#am i using hisashi midoriya for an illness inspiration?

[crossroadsfossil]

bnha worldbuilding: quirk related illnesses

Fuck it- world building prompts. Send a fandom and a prompt.

I had about 8 things ready to go on this but it was more a deconstruction of the lore already out there and then some extrapolation, which, as fun as that is, I am neither that well versed of a fan nor that much of a medical nerd. 

The best I really want to throw out there is that there are so many types of illnesses that we could play with: Stress illnesses from repeated use, quirk exhaustion, how the human body reacts to quirks it’s not compatible with and the mental health issues alone.

I’ve read amazing fic that already deals with such things and wonderful trope-y ones that deal with the idea of having a quirk that promotes illness in others. 

Buuttttt those are all very serious and I’d rather touch on something a bit more mundane. 

How the fuck would the common cold react to quirks? How would common childhood illnesses react? How would known killers of humanity adapt? Are there viruses that target specific quirks more due to genetic structures?

For the common cold: Imagine there being sub-variations for those whose baseline temperatures are not base-human standard? Those with colder baseline temperatures could be more or less sensitive to the common flu (which tends to thrive in colder temperatures, I think). Those with higher temperatures might get sick less. Those who have extreme heteromorphic qualities (Kouda?) might be immune to most forms of illness altogether, depending on if bacteria/virus can hijack their DNA like with most humans. 

 The common cold mutates enough as it is with all of us sharing like the same 99% of DNA. Adding quirks into that mess would either result in things mutating even faster... or things mutating even slower. 

For shits and giggles, let’s pretend that it doesn’t do either. It just goes six cha-cha slides to the left. Illnesses that mutate at the same rate but absorb some of the weirdness of quirks. 

You get one asshole with the ability to breathe fire and BAM. They get sick and pass it on and now everyone is coughing sparks because something just clicked right with the genetics of this dude and this bacteria and as long as you’re genetically human, congrats. You are now coughing some variation of sparks/smoke/flames/etc. You have the Pepper Up Cough. 

Here’s another idea. 

Chicken Pox. Common childhood illness in the west, or it was when I was a child. I remember it sucking and well, let’s give BNHA its version of chickenpox. Feather Pox. As in you sprout feathers instead of pox and well. Hawks said it takes his feathers like, two days to regrow so it can be extrapolated from there that human-feathers can grow quick. So. Childhood Feathers Pox. 

Also, imagine how many kids would be devastated that they weren’t getting wings after they recover from feather pox? If I suddenly had feathers as a kid I’d a) be so ready to learn to fly and b) make so many tarred and feathered jokes, because I was that sort of child. It probably would maybe makeup for all the itching. 

Last quirk related illness- but lets go with a chronic one: Diet deficiencies. Permanent issues due to not getting specific things in your diet. A lot of quirks are said to rely on things ingested (Tamaki, Fat Gum, Yaoyorozu, Tenya???). 

Besides that, when growing, you need a lot of things to just make a healthy human. It’s why a lot of processed food and products are supplemented with things (again, in the west as I’m USA based and we have shit in everything). For example, you miss getting enough folic acid during fetal development and well, neural abnormalities and issues with blood cells. There’s a bunch of little things like that for your standard base human. 

Now add whatever quirks will need into that mix. This would probably be one of the more horrific things to consider in this universe- even if you did everything right, you could miss something for your child if it’s a part of their quirk. Have a baby that will one day develop a quirk that can grow iron fingernails? Haha sucks to be you and them if you didn’t each iron-rich foods during pregnancy and what should have been a fingernail growing quirk is now a ‘missing all their keratin and it’s only partially replaced by iron’ quirk. Because guess what also is partially comprised of keratin?  epithelial cells. Guess where those are? According to the internet, they ‘line the inside and outside surfaces of the body. Keratins help form the tissues of the hair, nails, and the outer layer of the skin. They are also found on cells in the lining of organs, glands, and other parts of the body‘.

Yeah. As someone who has a connective tissue disease, this sounds creepily similar and really fucking horrifying. 

Let’s give this quirk-related, often prenatal issue a name. We’ll call it the Gen1 disease, or maybe just Qingqing/Q_Q disease, as the first generation to present quirks probably had to deal with this (and I would bet money that glowing baby probably had some serious health issues due to shining light all the time). So Q_Q disease is probably still around, and it’s probably a poverty disease because testing shit in-utero is expensive unless you live in a society that gives a flying fuck about bearers. 

Basically, Q_Q would just be a new variation of Rickets and other similar diseases. Anyone else getting Oliver Twist feels all of a sudden? 

So, I’m going to leave it here on this thrilling and positive note. Three fun ideas of what illnesses in BNHA might look like and the fact that I am, for one, very glad I am not a manga/anime character in this universe, even though the idea of Featherpox sounds Freaking Hilarious.