#SORRY for the rant-y discourse-y epic of gilgamesh i just wanted to let it all out in one place 🙏

[theophagie-remade]

(Warning: this is going to be a long long post)

[To make my life easier, I'm going to use "fanbase" to mean fans as a collective, and "fandom" to indicate those who are involved in shipping. Yes, I know that shipping isn't the only thing that makes up a fandom, but I need a quick way to differentiate between the two things, hence that "to make my life easier". Love and peace]

I've been spending a little more time on twitter these days just to witness the state of bnha discourse there (am I using it though? Ah! You'll never have me, hellsite [derogatory]), and man. It's genuinely... puzzling? Somewhat impressive, in a bad way? That such big portion of the fanbase appears to be completely unwilling to engage with anything that isn't surface level conflict, and completely disregards thematic elements, parallelisms, patterns...

Not that it's inherently wrong to be more interested in the fights, to want more action-based scenes or anything like that, and obviously it's not like bnha is the damned Divine Comedy, but the thing is, these are people who actively antagonize anyone who does talk about the [previously mentioned things] that it does have, and who do so in a scornful manner? What. Hello. I mean, shounen fans in general don't have the best reputation within manga/anime communities as it is, but to think that it has gotten this bad in there...

From my understanding things have turned especially sour in the past few months, but I do know that it has always been a thing. It was an eternity ago, but just to say one I still remember how a lot of people were genuinely convinced that Bakugou would indeed join the villains back when he had been kidnapped because... he has a bad attitude and is aggressive... When during the exam with Midoriya and All Might not long before that the audience was explicitly told what his objectives were, why he acted the way that he did, etc. Again, the problem isn't strictly that these people misunderstand things, but that they act like they know better and are so smart when canon (and theories by fandom swamp dwellers, but I'll get to this later*) has contradicted them again and again.

I'm going to half-recycle another post I made real quick. I know that to an external person it may look like I'm making up a Guy Type so that I can be mad at him, but well. It is a fact that the portion of the fanbase that I'm referring to is largely made up of young, straight men who invalidate the opinions of anyone who isn't like them, and that these guys are also very quick to turn to all sorts of bigotry whenever they have the chance, which... isn't a new thing obviously, but the thing with these guys is that oftentimes they're youtubers with a following, which can result in very nasty things. And after having had the displeasure of reading certain things, I do wonder why these men are even reading bnha anymore, what they're expecting out of it. It was obviously never going to be the dark manga that they wanted it to become. Midoriya was never going to be an ambiguous, emotionally distant protagonist. Bakugou was never going to remain a big, bad bully.

Recycling another post of mine again, but 💀 it literally is like this. Sorry for the bad screenshot but I don't want to worsen the length of this post too much lol

And speaking of Bakugou, something that at first really threw me off when I first exposed myself to this side of the fanbase (to the Dudebros™) is how vehemently they hate him. It's funny, because on paper he is most things that they've always wanted Midoriya to be. He's sure of himself, stronger than most since the beginning, has drive, is cool, isn't wHiNy. And then I began reading things like "all the teen girls and women in their 20s in this community care about is their stupid anime boy and their baseless gay ship" and I was like "Ah. It's one of those cases". And I don't like playing armchair psychologist, but from the way they're obsessed with bringing up his past bullying, and from how they talk about him in general, I do also think that they project hard onto Midoriya, whom they perceive as "the victim", "the underdog", hence why they wish he hated Bakugou, why they play down how important they are for each other, maybe why they refuse to accept the emotional weight of certain scenes and narrative choices.

And to tie back into *what I said earlier, this attitude that they have towards Bakugou, the way they act like he isn't a pivotal character (he's the damn co-star on set ffs), how they constantly and purposefully misunderstand him has had very funny outcomes, in which: they say A; the fandom (among which are the aforementioned brainless girls and women) says B; in the time that it takes for a chapter to come out, the dudebros revel in their perceived superiority; Horikoshi ends up delivering B, or as close to B as it could have been; ✨️the dudebros have a meltdown✨️, mayhaps they even have the bright idea of sending some death threats to Horikoshi himself here and there; repeat. And obviously the fandom has its own unlikely theories too, but in the case of these guys we're talking consistent levels of flopping, of completely misreading the manga and the characters. But no, it's the teen girls and the women who are stupid and ruin the fanbase with their disgusting gay🤢🤮 shipping (and any queer fan too, obviously 🙄, do any of you not know that shounen manga is supposed to be for us manly straight men who like pussy and want to see blood and guts 🙄) (why are you even still reading bnha if you're looking for that???)

The unfortunate coincidence that has made all of this worse was that, just as most people in the fandom like Bakugou and most dudebros dislike him, most dudebros like Uraraka and most people in the fandom... dislike her? Nope, not even that! (Un)surprisingly, there aren't many people around who express negative things about Uraraka herself. What I did read? Criticism (very understandable criticism, criticism that I fully agree with) of Horikoshi's writing, wishes that she had been given more agency, that she had been treated like the prominent supporting character that she is in a dignified way and not just as the mc's token future wife... Mhhh. Funny that. Funny also that most of this criticism indeed comes from women, who in turn are told that they should just shut up and stop complaining. :)

And wouldn't it be even funnier if the two characters that the fanbase is split over were both shipped with the mc, creating an even more polarised environment. :). And it's frustrating that it all circles back to that, izuocha isn't fandom-popular because people generally bring up its one-sidedness and the fact that Uraraka's feelings for Midoriya did have a negative impact on her growth, bakudeku isn't dudebro-popular because, and I'm listing things that I have literally read: it's gay and Midoriya and Bakugou aren't gay (a classic, an evergreen. Fresh); Bakugou abused Midoriya; Midoriya and Bakugou think of each other like brothers (note the paradox here); it's "sexualising children" (but shipping izuocha isn't?).

So Fun. Not one thing to not love in here 👍

Going back to Bakugou a second, but at this point it isn't even funny to read certain comments anymore for just how stupid they are. Bakugou dudebros pov encouraging him to win, keeping his secrets, wanting him to look at me, helping him train, constantly worrying for him, saving his life by risking mine, knowing him better than anyone else, apologising to him, being the closest person to him, acting like and thinking about him before possibly dying because I hate him 💢😠👊

And I mean, like I said lots of guys say things like these because 1) of projection and refusal to move on from the bully version of him from the earliest part of the story; 2) he's largely liked by female fans and Women Bad; 3) it's an extension of the bakudeku/izuocha ship war (🙄), but this pettiness and desire to be contrary for no good reason at all do leave me ??? Like, just how incapable of reading are you willing to make yourself look just because of how immature you are (if you are indeed faking it instead of the worse scenario, which is you not even misreading things on purpose but being that bad at it...)