw.

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

Rereading the manga, I notice something really interesting. If you go back to chapter 59, you'll find All Might explaining how AFO and OFA as quirks were born. That's the first time Toshinori explains the history of AFO too.

The interesting part is the way he tells the story of Yoichi, the first user of OFA. It reminds me a lot of Tenko's story. It can be just me, but please read it for yourself:

" The man had a quirkless little brother / the man had a quirkless younger brother.

The little brother was small, and frail, but he harbored a strong sense of justice...! / This brother was small and fragile, but he had a strong sense of justice!

His brother's actions panged his heart... and he opposed him / and the deeds of his big brother pained him... So he opposed the tyrant. "

( A quirkless little brother asking why the world is so unfair finding out he actually has a quirk when he decides to oppose his abuser? Of course, here the difference is that Yoichi was older than Tenko when it all happened. He was not a confused 5 years old trying to understand why and how.... )

" Yes... He who was thought quirkless, did in fact possess one prior. / Yes... It turned out he hadn't actually been quirkless from the start.

Though neither he himself nor anyone around him had ever noticed / thought neither he nor anyone else has known it. "

That means there is a previous instance in which a young man thought quirkless had indeed a quirk: Yoichi himself!

It also makes me think about how Tomura/Tenko's control over decay depends on his emotional and psychological state.

The night his quirk awakened, we saw that Tenko had no control over it; everything that touched the ground he had contact with decayed. After he was "rescued" and after he was given the hands of his deceased family, AFO noticed that Tomura had unconsciously restrained decay so he would only affect the things he directly touched. Later on the story, Tomura was able to expand his quirk, evolving to decay without using all his five fingers during My Villain Academia. He was able to decay things at will during the War arc!!!

Could it be possible that Tenko had unconsciously repressed his own quirk for years before the night he killed his family?

Maybe when he tried to repress his own feelings about what was happening at home, Tenko also repressed decay without knowing. If he kept all his negative feelings in check as to not upset his family, it'd be an option.

If we wanted to reaaaally go crazy theorizing, we could even make a case about how Tenko having a previous quirk before AFO implanted decay on him is a possibility (within the frames of the bnha narrative). I'm not going there, but I think that fic authors would appreciate the prompt.

[class1akids]

The way toga grief towards losing jin was sidelined and how uraraka never really comfort toga about jin was kinda weird to me

Yeah - this is why I'm not as big a fan of that fight as the whole fandom seems to be.

The PLF war confrontation between Toga and Ochako centered on the question of "who gets save by the heroes?" mirroring Ochako's question of "who saves the heroes". And then the answer Ochako gives "girl, even if that's what pleases you, you can't just go around killing people and expect no consequences" (which is valid, but is not exactly a response to Toga's question) pushes Toga further into grief.

Then Toga makes another attempt - this time with Deku and asks "what you want to do with me" and Deku's response "I can't imagine being like you - hurting the ones you claim to love" further escalates Toga.

And I think here the fight shifts away a bit from Toga's grief and more towards validating her own way of being. Or rather in a way, the two is conflated into the same: Jin got killed because his quirk was judged too dangerous and he wouldn't back down.

So I guess Ochako's attempts to understand her make Toga feel like a "person" who is not just to be stopped, but also seen as a human being. But in the end, Ochako is just one person and her calling Toga's smile pretty will not solve all the systemic issues around toxic quirk counselling, the way dangerous quirks are treated from childhood, the pressure to conform, the lack of mental care for people like Jin, the way the marginalized or poor are treated, families that disown their "difficult children". And I think the outcome of the fight recognizes that as Toga stays suicidal and says that the world as is doesn't work for her but the destruction doesn't make her happy either.

So even if Toga is "saved", she feels like her only option is to die and Ochako is clearly not happy with this outcome (btw, I still think Toga will live). There is no alternative for them, because Toga and Ochako are just two "normal teenage girls" with limited tools and the world they live in doesn't foster that understanding. Ochako reached and saved Toga's soul on a personal level, but in the grand scheme of things, nothing changed (yet).

I feel like this is maybe the outcome of all 3 fights - Toga's, Toya's and Tenko's "inner child" all got a moment of acceptance / relief they needed, but in the end, a bunch of teenagers reaching out in empathy can only go so far if the systemic issues have not been addressed.

And if Hori puts some effort into these issues in the epilogue - it can tie together quite well. Toga's and Uraraka's story can touch the heart of people to start to think about quirk discrimination and it could inspire people with the real power (like Hawks for example, if he becomes like the head of HPSC) to make changes to crucial aspects of how society works with buy-in from the public opinion.

I definitely feel like the narrative would let both the LoV Trio and the Savior squad down if everything stayed the same. But if the villains' issues become something the hero kids deeply care about on a broader level, their efforts can ignite a change. Then something good can come out of the confrontations, something important that can reach a new common ground between "destruction" and "bringing it all back".

[abodeofhunter]

Heeeeey! Look what I've done here! What resins! I want to make either micro stands or keychains, or both. I could make a pack of them.

[hornedtussock]

"Curious was a valuable asset.. She didn't need to throw herself at the front lines" Let's see if this will get anywhere, the hair took forever to figure out-

[gradelstuff]

[fanofflames]

Working on a Skeptic Funko Pop!

Sir Nighteye makes a great base lol.

[strike-n-brawl]

@*#&vrbb×*&#sj ok👍

[lgbtlunaverse]

A group of misfits outside of society

So I saw this post the other day talking about how toga is never truly treated as "the girl one" in the league despite, after Magne died, being the only female member. And it got me thinking about how no matter how endearing the protective found family dynamics in fics are, she's never actually treated like the baby of the group either. After mustard is arrested in basically their first mission, she is the youngest member by several years and the only one who's still a teenager.

But if you look purely at the league's interactions, you wouldn't really be able to tell? No one tells her to stay home for dangerous missions, no one babies her, she's never dismissed based on still being a child either.

This becomes especially obvious in her friendship with twice. Twice is only like a year apart from aizawa in age, and toga is in the age range of a highschool sutdent, but if you compare the relationship the UA kids have with aizawa to the one toga has with twice, they could not possibly be more different.

Jin and Himiko are not a mentor-student dynamic. These are two people finding understanding in each other when they've never gotten it anywhere else. Jin looks out for her not because she's under his care, but because they're friends. And Himiko does exactly the same.

Objectively it's... obviously kind of a bad idea to let a 17 year old go out into life threatening battles without even the minimum protection the hero students are offered, but the league is a supervillain group. They're committing murder and doing domestic terrorism. None of these people should be here, this isnt't safe for any of them. What this highlight is just what the league is for all the people in it: a place away from society. Not just from stigma around their quirks or from hero-worship, but ALL societal norms. Including ideas about gender and mental illness and about what teenager should or shouldn't be doing. That's why it attracted people like Magne, Twice, and Himiko.

[justjesse116]

Yooo, eeeextra long, kinda rambly dabihawks post incoming. I talk a fair bit about myself, because that's where my experiences come from, shocker there. God speed.

Woooooof here I am being extra emo about dabihawks tonight, so sit back and pull up a chair while I make good on outlining exactly what my main malfunction is concerning them, for the 3 people that care. One ticket to sad bitch island, population: me.

So I'm beginning this by saying; no this is not about canon dabihawks, I do in fact think those bitches are not good for each other from what I've seen, HOWEVER. I tend to look at things as they could be, not as they are, and the potential here is just ridiculous.

Source? Me. And people I know. And what I mean by that is I've lived as close to Dabi's life as I feel anyone is going to get without turning into a real life murderer, and I know plenty of people (myself included) who share plenty of attributes, aspirations etc with Hawks as well.

And I know, I know, they're fictional characters and there's no way anyone can pin down who they truly are, but I guess that's kind of my point. There's just enough suspension of disbelief that you could explain away pretty much anything, but that's true for most fanon pairings, and not my point.

SO. Onto my main point.

..........Human nature.

I hate to get all psychological but STAY WITH ME. As long as I can remember I've been very independent, the "I don't need anybody" type, because life had so thoroughly kicked the shit out of me that I was downright afraid of human connection because it always ended badly and I was always so hurt by it. Well now, later in life, and a couple diagnosis later, not only can I better sus out which relationships are worth pursuing, but I can understand what I'm looking for from other people and how to get it. And do you know what it is that I want now, no matter the cost to myself? Yessir, it's love, as fucking cringe as that is for me to say. Who saw that coming, eh?

There was a meme of sorts another user posted on Tumblr of the LOV and what they all wanted most as tweets or something, and someone else edited it(?) to have all of their reasons just say 'LOVE ME, LOVE ME, LOVE ME', and that lives rent free in my fucking head.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it turns out love is, in fact, the answer.......(*soft gag*) Shit do I hate to admit that.

SO ALL OF THAT TO SAY.

Dabi and Hawks understand at least broadly what the other has gone through, so they would at least have a vague understanding of one another from that. People underestimate the power of empathy.

I'm gonna be kinda toxic here and say I'm at a point in my life where I need a partner to argue with. I need to bicker, and I also do NOT need to be surrounded by yes men, I need someone to call me on my bullshit, and I feel like they would truly be like that together. Going along with the understanding, I feel like they're very well suited to holding the other accountable.

Their chemistry in my mind is undeniable. I'm a red/blue pairing bitch, I have no defense for that one.

And I'm not gonna lie, at this point I'm having a very difficult time articulating what other reasons I have beyond projection, so perhaps I'm full of shit??

There's the ever constant popular trope of both their relationships with Endeavor complicating things, their quirks being incompatible, the, you know, literal backstabbing etc, but for my purposes that's all neither here nor there. Because there is something about their relationship, both as it is and what it could be, that makes me half feral. It's The Good Shit™.

Yet again, all this to say that I truly believe despite Dabi's villainous tendencies and Hawks' position as the No. 2 hero, at some point both of those shits are going to be mighty sore for a similar connection, and I truly believe they are best suited for one another.