#Togachako critical

[thaeonblade]

Okay MHA...I’m tired...

I know I’m going to get hate for this and I don’t care. But can My Hero Academia go five minutes without romanticizing a fucked abusive unhealthy, destructive or terrible relationship? Because right now, the heroes look like self-righteous dumbasses who should not be trusted nor have any good sense of reason, logic or frankly a consistent sense of morality, ethics and justice. And every time the story pulls out that “the villain is a child inside” crap or goes on about how life was unfair to the mass murderer, it makes the villain look more and more unintentionally unsympathetic. Can heroes like Izuku and Ochako be allowed to set boundaries and priorities to let horrible people hurt them without being considered bad heroes or bad people? Is it really bad for them to not let themselves get hurt just to validate some asshole’s feelings? Ochako doesn’t owe Toga shit. Toga isn’t entitled to shit. But the story is basically absolving Toga of all of the shit she’s done so that Ochako looks heroic for bleeding to death to reach out to this selfish murderous psycho bitch with a stalker complex. It doesn’t make Toga sympathic, it makes her look even more selfish. It doesn’t make Ochako a better character, it actually makes her kind of pathetic and hard to respect. I’m not sorry, I can’t respect people who disregard lives lost, families destroyed and can actually look a mass murderer in the eye and say that she has a lovely smile and admires how carefree she is while attacking her and her friends. This is Ochako’s big moment apparently. Enabling and coddling a fucking murderer because holding her accountable for her crimes and telling her that she mad bad choices and she’s responsible for them is “bad”. Society may have been unfair to Toga, but Society didn’t make Toga kill Saito (yes he’s dead per the databook) or any of the people she left to bleed to death, Himiko Toga choose that for herself. However, when I say Toga’s responsible for her choices I also state that she has the ability to make the right choice and do the right thing. Same goes for Shigaraki, but that requires taking personal ownership and responsibility for your actions. This is why the Toga and Ochako storyline sucks so much because it acts like Toga’s entitled to sympathy and patience and completely ignores all of the horrible and shitty things she’s done or been apart of. When Ochako says that she “can’t forget Toga’s actions”, this is empty protest and her actions and other words like “have my blood for the rest of my life” don’t add up. And no, Toga being bisexual does not excuse shit. She’s still a psycho murderer and deserves consequences. She sure as shit doesn’t deserve Ochako after nearly killing her and all of the harm she’s caused against her and her friends. I won’t change anyone’s mind here, but wanting TogaChako canon is basically saying you support a fucked up relationship between a selfish psychotic murderous borderline-sexual predator and the girl she’s trying to murder. If you want to support a Yuri ship, at least pick one that isn’t romanticizing or enabling abuse and romantizing suffering for an abusive or harmful partner like for example Momo x Kyoka. If Toga was a male, ya’ll would agree with me and you know it. I halfway wonder if some of you only ship TogaChako despite all of the objective red flags because you’re that desperate or thirsty for some kind of validation. Well sorry folks, you’re picking the wrong hill to stand on because canon-wise it sucks. Fanon wise, you can make it whatever you want, I mean it. I’ve read plenty of good fanfics where Toga got the help she needed before she went off the deep end and I enjoy reading about her relationship with other characters like Ochako and Izuku. But just like how Fanon Aizawa or in some cases “Dadzawa” is very different from the objectively asshole Canon Aizawa, Fanon Toga is a sweetheart compared to the psycho murderer Canon Toga is. I honestly wouldn’t care what you ship because it’s your business. I highly question your choice of ship, but feel free to ignore me and enjoy your warped fucked up ship as you please. With that said, I’m free to dislike said ship and use evidence from the story to point out how this is the worst possible cruelty you could inflict on Ochako. But please stop pretending like Canon Toga wouldn’t be a constant threat to anyone she was with. She fucking stabbed the first guy she had a crush on and he died (again databook) and even if he didn’t die, that’s still not someone who should be shipped with anyone. And after reading all of that, if you think I’m some kind of sexist, homophobic asshole because I don’t absolve or excuse murderers regardless of race, sex or sexual identity then we have nothing to discuss because I’m not wasting any breath on you. Fuck off. For the record, I already had this problem with the Bakugou and Izuku dynamic where Bakugou basically gets no consequences for his objectively bad actions and attitude. No justice for ten years of abusive bullying; No accountability for trying to kill Izuku during the training exercise; Izuku holds Bakugou on a pedestal he doesn’t deserve and basically does all of the suffering and giving for their messed up relationship; and the story doesn’t even do the bare minimum to make Bakugou’s “redemption arc” passable. The story ignored it for almost 300 chapters and then puts in a few grand gestures then acts like that’s all that’s needed and goes no further. I also have this issue with how Izuku is lionized for acting on blind idealism and emotionality to try and “save” Shigaraki despite the thousands he’s chosen to kill; the path of villainy that he’s chosen to take; and how he’s going to kill everyone if he’s not stopped. Society didn’t make Shigaraki become a villain; attack USJ; attempt to murder the Class 1-A students and teachers multiple times; send an attack against the Camp; try to make Bakugou join him or die; make an alliance with Overhaul whose torturing a child; or willingly take AFO’s quirk to be even more destructive and evil. That was Shigaraki’s choice. Tomura Shigaraki made that choice. Tenko Shimura made that choice. The little child within Shigaraki is irrelevant. It’s not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you. If Izuku and Ochako really respected Shigaraki and Toga, they’d respect their choices and stop holding back. Take off the kiddie gloves and defeat them however they have to. If the villains have to die so that no one else is killed at their hands? So be it. Nope, instead the story treats Shigaraki and Toga like children who can’t be held responsible for their actions because it’s all society’s fault. Which is insulting to them as characters, insulting to the many they’ve killed and Izuku and Ochako are also disrespecting their friends, teachers and comrades who’ve died or almost died including Midnight who was killed by one of Shigaraki’s men on Shigaraki’s command. What is heroic about disregarding the families destroyed? How will Ochako and Izuku explain themselves to the families of Shigaraki and Toga’s victims? Will they have any answer that doesn’t involve blind emotionality or idealism? I doubt it. What’s wrong with holding the villains accountable for their actions and giving them deserved consequences and acknowledging that society is flawed and wrong them? They are not mutually exclusive. You don’t have to scream at the audience about how you’re ignoring the problem if you don’t absolve these unsympathetic people because you know murder is wrong. And while we’re at it, if Horikoshi really wanted a story about Izuku and Bakugou repairing their relationship, then he needs to hold Bakugou accountable and responsible for his shit. Izuku needs to be allowed to love himself, knock Bakugou off of his “symbol of victory” pedestal, and learn that he doesn’t need to tolerate shit from Bakugou nor prove anything to him. Instead, Horikoshi’s portraying his characters as emotional pushovers and I’m sick of abusive horrible harmful people being treated like they’re entitled to sympathy, empathy or whatever. All because society wronged them and that apparently validates their chaotic emotions and how they’re lashing out and killing thousands of people. Yet, the story expects us to treat them like they’re the victims and they’re therefore entitled to infinite patience, forgiveness and empathy. They’re not. They’re entitled to a punch to the face. And I’m done here. Note: If you disagree with what I said then do so with respect. I don’t care if you agree with me, but harassment, threats and bullying will not be tolerated. Note: Just because I’m critical of MHA, doesn’t mean I’m any less of a fan. I just will not ignore its major problems as I’ve outlined. So if anyone wants to tell me that “I’ll have no peace in this fandom”, then just know that I don’t give a damn if you think I belong here or not. PS: Despite my harsh and blunt language, I really have nothing personally against TogaChako, BakuDeku shippers or whatever. I just hate these ships because of the unfortunate implications within them due to the canonical actions and attitudes of Bakugou and Toga. I strongly and fundamentally disagree with anyone who’d support or defend these ships and it honestly annoys how much some fans desperately force their interpretations over other fans, but otherwise you can like what you like. I just reserve the right to hate what I want to hate and sadly, your ship checks off all of the wrong boxes.

[mettywiththenotes]

I hope my gf is okay (longingly touches the stab wound she gave me during her breakdown)

[linkspooky]

TOGACHAKO VS. FUFFY: How To Save Your Evil Girlfriend

So, once again My Hero Academia has failed to deliver on its promise of saving / redeeming one of the main villains of its story, and victims of its ficitonal society. This time I'm going to make the added argument that not only does failing to save Toga make the story worse, it also makes Uraraka's character almost completely hollow. While you can dismiss Deku's lack of character development as him being a shonen protagonist, both Uraraka and Shoto had arcs and Ochako's is effectively ruined by her failure to save Toga.

In order to make my point I am going to compare it to a villain redemption arc in another piece of media that does it right, Faith's character, and her strained relationship with Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A series which is overall anti-state punishment and pro-redemption and delivers on practically all the themes MHA promised us.

MORE UNDER THE CUT:

THE GOOD GIRL and THE BAD GIRL

There is a reoccurring dynamic between two female characters in media, usually between a heroine and a female villainness that I like to call: The Good Girl vs. Bad Girl complex.

However, if you were a Freudian you'd be calling this a Madonna Whore Complex.

To explain the Madonna Whore Complex, one of the biggest examples in other Media is Aronofsky's Black Swan. The entire movie is themed around the Madonna Whore complex, and the impossible double standards the male perception imposes upon women.

"The white swan and the black swan are not merely characters, and not merely characters that are relevant to Nina. The black swan and the white swan are archetypes of women. They are emblematic of the Madonna and the Whore [...] . The white swan is the Madonna, she is pure, innocent, the ingenue. The black swan is the whore, she is cunning and deviant. The seductress. Nina and her ballet counterpart Odette are characterized as perfect ingénues. Ingénues are young, innocent girls who possess qualities of youth, innocence, kindness, naivete and purity. She is the fawn eyed damsel in distress and in literary films she's often the heroine or protagonist. On the other side of the coin from the ingenue, we have the seductress, embodied by Lily and her ballet counterpart Odelle. The seductress is characterized by her promiscuity, cunning nature and sex appeal. She is the alluring femme fatalle, willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She's most often framed as the village. These draw parallels to Freud's psychoanalytical theory, a theory that suggests in the minds of some men they struggle to fully see women as fully realized and rather view them in archetypal categories." [SOURCE]

Black Swan is also a movie where Natalie Portman attempting to live up to the impossible expectations society has placed on her to be both the White Swan and the Black Swan goes insane, and quite possibly dies at the end of the movie.

Considering that Toga's entire story is that she is a shapeshifter who went mad because she could not fit both her parent's and society's expectations of being a "normal girl" then you can see why the Madonna Whore Complex is relevant, with the oversexualized, vampish, femme fatalle Toga quite obviously playing the part of the whore.

Before you call me a fraud for citing freud though, let me prove my point that the Madonna Whore Complex is quite literally everywhere in media.

I could literally keep going if this post didn't have an image limit: Jean Grey and Emma Frost, Jean Grey and Madelyne Pryor, Starfire and Blackfire, Raven and Terra, The Two Sisters from Ginger Snaps, t's literally everywhere all the way back to Lilith and Eve.

More intelligent takes on this trope play with the concept of the Madonna Whore Complex (MWC) to either present the archetypes as two fully rounded people (Catra and Adora) or demonstrate that it's impossible for women to fit into these two dinstinct categories (Natalie Portman in Black Swan).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a work that challenges the MWC, by allowing both its good girl, and bad girl to be fully realized characters. My Hero Academia plays the MWC straight to a sexist extent by not allowing Uraraka and Toga to escape their categorization of Good Girl and Bad Girl, and also going out of its way to punish and kill the seductress for her sexuality like this is a slasher horror movie. Actually, it's worse than a horror movie because at least Jennifer's Body plays with the MWC in a clever way.

It's not just bad writing anymore Hori's writing has crossed over into actively murdering female characters to enforce puritan values, but let's not get into that just yet we'll talk about the writing portion instead.

I'm going to outline what BTVS accomplishes, demonstrate how it does this below, and then go on at length picking apart how MHA fails.

BTVS:

Shows Buffy and Faith as fully realized people

Shows the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Breaks down those two categories

Redeems it's bad girl

With that out of the way let's get the ball rolling.

HOW TO (NOT) SAVE YOUR EVIL GIRLFRIEND

This is the part where everyone in the audience is going to gasp. Even though I'm using Buffy and Faith as a positive example of deconstructing the MWC and redeeming a villain, Buffy does not save Faith. The two of them reconcile in the end, but Faith is not redeemed or saved by Buffy, and in fact Buffy is in part responsible for Faith's fall.

So, why would I say Buffy and Faith are a better example of villain redemption then Uraraka who at least did everything she could to offer a helping hand to Toga?

Because Buffy not saving Faith is THE POINT and Faith receiving redemption even though Buffy gave up on her is also THE POINT. Lemme explain, by starting at the beginning.

BTVS is a story that exists to flip both horror tropes, and the idea of the chosen hero on its head. The concept started out with Joss Whedon noticing that the Cheerleader is always the first victim in any given horror movie, and wondering what it would look like if the Cheerleader could fight back. If the Cheerleader was the thing that monsters ran away from.

Which leads us to Buffy Summers. Buffy is chosen by the universe to slay vampires, she is hero with super strength that can easily take on legions of vampires and often has to fight even tougher villains for each season's conflict. Buffy carries all the classic features of both the ingenue and the chosen one protagonist rolled up into one:. Ingénues are young, innocent girls who possess qualities of youth, innocence, kindness, naivete and purity.

However, after dying in the first season, and having to kill her boyfriend in the second season after he turned evil and inflicted a lot of psychosexual abuse on her Buffy has also got a whole lot of trauma. Which is when Faith appears on the scene. One of the first ways that the show challenges the idea of the "Chosen One" is that there are actually two Chosen Ones, Faith being the other Slayer.

Buffy much like Deku has a case of protagonism brain rot, but in her case she was actually chosen by the mystic powers that be to be the protagonist of reality. Buffy, who views herself as the hero of the story as a coping mechanism (we'll get back to this later) is suddenly challenged when the fates chose yet another chosen hero, challenging her pre-conceived notion that she is the hero of the story. If Buffy is not the only hero then who is she? What is all the suffering she's endured so far if it's not a part of her own personal hero's journey?

Buffy begins to dislike Faith on sight for projection reasons, before Faith does anything wrong. In a way Buffy herself the female lead is enforcing society's standards of the MWC because all the reasons Buffy decides to disturst and dislike Faith on sight are because she exhibits qualities of the seductress.

Faith is openly promiscuous, often comparing the art of killing vampires to sex, she is also someone who is proud of her power as a a slayer and uses it for her own purposes. She is a slayer for selfish reasons (apparently) while Buffy is the selfless hero. In the first episode Faith appears in, Faith, Hope and Trick Buffy is almost immediately hostile to Faith who has so far done nothing wrong for, trying to get along with Buffy's friends, getting a little bit too into vampire slaying and openly relishing her strength, and like occasionally making lood comments.

FAITH: Don't… touch… me…! BUFFY - yanks Faith off the unconscious vamp with one hand, stakes the vamp withher other. Then she turns to Faith who is breathing hard, high on adrenaline, rubbing her fists. BUFFY: What is wrong with you? FAITH: What are you talking about? BUFFY: I'm talking about you living large on the great undead here. FAITH: Gee, if doing violence to vampires upsets you, I'm pretty sure you're in the wrong line a work… BUFFY: Or maybe you like it just a little too much. FAITH: I was getting the job done. BUFFY: The job is to slay demons. Not mash them into sloppy joes while their

Buffy then escalates to like ableist slurs towards Faith within half an episode for getting slightly violent in a fight against vampires that were trying to kill her.

GILES: Well, Buffy, you have to realize you and Faith have very different temperaments… BUFFY: I know, mine would be the sane one. Giles, she's not playing with a full deck. She has almost no deck. She has a three. GILES: You said yourself she killed one of them, she's a plucky fighter who got a little carried away. Which isnatural, she's focussed on Slaying,she doesn't have a whole other lifehere like you --

The twist this episode is that no matter how much Faith tries to present herself as a free-spirit, she's actually a scared homeless girl who just happened to become the Slayer. Unlike Buffy she does not have a watcher, a mother, or friends to support her. She lives in the cheapest motel in sunnydale. The reason she's so violent against vampires is because she is understandably having a trauma flashback because her mentor was murdered right in front of her by a different vamp.

This is repeating pattern throughout the whole season, Faith is shown to be a victim of trauma, and occasionally acts in ways that are understandable for a victim like her to ask, only for Buffy to start mischaracterizing her as someone violent and insane and throwing the slurs.

You can compare both Faith and Toga as characters who are complex victims of trauma who society turns their back on and become bad victims, but Faith is a special case because we actively see her turn to the dark side. Faith starts out trying to be a hero like the rest and she practically does nothing wrong for half a season, and when she does finally make a mistake and become a bad victim it's the hero's desire to punish her and castigate her that turns her into a villain.

We actively see Faith's fall happen onscreen, and it's like totally Buffy's fault. Buffy throws her completely under the bus, because she's so desperate to see Faith as the Bad Slayer and Buffy as the Good Slayer. Faith is almost pushed into evil because of the MWC, the characters around her can't see her as a fully fleshed out human being so they are quick to demonize her when she starts acting like a bad victim.

So the two episodes appropriately named: Bad Girls and Consequences depict Faith's fall. In that episode Faith and Buffy are fighting vampires, and one human is mixed among the vampires. The human grabs Faith by the shoulder, and Faith thinking that the human is a vampire turns him around and stakes him.

It's a complete accident, something that Giles even says later on is an accident that can happen to any Slayer on the job and is completely normal. It's a murder that Buffy herself could have committed.

GILES: This is not the first time something like this has happened. BUFFY: It's not? GILES: A slayer is on the front lines of a nightly war, Buffy. It's tragic - but accidents have happened. BUFFY: What do you do? GILES: The council investigates, meters out punishment if punishment is due… I've no plan to involve them,however. That's the last thing Faith needs right now. She's unstable, Buffy. She seems utterly unable to accept responsibility. Shows no remorse.

However, even in the same breath Giles explains that it's an accident and not Faith's fault, he's also calling Faith unstable and irresponsible. Basically when they're not calling her a psycho (just hitting her with the ableist slurs), the protagonists all lowkey imply that Faith is somehow inherently violent and unstable because she displays symptoms of a bad victim.

I might also remind you Faith has not done anything to earn any of these accusations, until she kills someone in a complete accident. A complete accident that Giles once again said wasn't her fault and wasn't really a big deal.

FAITH: My dead mother hits harder than that.

Faith is stated to be a victim of physical abuse, heavily implied to be a victim of sexual abuse, and is homeless (none of the main characters offer to let her stay in her house she spends half a season in a terrible motel). However, Faith is quickly demonized by the white wealthy main characters for acting in ways that are completely typical for a homeless teenager.

The moment she commits one mistake they all turn on her and use that mistake as proof of these violent tendencies they all want to accuse her of having. Faith can never be the ingenue so she must be the seductress, because she can't just be a person.

Buffy: So, I, uh... (sees Faith scrubbing) How are ya doin'? Faith: (still scrubbing) I'm alright. You know me. Buffy: Faith, we need to talk about what we're gonna do. Faith: (looks at Buffy) There's nothing to talk about. I was doing my job. Buffy: Being a Slayer is not the same as being a k*ller. Faith has nothing to say. She's finished scrubbing. Buffy: Faith, please don't shut me out here. Look, sooner or later, we're both gonna have to deal.

It is essentially two episodes of this, Faith after killing someone on accident in a life or death fight is constantly called a murderer by others. She wasn't even like, drunk, or high, or being especially reckless she was being a normal slayer.

FAITH: So the mayor of Sunnydale is a black hat. Shocker, huh? BUFFY: Actually - yeah. I didn't get the bad guy vibe off him. Faith shakes her head. Scoffs. FAITH: When you gonna learn, B? It doesn't matter what kind of "vibe" a person gives off. Nine times outta ten he face they're showing you? It isn't the real one. BUFFY: I guess you know a lot about that. FAITH: What's that supposed to mean? BUFFY: Look at you, Faith. Less than twenty four hours ago you killed a guy. And now you're laughing and scratching and zipidee doo dah. That's not your real face, and I know it. I know what you're feeling because I feel it too. FAITH: Do you? So, fill me in. I'd like to hear this. BUFFY: Dirty. Like something sick creeped inside you and you can't get it out. And you keep hoping what happened wasjust some nightmare…

Faith is dirty, faith is disgusting, faith is unstable, Faith is sick for... killing a guy on accident in a way that Giles said was a perfectly understandable accident, and not showing clear guilt because the moment she did it everyone around her jumped on her and started accusing her of being a murderer.

Why do the selfless main characters suddenly start demonizing this girl before she even did anything wrong - well it's because she's poor problem solved.

No, but it does play a factor. Why do most american white middle class look down on the homeless? Because, they must have done something to deserve it, right? If Faith killed a man, that clearly is an indication that she was violent all along and the heroes don't have to sympathize with the fact she's homeless or you know lift a finger to help her.

Now, this makes it sound like I hate Buffy, but Buffy is actually my favorite character in the whole show. The thing is Buffy's complete lack of sympathy for Faith makes her a better character. Buffy needs to demonize Faith and throw her under the bus, because Buffy is a victim of sexual abuse too. Her boyfriend turned evil after having sex with her once, and spent an entire season stalking her and terrorizing her the entire season 2 Buffy / Angel plotline is a thinly veiled groomer metaphor.

The thing about Buffy is she's not allowed to show any kind of reaction to her trauma. The episodes preceeding Faith, Hope and Trick are Anne, an episode where Buffy runs away from home after being sexually abused (stalking is sexual abuse) by Angel for a whole season and feeling like no one would understand her, and Dead Man's Party, an episode where every single one of Buffy's loved ones ruthlessly criticize her for having run away. Like, how dare a teenager not react perfectly to being horribly stalked by a serial killer after she had sex with him for like half a year.

JOYCE: Buffy! You didn't give me any time. You just dumped this… this thing on me and expected me to get it. Well -guess what? Mom's not perfect. I handled it badly. But that doesn'tgive you the right to punish me byrunning away. BUFFY: Punish you? I didn't do this to punish you XANDER: Well you did. You should have seen what it did to her. BUFFY: Great. Would anybody else care to weigh in? What about you? By the dip. XANDER: Maybe you don't want to hear it, Buffy. But taking off like that was selfishand stupid. Buffy's breaking down. It's all too much. BUFFY: Okay - I screwed up! I know it - alright!? But you have no idea. You have no idea what happened to me or what I was feeling

The reason Buffy is so hard on Faith is because everyone else is equally hard on her. The label of the ingenue is so difficult for Buffy to maintain, because she has to be pure, and without any flaws, especially when reacting to trauma that she throws Faith under the bus for her bad victim behaviors.

The white middle class demonize the homeless because they don't want to face the reality it can happen to them, Buffy doesn't want to reflect on all the things her and Faith have in common because she could very easily become Faith. Buffy is the victim of extremely similiar trauma to Faith, and being pressured to be the perfect victim of that trauma in a way that's destroying her mentally slowly.

FAITH: It was good, wasn't it? The sex? The danger? Bet a part of you even dug him when he went psycho BUFFY: No FAITH: See - you need me to tow the line because you're afraid you'll go over it, aren't you, B? You can't handle watching me living my own way and having a blast - because it tempts you. You know it could be you... ( Something snaps in Buffy. She rears back and POPS Faith a good one. Faith falls back, but she's smiling as she puts a hand to her bleeding mouth. ) FAITH: There's my girl…

Buffy is suffering under the expectations of the MWC too, but in her desperation to make Faith out to be the seductress instead of... like... a csa victim... Buffy is reinforcing those standards on both herself and another woman.

The entirety of Bad Girls and Conesequences is Faith being called a murderer by several people, having another trauma flashback to a sexual assault because Xander came to her motel room under the guise of "helping her", getting hit over the head and chained to a wall, then getting the swat team called on her and almost dragged to London for trial. Then the heroes do nothing to help her. The first thing Faith does is go to the main villain, who buys her an apartment AND A PLAYSTATION. So... the evil main Villain of the show helped Faith with her homelessness situation while none of the main characters lifted a finger.

it sounds like it sucks but it doesn't because it's all intentional. Buffy cannot process her own sexual trauma so she is just awful to people who are also domestic abuse victims. here's one of my favorite scenes, Buffy yells at a girl being beaten by her boyfriend with a visible black eye.

Buffy: Where can we find him? Debbie: I-I don't know. Buffy: You're lying. Debbie: What if I am? What are you gonna do about it? Willow: Wrong question. Buffy takes her by the arm again and pushes her up against the sink in front of the mirror. Buffy: Look at yourself. Why are you protecting him? Anybody who really loved you couldn't do this to you. She takes a few steps away. Debbie turns around to face them. Debbie: Would they take him someplace? Buffy: Probably. Debbie: (shakes her head, sobbing) I could never do that to him.(Willow sighs) I'm his everything. Buffy: (disgusted) Great. So what, you two live out your Grimm fairy tale? Two people are dead.

That poor girl gets her neck snapped like five minutes later and Buffy just kinda, moves on even though it would have been an easily preventable death.

Buffy getting mad at an abuse victim for showing textbook behaviors of abuse victims in bad relationships. Buffy is a good character because she is a hero, she can be empathic, but she really only understands heroism in term of defeating the bad guys, and when called to relate to people with complex trauma, especially trauma that reflects her own trauma she can't! She just can't process it! The expectations of being the ingenue, the perfect hero are so crushing she can't cope with a messy reality so she needs to have a black and white view of herself and other people.

Buffy needs to be firmly in the good category, and Faith needs to be firmly in the bad category in order for Buffy's brain to keep working.

Not only does Buffy's conflict with Faith characterize how much Faith suffers for being a bad victim, it shows how the pressure to be a good victim destroys Buffy mentally to the point where she starts using Faith as a punching bag.

Literallly.

It's all intentional too, Buffy gets called out on it, Faith always gets the last word and the final episode of the season makes out Buffy to be a hypocrite. After Buffy literally threw Faith under the bus, called her disgusting for murdering a man, Buffy is completely willing to murder Faith to get a cure for her vampire boyfriend who's been poisoned.

All human life is sacred and needs to be protected, but Fuck Faith I guess.

Faith: I could say the same about you. I mean, you're still the same better-than-thou Buffy. I mean, I knew it somehow. I kept having this dream, I'm not sure what it means, but in the dream the self-righteous blond chick stabs me, and you wanna know why? Buffy: You had it coming. Faith: That's one interpretation, but in my dream, she does it for a guy. Faith: I wake up to find the blond chick isn't even dating the guy she was so nuts about before. I mean, she's moved on to the first college beefstick she meets. Not only has she forgotten about the love of her life, but she's forgotten about the chick she nearly k*lled for him. So that's my dream. That and some stuff about cigars and a tunnel. But tell me, college girl, what does it mean? Buffy: To me? Mostly, that you still mouth off about things you don't understand. (Sirens) Uh-oh. I guess somebody knows you're here.

So the show goes to great length to show you that there are two sides to this conflict, Buffy demonizes Faith, because her friends expect her to be the perfect hero. Faith reacts badly to trauma because she has no support system, and the people around her have no empathy for her because they're too privileged to imagine the things in Faith's life ever happening to her.

Buffy and Faith are fully realized people.

Buffy and Faith are presented to the audience as the ingenue and the seductress but they're both fully realized characters. Buffy's not the ingenue because she's just as capable of murder as Faith is. Faith isn't the seductress because she's a homeless teenager. They are both victims of sexual trauma, though one reacts in what people consider an "acceptable way" and the other is a total slut about it.

Shows the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Buffy throws Faith under the bus specifically because the pressure in her life to be the perfect slayer is so immense that it could be her that takes the fall so she needs to believe in black and white concepts like she is inherently good and Faith is inherently bad to justify the bad things that happen to Faith and therefore convince herself said bad things could never happen to her. "You can't handle watching me living my own way and having a blast - because it tempts you. You know it could be you..."

Faith: Angel said there was no way you were gonna give me a chance. Buffy: I gave you every chance! I tried so hard to help you, and you spat on me. My life was just something for you to play with. Angel - Riley - anything that you could take from me - you took. I've lost battles before - but nobody else has -ever- made me a victim. Faith: And you can't stand that. You're all about control. You have no idea what it's like on the other side! Where nothing's in control, nothing makes sense! There is just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything. You can't even.. Buffy: Shut up!"

Buffy needs to fit her and Faith into neat little boxes because she cannot face the inherent senselessness of the world (and also that she is a victim too "you made me a victim")

Breaks down those two categories

Even in Seasons where Faith is not present she haunts the narrative, because the writers were well aware that Buffy and Faith are the same person under different circumstances.

All of Season 6 Buffy is faced with many of the same situations that Faith was, she suddenly becomes poor and in danger of losing her house, she has extreme depression from coming back from the dead (long story) she can't share those feelings with any of her friends because they treated her much like they did Faith - having no sympathy for imperfect victims. Buffy even gets into an unhealthy, sexual relationship, and like Natalie Portman basically changes from the ingenue into the seductress.

A relationship she has to keep a secret because once again, Buffy must fit into the box of the ingenue in order to be loved by her friends. This leads to her committing several bad behaviors, and at times borderline emotional abuse towards her sister (and debatably her boyfriend) and all comes to a head when Buffy is faced with the exact same situation as Faith.

Buffy in Season 6 believes she has killed a person accidentally while being the Slayer. It's a repeat of Bad Girls with several paralels, including someone trying to hide the body only for it to turn up later, and Buffy insisting she has to turn herself into the police and face jailtime.

However, in this version Buffy unlike Faith has friends who try to stop her from turning herself in and explain to her the murder wasn't her fault - and Buffy still reacts the same way Faith does. She basically borderline quotes Faith.

Faith: Shut up! Do you think I'm afraid of you? [Faith grabs Buffy and throws her down, then sits on top of her and starts punching her.] Faith: You're nothing. [Punch. Punch.] Faith: Disgusting. [Punch. Punch.] [Faith grabs Buffy's hair with both hand and bangs her head.] Faith: Murderous bitch. [Bang. Bang...] You're nothing. [Bang. Bang...] Faith: [Switches back to punches] You're [Faith is now crying.] disgusting.

This is an earlier scene which plays out as an exact parallel to this scene:

BUFFY: You can't understand why this is killing me, can you? SPIKE: Why don't you explain it? She hits him a few more times. He takes it, not fighting back. SPIKE: Come on, that's it, put it on me. Put it all on me. (She kicks him) That's my girl. BUFFY: (yelling) I am not your girl! She hits him hard. He falls back onto his butt. Buffy gets on top of him and begins hitting him over and over. BUFFY: You don't ... have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you. You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never ... be your girl! She continues hitting him throughout this. Now Spike goes back to human face. He's looking very bruised and bloody, but he doesn't fight back, just takes it. Buffy hits him again and again, looking angry and desperate. Finally she stops and looks at him in horror.

So if Buffy can react the exact same way that Faith does, when faced with the same trauma there is no good girl or bad girl, there's only two people who are complicated human beings.

The story *gasp* lets the hero be a bad girl.

Redeems it's bad girl

Faith's redemption is a shocking contrast to MHA the plot of BTVS does not allow Faith to commit suicide in order to redeem herself. In fact, her entire arc is an argument against the "put her down like a mad dog" trope. Starting with the fact that the heroes who are partly responsible for Faith's fall in the first place, are all too willing to just let the homeless teenager fall by the wayside, and then put her down for her own sake.

As I stated above, the inherent hypocrisy Buffy shows in her calling Faith a murderer and irredeemable for killing someone on accident because all human life is sacred to her, and then going on to try to murder Faith at the end of the season already shows the "put her down like a mad dog" argument doesn't work. Faith isn't too far gone, it's just Buffy who sees her that way. And because Buffy has given up on Faith she's failing at being a hero.

As I said above, Buffy is not the one to rescue Faith. In fact, in the episodes where Faith's redemption arc starts, Buffy is the one trying to hunt her down and enforce punishment on her. The episodes "5x5" and "Sanctuary" are both focused on Buffy going to LA to hunt down and interfere when Angel is trying to help Faith get back on her feet. The two episdodes basically explore the concept of redemption vs. punishment and how punishment saves no one.

5x5 depicts Faith's spiral as she runs away to LA to escape Buffy who is hunting her down, and accepts a job to assassinate Angel, which if she succeeds will get her rich and also get the cops off of her trail. We're led the whole episode to believe Faith has learned nothing until the confrontation with Angel at the very end, which you should really watch because it's great television.

Faith: You hear me? - You don't know what evil is! - I'm bad! - Fight back! Faith keeps whaling on Angel, sometimes he ducks, sometimes the hits connect. Angel grabs a hold of her: Nice try, Faith. He tosses her away from him. Then walks after her. Angel: I know what you want. She hits him and he hits back dropping her. She comes back up hitting and screaming, but not making much of a dent. Wesley leans out of the window and sees Faith beating up on Angel. He goes into the kitchen and grabs a butcher knife, then heads for the door. Angel as he dodges another hit: I'm not gonna make it easy for you. Faith throws herself against Angel screaming: I'm evil! I'm bad! I'm evil! Do you hear me? I'm bad! Angel, I'm bad! (She begins to sob, grabbing a hold of Angel's shirt and shaking him) I'm ba-ad. Do you hear me? I'm bad! I'm bad! I'm bad. Please. Angel, please, just do it. Wesley comes running out of the house. Faith sobbing: Angel please, just do it. Just do it. Just k*ll me. Just k*ll me." Angel wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her against him. She over balances them and they sink to their knees, Angel still holding her as she cries. Angel: Shh. It's all right. It's okay. I'm here. I'm right here. Shh.

Faith tries to take the Toga approach to commit suicide in order to atone, but Angel actively understands that is what she's trying to do, and denies her the chance to die to redeem herself and instead holds her until she calms down.

Angel doesn't just save her once though he spends the entire next episode defending Faith from Buffy who has come to LA to take her revenge, and trying to talk Faith into believing she can still keep on living in spite of all the bad things she's done.

Faith: Are you saying I got to apologize? Angel: Think you can? Faith: I don’t' know. - How do you say 'Gee, I'm really sorry tortured you I nearly to death? Angel: Well, first off I think I'd leave off the 'Gee.' And secondly I think you have to ask yourself: are you? Faith: What? Angel: Sorry. Faith: And what if I *can't* say it? There are some things you can't just take back, no matter how sorry you *are*, right? Angel: Yeah, there are. I've got some experience in that area. Faith: Right. And you've been doing this for a hundred years! I'm not gonna make it through the next ten minutes. Angel: So make it through the next five, the next minute." Faith: "I don't think I can. Angel: Yes, you can. Faith walks away: God, it hurts. I hate that it hurts like this. Angel follows her: Oh well, it's supposed to hurt. All that pain, all that suffering you caused is coming back on you. Feel it! Deal with it! Then maybe you've got a shot at being free.

Angel's advice is "Guilt is supposed to hurt but if you face your pain you can try to find a way to be free of it" which is something much more profound then any of the forgiveness crap they peddle in MHA. More importantly though, the conflict the whole episode goes out of its way to show that revenge is bad, and punishment doesn't save a soul.

Angel: I didn't - I didn't think it was your business. Buffy: Not my business? Angel: I needed more time with Faith. I'm not sure... Buffy: You needed - do you have any idea what it was like for me to see you with her? That you went behind my back... Angel: Buffy, this wasn't about you! This was about saving someone's soul. Buffy: I came here because you were in danger. Angel: I'm in Danger every day. You came here because of faith. You were looking for vengeance. Buffy: I have a right to it. Angel: Not in my city.

Faith's suicidal ideation is a recurring theme that carries through her character arc in the following season - she does in fact go to prison for awhile (Elizabeth Dushku had to go make Bring it On) but Buffy remains anti-state punishment because going to Prison doesn't help her whatsoever. In fact, she just breaks out when she has to save Angel and spends the rest of the season free.

There are two episodes that actually are dedicated to showing prison didn't help, and what Faith needs to redeem herself is to spend every day of her life trying to be good, not just accepting punishment.

ANGEL: Faith, wake up! FAITH: (wakes) I've rolled the bones. You for me. ANGEL: I used to think that. That there'd be a point when I'd paid my dues. Angel and Angelus are fighting in the alley again. Angel leaves the fight and goes over to Faith's side, holding her up in his arms. ANGEL: Faith, listen to me. You saw me drink. It doesn't get much lower than that. And I thought I could make up for it by disappearing. FAITH: I did my time. ANGEL: Our time is never up, Faith. We pay for everything. FAITH: It hurts. ANGEL: I know. I know. ANGEL: Get up! You have to get up now. Faith, you have to fight. I need you to fight. Do you understand what I'm saying?

So you have one manga series where the teenage girl who did bad things commits suicide because she believed she was going to be in prison for the rest of her life and had no future, and you have the other where the teenage girl tries to commit suicide - only for Angel to stop her and encourage her every step of the way that there's still a future for her even if she can't be "forgiven".

One work ends Toga's life because she's done "unforgivable things" and the other tells Faith that the things she should feel guilty for the things she's done, and she should feel that guilt so she can keep working to be a better person every single day.

One of these is a good message to send to your teenage homeless trauma victim, the other is incredibly harmful. With that out of the way let's switch to BNHA.

HOW TO BURY YOUR GAYS

Now I'm going to attempt to demonstrate why MHA fails to truly deconstruct the MWC, and this not only ruins any potential character development for Uraraka, it also sends a deeply harmful message with Toga's death.

I think I've gone to great length above explaining how BTVS communicates it's stance of being anti-punishment and pro-redemption and even goes as far to demonstrate how punishment does not save anyone. Yet, here is the manga about heroes saving people that completely fumbles those exact same themes.

MHA:

Doesn't show Toga and Ochako as fully realized people

Doesn't show the pressure to conform to the "Good Girl / Bad Girl" label.

Doesn't break down down those two categories

Doesn't redeem it's bad girl

So let me start by saying outside of the context of the story Ochako and Toga both had the potential to be great characters. Unforunately this isn't Gacha, so the way the characters are written in the story, and the quality of their story arcs affects how well they are characterized.

Toga is much better off as a character as opposed to Ochako who sort is reduced to a satellite that revolves around Deku, but their story arcs and the way they conclude does a disservice to both of them as characters. They fail entirely to be shown as fully realized people by their narratives, because of the narratives desire to force them into the good girl and bad girl box.

More or less, Ochako isn't allowed to have flaws, and Toga isn't allowed to redeem herself in any way that doesn't involve killing herself.

Let's get to the characters though, the basic premise of the comparsion between Toga and Ochako is that Ochako perfectly fits into the mould of what society considers a "good, nice girl" she perfectly embodies the ingenue. Whereas Toga was horribly abused for most of her life until she snapped, because she was unable to simply pretend to be the normal girl that Ochako is naturally.

One thing I will give credit to MHA for, it does Toga being pushed to the margins and eventually falling off the edge of society as a young eventually homeless girl that no one cared enough to help about as effectively as Faith did. Toga and Faith were also both demonized before they did anything wrong, and were further demonized because they didn't act the way good victims were supposed to act.

The manga is almost masterful at portraying how much being forced into the box of the ingenue caused Toga's mental decline, until she eventually snapped and became the seductress instead.

Toga hasn't even done anything yet, she's already being punished and demonized simply for appearing deviant. Because once again the categories of Ingenue and Seductress aren't for viewing women and girls as fully realized people, you are either a perfect, innocent, girl, or you're a whore.

Toga is also hypersexual the same way Faith is. Of course it's not done with any of the same amount of nuance of BTVS because Hori has a habit of using Toga for fanservice, but Toga does have a habit of sexualizing herself, in a way that would be classified as deviant love. We also in the manga first view her as nothing more than a shallow yandere who creeps Uraraka out with her blushing and hot desire for blood, only to be shown she's actually capable of being an emotionally intelligent and caring individual when it comes to how she relates to her friends.

Toga viewing sucking blood as love is a clear metaphor for deviant sexuality, or even hyper sexuality, it's something that makes her a literal vamp. Toga being overly sexually aggressive and suggestive with the way she sucks blood is something the society she's in demonizes her for, Deku even makes a thoughtless comment that pushes her off the edge that he'd never even think of hurting someone he loved.

Faith is a CSA victim who is constantly trying to play off her trauma, so she's totally into sex guys, she loves sex, she loves it rough, she goes to clubs and grinds on guys, she's all into sex and violence and safety words are for chumps.

Toga was told her way of expressing love and attraction was wrong and deviant from a young age, and as a result of that the same way that Faith embraces hypersexuality, Toga embraces her femme fatalle / yandere persona and plays it up. Well everyone was right about her, she's fine with being a monster, so she just wants to live as a monster stabbing people randomly and taking their blood before moving onto the next victim.

They can't ever be the ingenue, so Faith and Toga embrace being the seductress instead. Yes, Hori does use Toga for fanservice, but at the same time you can't deny she's deliberately playing up her sexuality like a femme fatalle in a way that is not healthy (Faith is a hypersexual teenager too, I'm saying it's a trauma response for both of them).

MHA also shows much like with Faith how Toga despite being just a teenager is someone all of society has given up on - the same way that everyone gave up on Faith for being a homeless teenager. Then further demonized her for acting in ways homeless teenagers act, until she at last finally committed one crime and they turned on her.

Toga's first crime was committed after her mental breakdown, but it's revealed much later on that Toga wanted to ask Saito for permission to drink his blood, and if she'd just been granted it or at least the emotional abuse heaped on her had stopped she never would have had her breakdown.

For Toga it was Saito, for Faith it was killing by Mistake, after being abandoned they endured violence that further radicalized them with no help from the heroes.

Toga's character also textually acknowledges that the heroes are not going to help her, and are likely going to kill her, whereas in Buffy it stays subtext. Which isn't a problem, it trusts it's audience to go "Oh, the good guys are being jerks here" however, it's a direct facet of MHA's worldbuilding that Toga has watched the heroes kill her best friend, and now thinks she has to fight to the death because the heroes will kill her too. She can't back down and let herself be saved, because the heroes don't even see her as human.

Buffy can't forgive Faith for accidentally killing some random guy because all human life is sacred, but also she tries to kill Faith multiple times, because Faith's not human I guess. Uraraka and Deku believe themselves to be heroes but they actively support people like Hawks, who murdered Toga's best friend and have done absolutely nothing to show her that they won't kill her.

Toga reflects a lot of Faith's suffering for being a bad victim that society allowed to fall through the cracks, and a Seductress who needs to be punished for expressing her sexuality. In fact if it were just Toga, you could call it at least an effective deconstruction of the "seductress/whore" because Toga is a fully realized character and her entire backstory is about how society's expectations for her to be a perfect ingenue, and then punishing her when she wasn't a perfect ingenue is what led to her complete mental breakdown. She couldn't be the white swan or the black swan, so she became the blood-soaked swan instead.

Where the comparison starts to fall apart is Ochako. Toga is a character, and Ochako is not. Just like Deku Ochako more or less just kind of morphs into a plot device that exists to save the villain counterparts to prove what good heroes the kids are - and then she doesn't even do that part. Failing to save Toga is the final nail in the coffin for Ochako being a character and not a plot device to show how good and virtuous the heroes are.

BTVS goes to painstaking extents to establish how Buffy and Faith are the exact same girl in different circumstances. They are both victims of sexual abuse. They're both the Slayer. They both lose their mom at different points in the story. They both struggle with the fact that slayers are also killers, they're both the "chosen one". They both have issues that makes them conflate sexuality with violence.

Buffy is put through several situations that parallel Faith, she loses her mom, she becomes financially destitute, she starts exploring her sexuality in a very faith-like way. The two of them swap bodies at one point and nobody can tell the difference.

There's no strong parallel between Ochako and Toga to give the audience a reason why we should care about the relationship between the two girls in the first place. Ochako's connection to Toga tells us nothing about her character, because there's no strong parallel as shown to us by the story.

There are some parallels, the story attempts to tackle the emotional repression angle of how much the ingenue suffers because she's forced to repress her emotions and how much she envies Toga's free expression.

Why does Ochako think that way? Why does she focus on Toga in particular? The plot tells us why Buffy feels she has so much in common with Faith, they're both the chosen one but Buffy feels like she's under such intense pressure to be perfect that seeing Faith get to act out and express herself makes her jealous.

The manga tells us that Ochako is emotionally repressed, but it doesn't show us, because there are never any real consequences for Ochako repressing her feelings. Natalie Portman in Black Swan, and Buffy both experience mental spirals because the pressure to be the perfect woman is too much for them - to meet the impossible purity standards of the ingenue while still being a sexual creature.

In Uraraka this is the extremely simplified belief that she can't have feelings for a boy, while also being a hero because those beings are selfish and she should be focused on saving people. However, we never see her suffer because of these feelings. We don't even get the bare minimum of having her angst over unrequited love.

I don't want to give Ochako too little credit, there are several things that could have been a connection to Ochako, but they all turn out to be non-starters. Ochako is poor and often makes remarks like "The best way to save money is to not eat" in omake and she hangs out with mostly rich friends. She had early angst about the fact that her friends were becoming heroes for mostly altruistic reasons and she became a hero for money.

That could have also connected to the scene where Ochako witnessed the scene of a hero quitting amongst all of the destruction after the end of the first war arc, to show her the consequences of all the heroes who were heroes for less than altruistic reasons.

Ochako could have even told Toga something along the lines of "I was poor, I know how it is to struggle" especially since Toga spent a good portion of time homeless after she was throne out by her parents.

Instead that goes unaddressed except in this scene which makes it look like Toga is ignorant for assuming Ochako never suffered.

Toga and Ochako both feel like they need to repress their feelings but Toga was emotionall abused by her parents, then experienced psychiatric abuse, and then was disowned after her mental breakdown led to a violent incident. Uraraka feels like she can't tell the boy she loves how she feels. One of thsee things is not like the others.

There are more possible connections that you could draw between them, Uraraka gives a big speech about how the heroes have it rough too guys and at that point it cuts to a picture of Toga crying and that could have led to a revelation that if Ochako is asking the common people to see heroes as human beings, then they should try to see villains as human beings too.

This could also couple well with the fact that Toga believes Ochako wants to kill her the same way that Hawks killed Twice. Both of these facts, Ochako originally only being a hero for money and watching heroes for money quit, and also Ochako learning about Twice killing Toga's friends could lead to some self-reflection on the hero system and Ochako could listen to Toga and be the one to convince her that heroes will save her.

However, none of these happen so we don't know why Ochako feels compelled to save Toga, other than the fact that Ochako is just that nice.

It is really a repeat of Deku's writing, we are told that Himiko just really, really, really wants to save Toga, but not only are we never given an in character reason why that is, but we're also supposed to ignore all the evidence that contradicts this.

Ochako wants to reach out and touch the sadness inside of Toga, but she never actually does anything to try to understand or talk to Toga until the last possible minute. In fact, it's Toga who reaches out several times and Uraraka who ignores her. It is Ochako who insists several times that Toga's deeds are unforgivable and then the conversation stops there.

There's also the scene where Deku and Ochako are looking over the cliffside and Ochako is actively reminding herself of the damage that Ochako caused as a reason that she doesn't have to think of her as a human being.

Ochako doesn't even go in with a plan to take down Toga non-lethally like Shoto did with Toya, nor does she even think about what she wants to say to her until the last possible moment.

Ochako's actions make her more like Buffy, someone who actively doesn't empathize with the villain and doesn't want to save her because of her own personal hangups. (However, we're given no personal hangups for why Ochako, the most perfect hero ever wouldn't want to save Toga). Her actions are like Buffy's, not reaching out a hand to Toga she only gets worse and worse, but we're told the opposite. That she's someone who wants to reach and touch Toga's sadness.

It would be better if Ochako DIDN'T want to save Toga, because at least there would be an arc to it. The lack of empathy would be a character flaw on Ochako's part, something that she needs to overcome to be a proper hero. It would be better if Ochako DIDN'T want to save Toga, because then she'd need an in character reason why she doesn't empathize with Toga, like Buffy does with Faith.

Ochako is supposed to be deconstructing the ingenue, but she's not allowed to have any flaws, or be anything other than the perfect, empathic hero and because of that she ends up reinforcing the Ingenue instead. The ingenue isn't allowed to be anything other than perfect, and the Seductress must be punished.

Doesn't allow the Bad Girl to be redeemed:

Toga's death ends up reinforcing basically every backwards double standard about the MWC including the need for men to punish and villify women who freely express their sexuality. Toga's entire character arc is asking the question if soemone like her is allowed to live in this society, if the heroes will save the life of someone like her and the answer we receive is: no she can't live.

Toga can't live in this world, she has to die. Not only does Twice die and never receive justice and his murderer get off scott free, Toga who asks the question of if she's going to die too, the answer is yes.

In both of these plotlines you have young woman who have done bad things but are still teenagers, who are struggling with suicidal ideation who believe their only escape is death. Faith is told that the guilt of the things she's done is painful, but she has to live in order to make up for it because that's the only way to free herself. Whereas, Toga comes to the conclusion that there is no future for her other than being in jail for the rest of her life and therefore it's not worth living.

Toga has to be punished by the narrative in a way that's completely unnecessary, because characters like Bakugo and Edgeshot somehow survived doing open heart surgery in the middle of an active battlefield, but Toga dies from a blood transfusion.

One of these narratives is telling a troubled young abuse victim who's still a teenager to live, and the other is telling her to die. Now which one of these plotlines would you want a young girl to read?

[amiscreations]

✨Flowers underneath us now

Towers underneath us now

We walk above the city

You and I✨

[bicheetopuff]

I just saw the worst takes about bnha’s ending on Instagram (three days ago now, as of posting this). So, today we’re gonna talk about Izuocha, shonen homoeroticism, and fandom… not in that order though…

I: Fandom

Fandom culture for all media has basically always been a war zone that you have to actively avoid, usually with two defining sides: people who try to enjoy media the way they want to enjoy it, and the people who say that everyone is wrong and attack others who they don’t agree with. There are shades of gray on both sides, but in general this is usually the case. It’s never been “‘alphabet mafia’ vs ‘normal’” or “fanon vs canon” or “right vs wrong”… I almost always see people having fun being attacked unwarranted (I am not saying that people being legitimately problematic shouldn’t be called out, pls don’t get me wrong. I’m talking about innocent fun!). And I’m not just talking about dudebros attacking shippers, I’ve seen a lot of shippers attack non-shippers/other shippers of a different ship, and it’s almost always people just saying “you’re wrong, I’m right, and your take ruins this media piece of media for everyone else.” That being said, I wanna talk about the highlighted parts of these comments, okay? But first I need to explain the video that these comments were on.

It was a video by @/d_rich7 on Instagram, a big anime creator, talking about this tweet:

To summarize the video, he went on to say that he’s not surprised because bnha has the worst shipping community since Naruto and how Horikoshi probably felt forced into not confirming any ships because of “threats and hate mail” that he got from his fandom. I’ll come back to that but first I’ll talk about some of the comments:

“At least, they can say they weren’t the reason for the downfall of their anime.”

I've seen this take from different parts of the fandom, whether it was in regard to ships, todofam, or the villains. Just because the narrative of a story ends up matching the theories of people you disagree with, doesn't mean the story is going through a downfall. Just accept that you were wrong and move on. It is okay to not like certain aspects of the story and it's okay to discuss and criticize it, but pinning the blame on people who just happened to be right, no matter how much you hate it, is not okay.

“People need to stop demanding the literal CREATOR of a series to do things how they want it done…They to learn it’s not their story to tell…”

“…like I don’t get how people who have no impact on the writing of a story get mad because the CREATORS don’t wanna use their personal ideas.”

“…from now on imma blame the fandom for fucking up the anime/manga, we could’ve had a better ending if it wasn’t for them…”

Outside of the context, I actually agree with the sentiment that fans shouldn't feel so entitled that they think they have any control over the media they're consuming. But, the commenters don't realize that they're doing the exact thing that they’re talking about. They're convinced that the queer shipping community is the reason the creator decided not to confirm any relationship and are pissed off that the ship they were rooting for, didn't happen. Why are they exempt from this rule? Because straight ships are supposed to happen and queer ships aren't? Because the boy is supposed to win the girl at the end in order to develop a good shonen? I'll go into the misogynistic implications of that later.

Other than that, I have seen a lot of people on tumblr get mad about other things, like before, regarding to the villains and todofam drama to the point that they started insulting Hori. Like I said, it's okay to be mad. Being mad about something doesn't make you a bad person but it was never our story to tell. Criticism and hate, are two different things and come off very differently.

“MHA’s fandom is filled to the brim with toxic, no shower taking, furry loving, lgbtq idiots…”

Honestly I added this one because he's right. We're here, we're queer, and we're idiots in the best way possible. However, I think this also says the quiet part out loud when it comes to the hatred towards bnha and it's fandom.

Shipping communities in other fandoms don't get anywhere near as harassed as often as the shipping communities in the bnha fandom despite not being much different. The difference is, a lot of us identify as and are recognized as queer and Hori himself even recognized that the LGBT community especially took a liking to his manga. But, in other fandoms, it's only okay to consider queer ships if they're recognized by the cishet audience.

Most people in the aot fandom don't have an issue with eremin because it was something recognized and memed by straight men, even if it was mostly as a joke. The kny fandom doesn't care about inotan because it was also recognized and memed by straight men. Narusasu doesn't get much hate anymore because the straight men of their fandom also started to recognize the characters weird obsession with each other and it became more difficult to ignore the ship since there was literally multiple accidental kiss scenes--one of the few times where the source material actively encourages shipping. I can keep going too.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, non-shonen animes with majority cishet women as their audience, no one bats an eye at their ships either, because there's not enough men in their communities to tell them they should feel ashamed for their fanon content and their words hold no weight… and there’s a lot less queer people in those fandoms. You see the trend, right? It's almost like queer shipping is perfectly okay and mostly accepted as long as the community is either majority cishet men, or those men grant permission/approval for the specific ships or the piece of media wasn’t “meant for men.” Otherwise, it's seen as gross and cringe.

There was one other community that was kind of similar to bnha in a sense that it was mostly consumed by queer people and cishet men, where there was a lot of discourse on whether the two main characters were queer or not… which is the Buddy Daddies fandom. When the show was airing, those two sides that I talked about earlier were pretty apparent, with people having heated arguments about whether there were queer undertones or not. The cishet men of the fandom didn't give their approval to ship Rei and Kazuki, so it became an issue. Same with JJK now, more so with itafushi though. SatoSugu was given a somewhat stamp of approval but itafushi is still seen as taboo.

However, for some reason, every queer ship and character (even if it's canon) in bnha is seen as something shameful to recognize which I think is very telling considering how large the queer and disabled part of the fandom is. Minorities are being punished for relating to a manga with discrimination as one of it's core themes. Do what you want with that...

“…hate-mail just pushed him over the edge so he just scrapped everything just as punishment to spite them…”

This kind of references rumors from a few years ago about the shipping community sending hate mail and death threats towards Horikoshi and everyone just running with it without doing their research.

Horikoshi did receive death threats but it was about Dr.Garaki's original name which you can read about here. It was mostly the eastern side of the fandom being aggressive, even going as far as posting videos of them burning the volume where Garaki's name was revealed which isn't okay. However, everyone blamed it on the western shipping community... for whatever reason...

There was another instance where people in the western fandom started sending Horikoshi death threats on his twitter because of a chapter about Endeavor getting attacked by Dabi and an Nomu and the Todo family being worried about him, people claiming that Hori "deserved to die" for romanticizing and glorifying abuse (when that wasn't at all the case, I'm genuinely confused on how they interpreted that...). This came out six years ago but somehow is still narrowed down to the queer community and women being toxic... like what? Do you see my point now of it feeling like we need to be granted permission to do certain things in fandom if we don't want to be punished?

Also who was Hori punishing by not confirming any ships? If anything, I’ve seen most shippers appreciative than not…

II: Ochako Uraraka and her relationship with Izuku Midoriya

Back to that point about misogyny that I mentioned earlier...

"...I would have lowkey wish we got to see deku and ochaco end up together since their relationship was hinted from the beginning..."

Quick warning... this is gonna be a long point.

Yes, they were attracted to each other at the beginning, no one is denying that. No one is denying Ochako’s crush either. Izuku’s nervous around her for the first like 50-ish chapters because he's still used to having friends (especially a girl. If you think about it, if his childhood friends were the only friends he had ever had before getting shunned by his community, then he had never had a girl as a friend before... ever) but their relationship eventually mellows out into a normal friendship. Given Ochako and Toga's arc, I don't think Izuocha was ever destined to end romantically.

Toga was desperate to be loved by someone who accepted her for who she was while Ochako was desperate to be able to show love to someone who she truly admired. Ochako wanted to be like Deku and tried for a while until she realized that she couldn’t and shouldn’t want to be like Deku. She thinks he’s amazing but she realizes that she can’t strive to be like him because she’s already like him but wants to change.

(this is kind of off topic but I just want to point out what Ochako said about Toga being sad about not being able to totally become Jin. Correct me if I'm remembering wrong but, Toga was only able to ever transform into Ochako completely, quirk and all. I think there's an analogy there, where her being able to be just like someone possibly means she's in love with them but she convinces herself that she loves everyone equally. I think it's supposed to be saying that "even though you can't be him completely, doesn't mean you don't love him, you just don't love him in the way you thought you did" and I think Ochako realizes that because she possibly had the same realization with Izuku. Becoming him didn't work out for her because she didn't love him the way others told her she did... I guess it wasn't off topic... oh well.)

The highlighted parts can apply to Ochako too if you replace “bloodlust” with “envy”. She suffered the same issue that Toga did with other people telling her how and who to love which made her feel like she was supposed to be jealous.

She didn't like these feelings of jealousy, so she began to unintentionally be like Deku and hide them. I don't think she ever had an issue with loving Deku but she had an issue with the way she convinced herself of how she loved Deku made her feel. It made her feel like she was hiding something because I think she felt conflicted for not loving him the way everyone expected her to. All the way up to her final fight with Toga, we were only getting intel about her crush from other characters. Not her.

There's a lot of Mina just telling her what her feelings are despite Mina canonically not knowing much about love. Her crush has always been projected onto her which is why she's able to relate to Toga so well and wants to be more like her since Toga is able to live as herself so comfortably and broke away from conformity and what's expected of her.

Ochako's crush is only there because it's expected to be and her arc is meant to prove that she can be more than just the MCs love interest. Ochako's projected crush is Horikoshi trying to prove a point about basic shonen tropes which he's done time and time again throughout the story. SHE WANTS TO LIVE AND LOVE HOW SHE PLEASES WITHOUT SOCIETY TELLING HER HOW TO JUST LIKE TOGA WAS ABLE TO DO! I WILL KEEP SAYING IT UNTIL MY THROAT IS RAW AND DUDEBROS BEGIN TO FINALLY UNDERSTAND AND NOT VIEW FEMALE CHARACTERS AS NOTHING MORE THAN EYE CANDY FOR THE MALE CHARACTERS!!!

In the epilogue. she hides her feelings with a smile because she doesn't want to worry anyone (sound familiar?) so it only makes sense that it was Deku who pushed her to let out her feelings despite not practicing what he preaches. So, she embraced her inner Himiko and let out her feelings with her whole face. Those feeling just weren't for Deku... and they shouldn't have to be.

I genuinely feel like (especially with the way dudebros hate queer ships in this fandom) if Ochako was a boy, her arc wouldn't have been so widely misinterpreted. Because if he had talked about how amazing Izuku was and Mina came in and still said "It's love!" most fans would've taken it as a joke and/or even going as far as pointing out that the crush wasn't real because he didn't actually admit to it and it was projected onto him by other characters. But, the world ain't ready for that conversation.

"...I saw it as the fandom tryn to force their ships into the story 100% ruining key moments..."

I mainly added this quote because I thought it was so absurd. How do you see class-a coming to support Ochako as "omg it's the fandom forcing their agenda and controlling Hori through mind control to force their ships into the story and ruin this key moment,"??? Like, is it really so unthinkable that Horikoshi can have creative freedom outside the norm of treating girl characters as a trophy for the MC? You expected Izuku to marry her on the spot while she's having a mental breakdown? It's just... anyways...

III: Old-Gen Shonen Homoeroticism and it's Relation with Internalized Misogyny and how New-Gen is Changing That

The Shonen genre - especially old gen - is notorious for it's accidental misogyny, queerphobia, and racism. It got to the point where it's just kind of expected at this point.

The main one is usually misogyny. A lot of shonen mangaka like to write women as nothing more than eye candy and when they are actually given a personality and power, their character arcs are suddenly ignored/neglected and turned back into eye candy. Take Tsunade and Nezuko for example. We're told that they're important and powerful and yet they rarely do anything and almost never get important speaking lines and when we get to see them in action, the author makes sure to highlight certain parts of their bodies. Nezuko I think is an especially obvious one, being literally muzzled for most of the story, and when she powers up, she grows up and is suddenly given huge boobs...

Almost every shonen girls' character arcs revolves around a man and if not, then their existence is for the sake of a male character. I will say, I havent watched much shonen because of this aspect that's always apparent, but almost every older shonen I've watched, read, or seen other people talk about, it rears its ugly head at least once.

Because of that, most love interests weren’t given enough personality to actually form a meaningful relationship with the MC that the audience - especially female and queer audiences - can connect to. More often than not, it’s “I like her cuz she’s pretty” or “I like her cuz she likes me” and it’s irritating. And since these relationships are so shallow, authors are forced to create an interesting bond between the MC and a different character which usually ends up being the deuteragonist who is usually another boy more often than not. And boys in media written “for boys” are almost never neglected the way a girl would be, which is a sad truth.

These relationships almost always end up feeling like they’re passed the point of friendship and because of that, a lot of women and queer people end up shipping them instead of the canon love interest. Because their relationship being romantic actually makes sense most of the time.

BakuDeku, Eremin, KilluaGon, NaruSasu, ItaFushi, SatoSugu, IsaBachi, HideKan, GenoSai, LawLight, the list can go on for fucking ever.

However, in bnha and BakuDeku’s case, especially when the “canon” relationship with the “canon” love interest wasn’t really developed at all, and we never got a hint from Deku that he liked her, I don’t think this homoeroticism wasn’t intentional. Like with a lot of new-gen, there wasn’t really blatant misogyny towards the “love interest” present to explain away the closeness between the two male leads.

All of the roles a love interest would usually have, were given to Katsuki. He was damseled for Deku to save, he was Deku’s biggest cheerleader, he risked his life to save Deku, he died in Izuku’s honor, he showed up for Izuku when no one else thought to, he showed up to his hospital room and cried over the condition he was in, and then he devoted nearly a decade of his life trying to bring Izuku’s dream back into fruition… He cares so fucking much and Izuku cares right back. And no one can convince me that it was accidentally gay, because Horikoshi literally felt the need to tell AND remind us that Katsuki doesn’t like girls. Plus, like I said before, all of that was done without neglecting Uraraka’s character arc.

But even though all of that is in text, I think shonen bros just expect it while also expecting the main girl and boy to be together… because that’s how it always used to be. It wasn’t until new-gen - starting with mha - started to purposely parody dated shonen tropes and twisting them into their own stories that shonen bros began to feel threatened by queer ships. Because they know that there’s actually a chance of them happening now, and I feel like IzuOcha not being canonized is the beginning of a new trend. And misogynistic anime fans already hate it.

Conclusion - TLDR

uh idk what to say here.

In conclusion, fandom culture kinda sucks because of unexpected reasons, Ochako’s character arc is ignored for the sake of men wanting her to be Izuku’s prize and it’s irritating as fuck, and I think previously accidental homoeroticism in old-gen shonen is becoming purposeful in new-gen shonen as new-gen slowly becomes more progressive and less misogynistic. Oh and bkdk canon ig (I don’t think I’ve ever said that before, strangely enough…)

[gece-misin-nesin]

honestly? himiko and ochako's climax and ending (aside from himiko dying obvs) was written great. like genuinely that fight is amazing. i DO think their dynamic wasn't set up anywhere near well enough though. the lines are good and all, but they don't have any buildup, they just come out of nowhere. i don't think their dynamic was established very well at first at all, so even though the later parts of it are brilliant, it has a very weak beginning.

for example, ochako saying "im jealous of your smile"? great. why though. where is the buildup. show me HOW this happened.

[khonaker]

Imagine having the arrogance of talking like this. And this is a thirty something year old TEACHER acting like this. This will be the last time I ever do a post like this but, honestly, I am so sick of her negativity. And the fact people LIKE her talking like this…they should be ashamed of themselves. They are only going to encourage people to cause to be ugly to each other for ships. People like her are going to help cause MHA to be remembered as a joke for how crazy people get over imagining doodles falling in love.

[moonsb1996]

What is your opinion on these people?

Early in the morning, according to my home time Going to comment on things I disagree with about Toga Himiko, but not attacking anyone except the characters they love so much, especially the actions of said characters. And this is what they And some people received replies for expressing their disagreement with Himiko Toga's actions.

I only chose people who seemed to "pity" Himiko Toga to the point of not caring. What are her current actions? She is pitiful She has no support. It's Toga's parents' fault. It's society's fault. And it makes me wonder In that way, would Toga not be guilty because society, heroes, and her parents forced her to genocide the human race and all the other props? I even thought If Toga's clone was released in the War Refugees section because some hero (Ochako) chose to talk to Toga about their love. (Which many people call it a confession of love vomit) rather than "choosing to arrest" first and "talk" later. I really want to know the families of those supporting characters. Or if Toga's clone were to encounter a war refugee camp, how bloody would it be? Fan club: Oh! It's not Toga's fault. Refugees and props are the ones who have ended up in the Toga Clone Army's expansion zone. Sigh…These people only talked about Toga's past and didn't even mention her murder. Ah… prop characters can only be prop characters. It's like us readers who waste time reading MHA which is just an NPC by Horikoshi Kohei who sees us as stupider than monkeys.

[potatoof69]

ppl will do anything to deny a yuri ship man imagine if ochaco said "let's talk about romance" to a guy and called his smile "the cutest in the whole world".

like that shit would be canon fast nobody would deny it. and if by the end of this hypothetical bnha run ochaco had turned around and ended up with some other dude people would go insane, but bc it's wlw it's just not taken seriously.

it's like if katara had said to zuko "let's talk about romance" down in that cave or if zuko had called her cute. and then katara ends up with aang with no further mention of that. zutara shippers would be going more apeshit than they already did.

but bnha can just leave the issue hanging for 30 chapters, nearly one whole year, and then just kill off toga at the end offscreen and it's all fine i guess when izuocha inevitably happens because it has a boy and a girl instead of a girl and a girl.

[bibibbon]

MHA characters with wasted potential : ochako Uraraka (rant)

Ps : this is my opinion!!!

Ochako is one of those characters that I tend to just have a love/hate relationship with. In my opinion she had potential to be a great character but a lot of that was ruined due to stuff that horikoshi did and how the narrative did her character arc. As I have stated I have a lot of problems with her but my main ones are:

HER MIXED SIGNALS/MESSAGES?!?!. What I mean by this is that ochako is very flimsy a great example of her hypocrisy is when she asks izuku if he is going to fight quirkless but then she realises that she relays way too much in her quirk and then does some quirkless hand to hand combat with gunhead. There are more examples of her doing this like when she goes to tell toga that she deserves whatever bad thing comes to her but then is like I wanna be your blood bank?

THE WHOLE IZUKU ORDEAL. Don't even get me started on this one like why is it that the her plot has to focus on izuku and literally izuku bashing for no reason??!?! I understand her admiring izuku and her inspiring her to be better and all of that. However, I don't understand the whole I need to focus on my career that's why I need to hide my crush on izuku thing. It doesn't make sense at all!!!! Like?!?!?! And then she goes on to like toga and wants to be togas blood bank or something?!?! Also why is it such a pathetic excuse like you're only a first year you still have time before becoming a pro hero. Look I see her being Izuku's best friend and them forming a close platonic bond. However, hori does her a huge disservice and makes her character have to revolve around either izuku or toga.

HER INCONSISTENCY. Iam pretty certain that I can talk about the inconsistncy of every character in MHA because they all contradict themselves with reasons that make no sense. Ochako is a character with a huge ton of inconsistncy as we see it in my first post of her inconsistency making her come off as a hypocrite and it ruins other aspects of her character like her friendship or character interactions. There is also a lot of inconsistncy in her goals of becoming a hero. At first she wants to become a hero to provide for her family and then like 3/4 of the way hori ditches that and is like no she wants to be a hero that sees others smile and saves other heros which could of been a good point but in my opinion was introduced way too late.

HER CHARACTER INTERACTIONS. As I have said before this is a very reoccurring thing with the characters horikoshi writes it the fact that the characters actions don't match up and they tend to be inconsistent. I, myself have a lot of questions about ochako like what happend to the I wanna provide for my parents plot point or what is going on with her and izuku because she still carries that all might charm around her it's literally what unites both toga and ochako which is horrible. There are questions like what happend to her friendship with tenya and at this point who really are her friends because Iam a bit confused since she never sticks to them a lot and the only time she has screen time she has to SHARE it with toga.

HER MOTIVATION? I have touched on this subject before but her motivation for being a hero just goes all over the place. At first she wants to be a hero who wants to help her parents financially which is a good motivation and could be built upon. She then wants to be a hero who wants to see others smile and protect their smile which is very similar to all might and izuku; you can say that she was inspired by both of them ( especially izuku) but it falls flat when you notice that she doesn't have that much screen time for it. Lastly, she goes on to say that she wants to be a hero who helps and saves other and other heros which in canon it's only implied that she got to this conclusion from seeing izuku all beat up and in his horrible state in the dark deku arc. However, I think that she might of started thinking of this from the time she had to hold nighteyes dying body but oh well canon never focuses on that and how it affected her🤷‍♀️.

In my opinion it's pretty easy to change her character and rewrite her in a way that wouldn't change her purpose in canon which are :

Cut the whole shipping with Izuku. From the beginning you can easily tell that she was supposed to be the lone interest which is ok but horikoshi changed his mind halfway through and made her have a horrible reason for not confessing and distancing herself away from izuku (who at the time was her best friend). The whole reason of I wanna focus on my career doesn't work especially cos she is only a first year and I don't understand how her being in a relationship would affect her hero work. My solution is to cut that out completely and just have them develop a deep platonic bond (I love platonic soulmates) something similar to Nobara and yuji. By having this she can have more screen time and we sort out the whole mixed messages and signals part of her character that I get from her.

Give her and toga more Parallels or make twice ochako's villain. Honestly, ever since I saw @doodlegirl1998 post about twice being a better villain I have been obsessed with the idea of twice becoming ochakos villain and it makes it easier for twice to have a redemption because he is the most redeemable villain in the league. However, ochako and toga can also work if they met both as civilians (before the attack) and had more Parallels with eachother.

Give her more screen time. One of the reasons why ochakos character arc kind of lacks impact and is lacking overall is because of her lack of screen time and whenever she gets screen time it's shared about toga or toga appears which is kind of bad in my opinion. Ochako and toga is one aspect to their characters but they should both definitely have major interactions and scenes without the other being present or mentioned so both of their characters develop. Iam still very salty about the fact that ochako doesn't get much screen time or an arc where she defeats a villain with Izuku (just like iida and todoroki did).

Give her a mentor. The main characters all have their own mentors and even some of the support cast have their own mentors that we see together from time to time. However, ochako the main female lead doesn't have a mentor at all? I liked gun head and he could of been a good mentor for her but we didn't see much of them and Iam more into the idea of ochako having pro hero thirteen as her mentor. Either way my point stands is that she should have a mentor someone she is close to and can talk to. She can tell this mentor her thoughts and ambitions and so many other stuff. It would of been fun to see ochako and a mentor like thirteen or gunhead.

Have her reflect on her morals and why she wants to be a hero etc. We can consistently see her reflect on her morals and why she wants to be a hero and we see a build up and what causes her to make the decisions she makes. This can be seen from the multitude if screen time she will get that will have scenes with 1A, her main villain, her mentor and just her doing hero work. In my opinion, I really like the idea of ochako wanting to be a hero to only help her parents and then as she goes further into the industry she realises how many people actually need help and comes to the conclusion that as much as she wants to help her parents she also wants to be a hero for both heros and villains

Make her an actual supportive friend. This is probably very controversial but due to the lack of ochako screen time with her friends I don't get the feeling that they're close and the whole "izuku may have OFA but he is just a boy" speech that she had was very anti-climatic to me because of the lack of screen time and whatever the hell their relationship became as the series went on. I also miss her interactions with iida and wish we got more of her hanging out with the dekusquad considering that she is one of the main members.

Make her blunt. This is a 50/50 for me. As I have previously stated I sometimes get mixed signals from ochako where in my opinion she can come of as a bit passive aggressive or say things that are so uncalled for Iam not sure if that's the word? A lot of the time these insistences if altered a bit could be seen as her being cheerfully blunt or curious if done well this can be seen as an interesting idea for her and may make her dynamic with izuku a whole lot more interesting.

Overall, on paper I was a fan of ochako's character arc but I think it definitely could of been executed a whole lot better. I think that she could of been a character who was exposed to a lot of stuff a young kid shouldn't of have especially considering family issues with finance and you could of had her living somewhere near the red district (not sure if that's a canon thing in MHA) however, I think she could of seen this and tired to just help her parents overcome the struggles but she slowly realises how many people actually need help and are overlooked like heros and villains and she becomes a hero who wants to be a hero that helps heros and villains while also valuing family and helping them.

[a-sentimental-man]

I'm going to have to ask you all keep the words "queer bait" out of your mouths until you understand exactly what it means

[sapphic-agent]

Hopefully, this ask won’t get you in trouble. If you feel it does, then feel free to disregard this. Or if you don’t feel comfortable or confident talking about it, cause it does involve talking about ships.

But it somewhat feels like Horikoshi for the later chapters seems to be catering for same sex pairings, like Midoriya always being around Bakugou, or Ochako’s most significant moments now being around Toga. At least to me.

And the fact he seems to be focusing on same sex pairings certainly isn’t the problem.

The problem is the fact is the pairings he’s focusing on are f****** shit!

BakuDeku is an angry asshole bossing around and being a d*****bag to a boy that has been conditioned to think so highly of his abuser. This is a hop, skip and a jump away from Stockholm Syndrome.

Togachako, imo, is slightly worse than BakuDeku (but not by much) simply because it’s a very one sided relationship where one partner always has to cater to the problems of the other with no sign of returned love or reciprocated love. I wouldn’t trust Toga to know when she’s had enough of my blood. Why should I believe she would know where to stop drinking Ochako’s blood? And despite the images throughout their fight, like Toga GROPING Ochako, Horikoshi, for some disturbing reason, tries SO hard to paint this as a CUTE couple. (Hell, the dude could be showing Toga literally EATING Ochako and somehow paint it as an endearing thing…)

Why is Horikoshi banking on these toxic forms of love for the LGBTQ when he’s had more HEALTHIER couples?!?

TodoDeku? Tsuchako? IidaDeku? Minachako?

Hell, there are other pairings that were literally already there!

MomoJirou!

Mirio and Amajiki!

It’s just…it’s baffling why BakuDeku and Togachako are paraded as these fantastic M/M and W/W ships when they are anything BUT.

I have a sapphic couple in their wedding dresses as my pfp and my user is sapphic-agent... I'd honestly be impressed if someone could accuse me of homophobia😆Feel free to submit any LGBTQIA asks :)

In the case of TogaChako, I just think Toga herself is queer-bait. Among BakuDeku and other queer ships becoming popular, good old Hori probably thought to himself, "What's the best way to capitalize on this?" without actually putting any thought or care into it (like with Bakugou's redemption once he started to become popular). So he made Toga canonically bisexual (I'm like 90% sure she wasn't originally intended to be bi as she was way more infatuated with Izuku than Uraraka initially). And she's bad rep to boot. Horikoshi is making his only canonically queer character a predator... that's not a good look.

I even like Toga. Or, I liked how much potential she had at the beginning of the series. She was original and I liked her quirk. He could have given her a lot of depth, but nah let's just make her creepy and a predator mfers will eat it right up... And he was right unfortunately.

What makes it worse is that Uraraka has to be at the center of Toga's advances (again, WHY THE GROPING PANEL). Idk if it's because she's the main girl or what, but she deserved better than this.

(Tbh, I know she's Izuku's LI, but her and Tsu are way cuter and a lot healthier than her and Toga)

BakuDeku I feel like is part of that queer-baiting. Look, the fact is that it will never be canon. We know it, the shippers know it (even if they feign delusion), and Horikoshi knows it. But that doesn't mean Hori isn't milking it for all its worth. Do you see how the shippers go nuts when Izuku and Bakugou are in the same panel together? The entire MHA feed will be filled with it here on Tumblr for weeks. They eat that shit up and Horikoshi knows that. That's part of the reason why he forced reconciliation between them, so that he'd have more content for them to froth at the mouth over.

[dekusleftsock]

SO TO PROVIDE SOME CONTEXT OKAY…

I wanted to make a more idfk “clean looking” digital illustration since my style relies on your eyes filling in the gaps a lot of the time (vague hair, not knowing where lines are supposed to end, smaller drawings, etc) I DECIDED… to try to do line art again.

And yk trying new ways of doing things makes the style change bc the rules you’ve made aren’t going to apply to everything, yada yada, I WANYED TO ALSO TRY DOING A COMIC OKAY

And I don’t really DO comics all that much. And comics require (usually) that more “clean looking” line art style and WHATEVER. WHATEVER. ITS DONE. ITS NOT LONG ENOUGH OR DETAILED ENOUGH TO BE A “REAL COMIC” BUT WHATEVER

She says “a boy” and the background is in green to represent what Tsu KNOWS about her crush on Izuku but NOT about toga, nor does she really know the full extent to how she’s thinking about her. So since she’s bashful rn she has to lie to Tsu bc yk gay gay homosexual gay (and also villain) AND YOU GET MY POINT OKAY. It’s also why I crossed out the boy in pink bc girl equal pink ITS NOT STEREOTYPES ITS SYMBOLISM FUCK YOU

I also tried to make her smile more “creepy” but still cute, like her actual smile. So that’s why her eye brows are like that. SHES HAPPY GUYS I SWEAR SHES ACTUALLY HAPPY THE POINT WAS THAT YOU COULD MISTAJE HER EXPRESSION.

[doodlegirl1998]

I remember reading a post somewhere on Tumblr, I don't remember the exact one, I know it involved how Uraraka's plot was handled and how it could've been handled better.

One part is saying that Twice should've been her villain since they both dealt in poverty, one had support while the other had nothing.

And I think that would've been way better than what we got. Because if Uraraka and Twice were to have more genuine interactions with each other, she probably would've seen some of herself in him and how she could've turned out if she didn't had her parents or her friend's support.

Twice also probably would've been touched that a hero had suffered something similar but is able to keep moving forward despite the hardships and not having as much.

So what do you think? You think it would've worked better than the stupid love triangle that's happening?

Hi @theloganator101 👋,

Yes!! Twice as Uraraka's villain would have worked so so much better narratively.

In fact, this will be an unpopular opinion, I feel like because of how Toga and Twice were set up by Hori, their roles in the narrative being switched would also work better if one of them had to die.

Hawks killing a minor (Toga is seventeen) would be harder to excuse and brush under the carpet for him. So more consequences.

Twice would feel extremely guilty because now his worst fear has happened and his best friend has died because he trusted the wrong person.

Twice having a big moment of going full villain in the final battle would be more impactful and jarring than Toga who was honestly a full villain before she joined the LOV. Since he would go from a kind, goofy guy led into villainy and crime through his circumstances, mental illness, poverty to someone consumed by the need for revenge (rather like Dabi.)

Speaking of Dabi, there was more of a friendship between him and Twice and him and Toga. So having Twice fighting Uraraka getting more distraught because he was thinking he lost another friend while fighting her would be more impactful.

Also his fight with Uraraka would be more focused on his grief, his circumstances (that are rather like Uraraka's sans support) - the parallels between them both would be interesting to explore. Uraraka would have an easier time empathising with him.

Hawks would not have a fun time - could imagine Twice sending a legion of Toga clones his way, and only calling off the attack when Uraraka gets through to him.

Plus we would see more Twice asking the honest questions to her like "How do you keep going?" "How do you stay so positive and strong? I admire you, dude." "I was so stupid I trusted the hero who went and killed Toga-chan. How do I know youre not like the guy that killed my buddy? Toga-chan just wanted a place to belong like me..." Uraraka I could see providing him with the answers, support he needed as well as helping him forgive himself for what happened.

Toga (other than her sweet moments with Twice) was set up as an unrepentant blood yandere. Her friends? Her family? No mention of them (no build up of a mysterious past like Dabi either.) She's also a mass murderer prior to joining the LOV - so that's harder to redeem than Twice who wasn't and to my memory only committed burglary.

In my opinion, the Toga/Uraraka fight as it played out in canon was a mess. Hori seemed to try to do too many things at once and failed to give any of them real depth in the process.

Not only that by he failed to explore Toga's vengeance for Twice in more depth by distracting it with the love triangle B.S.

Hori doesn't allow her to really go all out trying to kill Hawks like she could have with the clone army.

He failed to explore Toga's backstory properly (I.e did her parents actually hit her? Her kissing her friends wound better - what happened there? Did she actually just press her mouth to the wound and suck? We don't know but she's covered in blood.)

Uraraka just her 'bond' with Toga, calling her the "cutest" and saying she wants to talk about romance now is all SO forced. Whereas the parallels with Twice were all already there.

TLDR - Twice should have been Uraraka's villain instead.

[ice-cream-nekogirl]

Hot Take On BNHA Chapter 394: I've Seen Gayer

Okay, so I'm seeing everyone go on and on about this Togachako stuff, and hey that's cool, ship who you want you guys. Definitely hype up what you want and say it's your favorite gay ship, it's valid! Your ship is valid.

Hell, I keep hearing people say it's the "gayest thing ever".

I'm just here to share my opinion, because I'm thinking, nah, I've seen gayer.

Now for my critical take on the writing aspect of it all. This chapter was so spur of the moment it's honestly hard for my personally to feel anything for it. I don't buy for a second that there's anything that deep into this mess of a relationship between Ochako and Toga. I'm actually kinda proud that Ochako showed genuine sympathy and compassion for Toga... but what did that cost?

The rest of her sympathy and compassion for the people Toga hurt, and killed and impacted for the rest of their lives.

Why are people forgetting that?

I'm a Toga fan, I feel bad for her, she's a tragic villain and that's why I love her as a villain! She's an excellent villain with troubling motivations that would make her dangerous in real life, and watching her on screen is a delight.

But as someone who enjoys her villainous antics, I've made it a point to notforget that she's killed quite a few, some innocent people and just people in general who didn't really deserve it, Curious and her Squad is debatable but still comes into question. Even though Ochako says she isn't going to forget either, here she is, telling her that she's got the cutest smile?

That's kinda bullshit?

Or am I crazy?

This very disturbed girl who has shown NO remorse for attacking people, killing them and drinking their blood without any of their consent, has "the cutest smile"? Okay, I know there are fans who like the unhinged x cinnamon roll ship, but this is ridiculous.

I don't know. I guess there was no other way Hori could have written the end to this weak-as-hell Ochako and Toga final endgame conflict. I mean if it were me I would have tried something a little different that includes NOT... this. Not telling the girl who murdered people with no true remorse that her smile is cute. Especially since this is the same girl who attacked and hurt some of her friends.

To make matters worse, Hori strikes again with his 'crying child' imagery to invoke easy sympathy from readers and it's clearly working since everyone and their grandma is sobbing over it while forgetting that Toga is a murderer and Ochako now suddenly feels sorry for her despite how many people she's killed.

Whatever. I don't like it.

And just for emphasis, I've seen gayer. I greatly prefer Momojirou, an actually healthy lesbian pairing. And Tsuchako! A sweet friendship that is both healthy and heartwarming, because even though I'm not an Ochako fan at all, she deserves better than what she's getting in this story.

[stxrry-dxys]

hmmmm hmmmmm need to bnha critpost for a second cuz uhh yikes!!

not very fond of the toga and chako chapter,,, like yeah okay homoerotic togachako cool cool whatever uh??? we do acknowledge that toga's biggest problem atm is not "she needs to be a teenage girl!" and is in fact "her best friend, her BROTHER, died at the hands of a hero and despite being called out on this fact he still has not faced repercussions for his actions. she has spent her whole life wanting nothing more than to be herself and the one person she could be herself with has been ripped away by the same society that forced her to mask"

like we acknowledge that this "let's talk about romance together!" is not actually what she needs to complete her arc right. right?