#bnha 101

[delawaredetroit]

It's interesting how differently Ochako interacts with Toga versus Hatsume. In both cases, Ochako represents the normal girl in contrast to girls who deviate from the norm like Hatsume and Toga.

Both Toga and Hatsume deviate from the norm, act selfishly, and hit on Izuku. But except for when it comes to harm to others, Ochako seems to dislike Hatsume more despite Toga being the villain. And Toga and Ochako reconcile; meanwhile Ochako was never able to see eye to eye with Hatsume.

To some extent, it might be that Ochako didn't consider Toga a real threat concerning her crush on Izuku because he wouldn't date a current villain. Also, Toga has an interest in and even loves Ochako. Hatsume on the other hand takes little interest in Ochako whenever they are in the same scene. It may also be that Toga sees Ochako as someone aspirational - someone she wants to be like - and on some level Ochako finds that flattering. Toga's desire to be a normal girl may also be relatable to Ochako at least on a superficial level. On the other hand, Hatsume has no desire to aspire to normalcy and doesn't care about doing anything outside of her own pace.

[amuletx]

the fandom needs to talk more about how katsuki is 100x nerdier than izuku

[numberoneredriotfan]

One of Deku's students asking about the humarise crisis, in which Deku gets really excited and ends up just talking about his husband and their love story for three hours.

[harukamitsuki]

toshinori's character was supposed to encapsulate the idea that 'not everyone can be heroes, but everyone has the capacity for heroism'.

maybe you can't be a hero without a quirk, maybe you can't be a hero with strength.

but it doesn't change the fact that everyone can be heroic.

after all might's retirement, toshinori goes through a bit of an identity crisis, wondering who he is if he cannot be all might. and aizawa tells him straight up that he does not need to be all might. all he has to be is toshinori.

stain further exemplifies this, when he saves all might and tells him that it was not his strength that moved him. it was his actions. the all might statue built had been defecated, and this upsets toshinori. it makes him feel as though he failed in being a symbol of peace.

yet, when stain tells him that people loved all might for his actions and what he stood for, not his strength, a single person goes up to that statue and cleans it.

all might may have died, but toshinori lives on and that is all he needs to do. all he has to do is be himself.

...

all this gets thrown out with iron might.

iron might goes against what his character was building up to be, what his character was going to say.

'not everyone can be heroes, but all can be heroic.'

by giving us iron might, it erases that first half. because, while quirkless, toshinori is able to fight on using this suit to mimic quirks. which, while i'd accept if izuku did this at the start, or if a different quirkless character did, is just not good.

the whole point of all might dying was so that toshinori could live on. he shouldn't have to fight after everything that he's already done.

toshinori dying would have been trash, but i wouldn't mind it so much if he died an honorable and heroic death, such as saving someone from an attack, maybe having a call-back to izuku's 'my feet started moving on its own'.

he wouldn't be a hero in that moment, but he would be heroic, and that is what his character was supposed to say.

his character was supposed to show us that. we were supposed to gather that, even if toshinori is no longer a hero, he is still heroic.

supporting others, trying to reach out to izuku in his dark hero arc, dong whatever he can to keep morale up.

iron might is cool and all, but it goes against his own narrative.

horikoshi, once again, did him dirty. he does so many character dirty.

[deadwriter16]

people editing mha 430 to put the panel of deku smiling after bkg holding put his hand to imply that bkg’s handhold is what made deku smile when it’s different in canon is just

sooooo kuleschov i will think abt this forever

im kinda lazy to explain what the kuleschov effect is are there any other film ppl here who can do it for me 😭😭

but hori made deku smile first. and Then had the bkg handhold panel. if he’d done it the opposite way like people have been editing them the meaning and implications would’ve been changed completely. and i think that’s why bkdks edit it the other way to change the implication and make it seem like dekus smile was specifically because of bkg. whether it’s conscious or not. that’s the kuleschov effect essentially lol and i find it fascinating

also sorry to anyone who already knows this and is annoyed at me mansplaining it to u

edit: to clarify editing the panels like this and stuff is not a bad thing or anything at all i have nothing but love in my heart for my bkdk brethren basically i just find the effect of switching the panels really interesting from a completely analytical/film perspective and thats it lol

[bkdkficrecs]

Fic Finder 101

Hey y’all! I’ve gotten a lot of fic finding requests in my inbox over the past few months, (Yay!) so I'm excited to help y’all and discover/rec some great new fics in the process!

In order to make things a smidge easier on myself, I’m making this post to clarify a few things that are helpful to include when submitting a Fic Finder ask:

AO3 Only. I don't look for or read fic elsewhere (i.e. Wattpad, etc.) and am very, very familiar with their website, so I prefer to only rec fics that are posted to Archive of our Own. If you can't remember what platform you read a fic on, just know that there is a possibility that I may not be able to find it.

Details, details, details! If you can list specific dialogue, scenes, settings, plot points that stuck out to you these are all very helpful. For example, great details to include would be something like: "Oneshot Coffee Shop!AU where Pro Hero Katsuki falls in love with Quirkless Barista Izuku at first sight and asks Izuku to make him Deku's favorite drink every morning. He keeps coming back even though he hates the taste of coffee. There was a lot of fluff and pining and it had a happy ending where they moved in together. Bakugou finds out that Izuku knew he didn't like the drink the whole time and kept notes, making it a little different each day until he did."

Include your @. It is understandable that you may not want your username included in posts! However the reason I request this is so that I can message you if I am having issues finding your fic or have questions while searching for it. If you would still like your post to remain anonymous when posted, start your message with "anon please" or something along those lines and I will be sure not to include it.

Read Date. If you are able to give me a rough estimate of how long is has been since you read the fic, that is helpful for me to narrow down results.

I realize that not everyone will be able to provide everything on this list, so don't fret if your answers to most of these are "I don't know." I will still do my best to find that fic you've been looking for!

[violet-sumire]

An absolutely horrible, evil oneshot idea

Dabi dies sometime before he can reveal his identity to the world.

Since he was such a big unknown, his genome is tested to find any relatives so the heroes might learn who he was.

Endeavor gets the worst phone call of his entire life.

[all-all-for-one]

Chapter 287 | Mistake

[bnha-favoriteheadcanon]

Unpopular opinion, but I always thought Mina was the closest female friend to Bakugou than Uraraka and Camie were, I always loved fics that showed that 🥲

🥲

[seethinglikeme]

just found someone’s shigadabi smut series that they’ve written 473k words for in the past eight months

[thatsgaybro]

He really is that one short situationship that u remember longer than actual relationships

Rody had ONE (1) movie and has still been in the top 20 most popular characters for 3 YEARS!

[delawaredetroit]

Paperwork for the paper god I guess.

This is the reason someone can't just be Batman in BNHA unless they have All Might or Knuckleduster connections by the way. Because even if a quirkless person trained, access to support gear is tightly regulated through the pro hero (pro quirk user) profession.

And for the only person shown with access to a support item outside of heroics or villainy (Aoyama), it was because his family was extremely wealthy and they were willing to use unsavory channels to have their kid's needs met.

[thequietmanno1]

TheLreads, Vigilantes ch 101, Replies Part 2

1) “YEAH BOY! THAT’S THE STUFF!

PLUS FUCKING ULTRA!

NOW AT LEAST REMEMBER TO BREATH, WE DON’T WANT YOU TURNING BLUE BY THE TIME YOU REACH THE HOSPITAL”- And here comes the big reveal that connects both Izuku and Koichi’s powers. All along, they’ve been limited by their users’ self-imagined beliefs and understanding of how they think they work. It’s when they let go of thinking and start using the powers on instinct, like it’s a third limb they’ve been born with, that the true potential finally shows. The centipede’s dilemma was capping off Koichi’s real strength this whole time, so when he stops thinking about what he can’t do, and focuses on something more important, like saving Pop, his power skyrockets, and his limits vanish. 2) “…Welp spoke too soon. Shame. Now with his death the fabric of reality shall begin to unravel and disintegrate.”-Only once he finishes Phelps off by shooting him with an actual bullet, “for old times’ sake”. 3) “Ah shit it was just Soga. Never mind then, keep moving koichi, there’s more important stuff to care about right now.”- Sadly, Soga is the designated “ideas man” for the vigilante group right now, which means any clever strategy they need to turn the tables on Nomura needs to be run by him first. Downsides of not having Koichi become completely independent and self-sufficient as a hero- er, Vigilante. 4) “Alright Mr. Strategist, do tell us what the counterattack will entail, since you’re apparently the brain of this whole operation.”- I will admit that for all his strengths as a protagonist, Koichi not having Izuku’s ability to think and plan on his feet, and thus being reliant on others for ideas, does majorly handicap his ability to heroically perform in action. 5) “Jokes on you Soggy, that’s been his life for the past three non-important years. You wouldn’t know, since they weren’t important and thus weren’t shown, but I’ll assure you, all that non-important stuff was building up to this exact moment right here.”- I’d say it was a joke, but it really was all leading up to this fight all along – and us being absent from the humdrum day-to-day does really make us feel the disconnect in Koichi’s journey as a hero compared to Izuku, who we’ve followed closely for an entire year of his life up to this current fight with Tomura. 6) “Also, where’s Midnight? Why isn’t she here? Her quirk could’ve put all of them to sleep, or at least she could try to do so.”- Would that even work on the drones? They have mouths, sure, but they don’t seem to have noses or such to breath with, and it’s unclear if their weird biology would even be affected by the normal cocktail of chemicals that Midnight uses to make others go to sleep.

7) “Again, how many of those fucking things did AfO gave McBee? I was under the impression that Nomus were, you know, difficult to make, even the less-powerful models, and it would probably be worse here considering that this is the early models, before the technology was properly mastered.”- Given the bomber cells have weird “growing” capacities, like we saw with how Nomura formed hands out of them in order to beat Knuckles, it’s possible that he just grew a big vat of the stuff and had it form under Nomura’s control into humanoid Drones to control with. The issue being is that this growth results in the cells being unstable and bad for long-term use, so they won’t work with a Nomu’s trademark durability down the line, but they’re useful for making a large disposable force for an assault like this- don’t even leave any traces behind with how they utterly eradicate themselves with each blast. 8) “So, the final clash is about to start for real. Even McBee himself is there to get his hands dirt, but my oh my, Koichi is right here, and as he showed he has unlocked the next level of his quirk, and if he was already fucking him over before, well, let us just say McBee doesn’t stand much of a chance right now…”- This fight is gonna be wild, let me tell you. @thelreads

[stillness-in-green]

Do you think that afo's claim is true that Shigaraki never made a choice of his own?

Okay, so, I wrote about a thousand words answering this, and what I eventually settled on is that you can’t (or at least, my rambly ass can’t) really answer it properly without meandering into a philosophical cul-de-sac about The Problem of Free Will. I tried to rewrite it and it just got longer. Blame the Philosphy 101 class I took back in college.

Consider: What does it mean to “make a choice of your own”?  What is required for free choice, and has Shigaraki’s free choice been not merely hindered but wholly fettered for his entire life?  Is his agency limited in a way unique to him?  Was it possible for him to have made decisions other than the ones he did?  Why or why not?

On top of a bunch of philosophical/biological questions applied to Shigaraki as if he were a real person, you also have the meta-narrative questions.  What does Horikoshi think?  Did he intend AFO to be read as a reliable narrator in his claim about Shigaraki’s lack of free choice?  Are those answers consistent with the way Shigaraki and AFO’s relationship is portrayed and the portrayal of the actions of other characters in the story?

I don’t really want to turn this into a dissertation on the nature of free will, and that’s not a solved problem in the real world, anyway, so any possible answer is going to come down to a practical, situational assessment and a judgement call. With that in mind, hit the jump.

Per this post, the evidence points towards Horikoshi believing that All For One was making a truthful statement, if only because, if it weren’t true, presumably he would have written Deku contradicting the man, which he didn’t.  And, indeed, Shigaraki himself, in his rueful musing that he was just a kid throwing a tantrum after all, would seem to agree as well.  So taking the text purely at face value, AFO’s claim is likely true in the sense that the author intends it to be definitive.  (Which makes Deku killing Shigaraki all the more loathsome, but that’s neither here nor there.)

So the next question is, am I as a reader obligated to agree with Horikoshi as an author, and do I?

Ultimately, my answer to both halves of that question is no.  If I take a holistic view of BNHA, one that accounts for the entire scope of Shigaraki and AFO’s relationship rather than just the stuff at the very end, I do not think that AFO’s claim about Shigaraki was correct—or, if it is correct, then there’s little difference between Shigaraki’s agency and that of anyone else in the world.

See, the thing is, every piece of evidence we have pre-Liberation War points to an All For One who was genuinely trying to cultivate Shigaraki into a powerful force with a strong will of his own, someone able to stand on his own two feet, able to be a Villain to be reckoned with entirely on his own merits.  Post-Kamino, AFO reflects in his own mind—talking to no one and thus with no one to fool—that it is a teacher’s job to raise their ward to be independent.  Tomura relied on him, but now that the Heroes have locked AFO away, Tomura is ready, rage stoked, to take charge, and he’ll be fine, able to use his experiences, his hatred, and his regrets to fuel himself moving forward.

Heck, even the previous, very damning, “He will be the next me,” rejoinder to Ujiko could, absent AFO’s stupid endgame conflation of quirk consciousness with literal consciousness, easily be read as AFO intending Shigaraki to be the next person like himself, the heir to AFO’s position and resources, rather than his literal next vessel.  He’s got no reason to play coy with Ujiko, after all; if he was referencing the vessel business, why not just say so?[1] In a story that wasn’t trying to convince everyone that the continued existence of the quirk All For One is precisely synonymous with the continued existence of a certain orphan boy born under a bridge, AFO would have no reason to be pursuing cockamamie possession plots, and therefore no need for a Shigaraki whose will can be simultaneously stronger than One For All’s yet easily shattered with a single well-timed reveal.

1: See more of my previous posts than I care to try to link where I complain about Horikoshi’s bald-faced, bad faith lying to the reader for the purposes of building drama or misdirection.

Being independent means being able to make your own choices and chart your own course.  There was a point at which AFO wanted that for Shigaraki; the fact that Shigaraki was able to meet his expectations in this regard has no inherent bearing on Shigaraki’s free will.  You get into irresolvable paradoxes real quick-like if you start saying things like, “Shigaraki being independent because AFO wanted him to be independent means Shigaraki isn’t truly independent!”

It’s kind of like saying, “My parents want me to graduate from school and become independent, but if I just do what they want, that makes me their puppet.  I’ll flunk out and keep living at home, instead.  Being dependent on my parents’ income will really prove how independent I am!”  See the issue?  Person A’s desires for Person B do not impede Person B’s free choice unless Person A acts on Person B in a way that limits their choices.  Person A encouraging and supporting Person B in becoming independent of Person A is the antithesis of limiting them.

This portrayal continues into the backstory we see in the My Villain Academia flashbacks.  From what we see, AFO was not teaching Shigaraki that he could only destroy (the common interpretation), but rather desensitizing him to the option of destruction.  My read was that AFO wanted Shigaraki to be wholly amoral and grudge-bearing against Heroes, such that Shigaraki would pursue vengeance on Hero Society without recognizing or hesitating over ethical boundaries; beyond that, though, he was happy to let Shigaraki do things however Shigaraki saw fit, be that raw destructiveness or alliance-building with other Villains.

When his ward was young, this encouragement involved some behavioral modification tactics.  That’s the kind of phrase that sounds bad, but it’s actually a very standard part of parenting; I would argue there’s only one thing AFO does to Tenko that really goes beyond the pale.  Giving him the family hands and telling him to always keep them close is, by any measure, a grossly manipulative and controlling thing to do, explicitly intended to keep the boy from healing.[2]

2: Though it’s notably something AFO has been inflicting on himself, too, since we know he kept Yoichi’s hand.  Given the striking parallel of AFO coming to Tenko as one family-killing orphan “born” under a bridge to another, one wonders how much of what AFO does to Shigaraki is based on his own life, and how much that might have been behind the, “He will be the next me,” quip.  Shigaraki musing that he takes things when they’re offered to him feels of a piece with this.  Sure, it could be something AFO groomed him towards, but it could also just be an outlook on life Shigaraki learned from AFO in the same way any child might pick up on their parents’ philosophies.

As to the rest?  There are two major things I could point to, and both are—while diametrically morally opposite to the standard goals of childrearing—pretty normal in terms of childrearing philosophy.

Firstly, AFO pretty clearly buys Tenko a nice computer directly after he murders the two thugs that had been picking on him.[3]  Secondly, he heaps Tenko with verbal praise for the same act, compared to his gentle scolding when Tenko was previously being reluctant.  As to whether AFO used further methods of behavioral conditioning, that’s less clear.  Him sitting on the bed keeping his hands to himself while Tenko writhes on the floor in an agony of itching is certainly repellant, but he’s not withholding physical comfort in the way behavioral modification would describe unless he had previously been giving Tenko physical comfort and was now denying it.  After that one hug under the bridge, though, we never see AFO physically touching Shigaraki again until the cave, and at that point the two of them are mentally merged enough that AFO can presumably feel safe about touching Shigaraki without the latter having any sudden turns in temper that would get AFO Decayed.  So I think the giving/withholding of praise, and the rewarding of physical objects of value, is more supportable as an argument of AFO using behavioral modification tactics than him giving/withholding physical expressions of comfort.

3: Nothing else in Tenko’s room is 100% provable as a reward in this sense.  The rows of books are there from the very beginning.  The computer monitor definitely only appears after the thugs are killed; previously the only thing on Tenko’s desk was the pile of family hands.  The mangled Hero toys, however, could have shown up sometime in the interim between Tenko being brought to the room and his encounter with the thugs.  We don’t get any angles showing the shelves containing them in the scene where AFO is encouraging him to act as his heart desires, so we don’t know for sure whether Tenko already had them by that point or not.

As to whether all this had a debilitating impact of Shigaraki’s free will, I’m skeptical.  To my eye, and with the exception of the business with the hands, the way AFO raises Tomura is bad because AFO teaches Tomura to do bad things, not bad because it’s damaging to Tomura’s independence—unless, to return to a similar example I used before, you’re prepared to say with a straight face that it’s damaging to a child’s independence to buy them an ice cream cone for making an A on their big math test or give them a time-out punishment for hitting another child in class.  Maybe it’s “damaging” to their sense of freedom in some big abstract way, but the purpose is to teach them how to successfully navigate life, not to impede them, and it’s not anything millions of other parents and teachers aren’t doing all across the globe.  That is to say, it isn’t unique.

So yes, AFO was raising Shigaraki to be a Villain, but no mentor alive has raised a child without intending them to be something, even if that something is just “a functioning member of society.”  AFO’s goal may be different, but his methodology (again excluding the hands) is not, so if the claim is that Shigaraki’s choices aren’t free because of that methodology, despite the numerous instances of AFO openly, vocally encouraging Shigaraki to make his own free choices, couldn’t you also say the same of literally anyone else who was raised using those same childrearing methods?

This question is even in the series, sorta: during the training camp attack, Mr. Compress observes, “You kids today have your values chosen for you.”  Most of the characters in the series act according to the morals they were raised by, without ever attempting to actively evaluate or interrogate those morals.  They may be encouraged to find their own paths, but that encouragement comes with the unspoken assumption that their “path” should be a healthy and law-abiding one, whereas Shigaraki’s path will be that of a dangerous criminal—but one who’s still being encourage to choose what kind of dangerous criminal he wants to be!

I’m perfectly willing to concede that AFO raising Shigaraki to be the Symbol of Fear put more restraints on him than e.g. Jirou or Ochaco’s parents encouraging their daughters to pursue their own passions, but I’m very unconvinced that that disparity is so sharp that we could say Shigaraki has no free will at all while the heroic characters enjoy total self-determination.  Hell, in the early series, AFO has a freer hand with Shigaraki than All Might does with Deku!  All Might has some very specific ideas about the kind of “narrative” Deku needs to establish in order to inherit the Pillar position All Might wants for him—he has to keep the power secret, he has to win the Sports Festival in a blowout, he has to appear confident at all times, and so on.  All Might shakes the mentality eventually, leaving Deku freer to write his own story, but the same can be said of AFO being arrested and leaving Shigaraki to develop on his own.

Want a better parallel for AFO’s impact on Tomura’s developmental years?  Let’s look at Shouto, instead.  He was conceived and raised by Endeavor for a very specific purpose, and Endeavor was way more domineering about it than AFO was!  Does that mean Endeavor deprived Shouto of free will?  Or was he just worse at predicting how his child would respond to any given stimuli than AFO?

Shouto gets rebellious and lashes out and makes the decisions he does because of the abuse he suffers and his feelings about the parents perpetuating that abuse: can we really say, then, that he’s acting of his own free will in a way Shigaraki is not?  Does AFO having a better understanding of human nature than Endeavor inherently make Shigaraki less capable of defining his own sort of Villainy than Shouto is of defining his own Heroism?   Shouto, after all, became a Hero rather than deciding on literally any other career path; can we thus say he had no choice in what he became?  If he “chose” to be a Hero because Endeavor was pressuring him to be one but also because he wanted to become someone who could reassure others, can we not say that Shigaraki “chose” to be a Villain because AFO was pressuring him to be one but also because he wanted to avenge himself on the society that abandoned him?

AFO may have engineered the circumstances that led to Shigaraki wanting that revenge, but Endeavor is equally responsible for the circumstances that led to Shouto wanting to become “a Hero who can reassure others.”  Does AFO doing so knowingly while Endeavor does so unintentionally change the level of agency expressed by their respective children?

Would an omniscient God knowing what decision a certain human will make when faced with any given problem mean the human is less free in themselves to make that decision?

You see how deep this question winds up taking us into the philosophical weeds?  Let’s refocus somewhat.  Up to this point, I’ve been talking exclusively about Shigaraki’s path as a Villain and whether or not he made any choices of his own when walking that path.  While AFO—and Deku, for that matter—certainly try to reduce Shigaraki to a helpless infant incapable of free choice, one of the things that’s so compelling about Shigaraki is that he’s not wholly defined by his Villainy.

Think back to that big collage we get in Chapter 419 as the background for Shigaraki’s psyche shattering.  All of the images in those fragments are people Shigaraki has harmed.[4] Indeed, with a few exceptions, we see them right in the moment that Shigaraki is inflicting that harm!  I’ve seen this moment explained on many occasions as indicative of Shigaraki feeling a sudden surge of realization and guilt, that he hurt all those people and it didn’t even mean anything because AFO set him up for all of it.  That reading never quite sat right with me, though.  Shigaraki is not a character prone to expressing much in the way of guilt, and him suddenly doing so feels like…  Well, it feels like Woobie Tenko to me, a construct I loathe.

4: Give or take Gigantomachia, who I don’t think Shigaraki ever actually managed to put a scratch on, despite six weeks of dedicated efforts to do so.

As an alternative reading, then, consider that moment being framed as “all the choices Shigaraki thinks he made that were actually just him following the path AFO set for him.”  And if we read it that way, then it’s very notable what isn’t there.

All his scenes bonding with the League.  Taking and then returning Twice’s mask.  Telling Toga that going to Overhaul is for everyone’s sake.  Playing video games with Spinner.  Telling Dabi he looks forward to meeting his recruit.  Remembering Mr. Compress wanting sushi.

Expand the lens out.  Also not included in that collage are any scenes of him working with Kurogiri, trading quips with Ujiko, or winning over Gigantomachia.

Expand again: talking with Overhaul about the alliance, the bar meeting with Stain, accepting Re-Destro’s pledge of loyalty, addressing his new army?  No, no, no, and no.

I said in the post I linked before that even Shigaraki’s affection for the League is suspect based on the order of events around the reveal, but it’s telling that when AFO bellows to a shattering Shigaraki that all that he is was granted by AFO himself, the scene conspicuously omits any and every interaction that involves Shigaraki meeting with others in a non-violent way.  If we’re meant to believe that he is a creature who can only destroy, one who never made a choice of his own, those are some pretty serious omissions!

It’s not as if Shigaraki’s relationships with the League and other Villains couldn’t be attributed to AFO’s influence!  It’s AFO’s resources, after all, that allow Shigaraki to make enough of a splash that he starts attracting other Villains’ attention to begin with.  If AFO taught Shigaraki to value his subordinates,[5] it might have only been so Shigaraki could become even more determined to be a Villain because the friends he made were equally harmed by Hero Society as Shigaraki believed himself to have been.  There’s practically no decision Shigaraki makes that the reader determined to take AFO at his word couldn’t say he was groomed into making.

5: Which AFO himself very much does not, give or take how much you think that might have been different for Early Series AFO, with his stirring lines about the nice view All Might must be enjoying, standing atop the mountain of bodies of AFO’s allies.

But if that was intended to be the case, why aren’t the League in that collage, or the scene preceding it?  Why not call out even the aspect of Shigaraki that seems most genuinely and truly his, if everything he is was decided for him in advance?

And that takes me back around to whether or not AFO is supposed to be read as correct.  The conspicuous absence of the League and Shigaraki’s other allies in the “all that you are” collage would suggest AFO is wrong, but if AFO is supposed to be wrong, why doesn’t anyone ever tell him so?  God knows Deku’s not shy about pushing back against Villain statements he disagrees with!

To me, it feels like Horikoshi couldn’t bring himself to let AFO claim ownership of that aspect of Shigaraki.  Horikoshi wrote those friendships, those alliances; he has to know what they mean for Shigaraki, as a person and as a character.  The fact that he doesn’t allow AFO to retroactively poison them says to me that Horikoshi doesn’t want to let AFO have that win.  He can’t have Deku or Shigaraki call AFO out, either, though, because then AFO would be obviously wrong, and that would undermine Deku’s (presumed) decision to just go ahead and murder Shigaraki because he’s an entity that can only destroy, just as AFO intended him to be.

So instead we wind up with a story that says AFO is right while furtively, guiltily leaving out the many, many puzzle pieces that prove the complete image of Shigaraki Tomura is something other than what AFO describes.

Well, I’m not obligated to follow the story’s lead on that.  When I look at the whole picture of Shigaraki’s life, his relationship with AFO, the friendships he made, the allies he gained, I see a character who very much did have choices and, particularly in the stretch between Kamino and the first war, made them with just as much freedom as any other character in the series.  Shigaraki’s baseline morality being influenced by AFO does not limit his free will any more than Deku’s morality being influenced by Inko and All Might limits his.  Shigaraki’s circumstances being set in place by AFO does not limit his ability to make free choices once he’s out from under AFO’s direct supervision anymore than the same could be said of Shouto relative to Endeavor.

Summing it all up, I would really only buy that Shigaraki never made a choice of his own in the sense that AFO set up every choice he made, so all those choices were made under false pretenses.  But even this, the story fails to bear out thanks to scenes like AFO giving Tenko/Tomura freedom to roam around basically unsupervised, and AFO’s (as well as Kurogiri’s, insomuch as Kurogiri had the ability to steer Shigaraki towards AFO’s preferred outcomes) later arrest. AFO can't set up every choice Shigaraki makes when AFO cedes supervision of the situations Shigaraki encounters!

The question of free will versus determinism is a thorny one; it’s very normal to be hugely uncomfortable with the idea that free will does not exist, and everyone in the world is basically a highly sophisticated robot whose programming is determined by a combination of their life experiences and their physical makeup.  But if free will does exist—independent of genetics and life experience, and not fatally curtailed by the basic tactics adults use to prepare children for the world ahead of them—then yes, I think Shigaraki has as much or nearly as much free will as anyone, and AFO's claims to the contrary are just him being self-serving and inflating his own influence.

Thanks for the ask!

[primegrim]

      since someone thinks this is so funny , perhaps it would become even more so if it were to happen to him instead ! and since the teenager is so busy laughing . . .

   it gives the merc the perfect timing to put the gum on his helmet !

      "" serves you right . ""

" haha !! hahaha !! " laughter howls, erupting from you so thunderous and loud. you're pointing at her as you clutch your stomach, laughing hard enough to almost cry. this is incredible, really. god, you can't wait to tell twice about this later on. " holy shit !! that's sick !! yuuuuck !! should've just ate the cost and tossed 'em, haha. "

[sapphic-agent]

I keep seeing post about BNHA's missed potencial and about how it's one of the few stories out there to pit abuse victims against each other and yeah. Absolutely agree. No comments there. But I haven't seen it pointed out how much worse that gets if you are still willing to give Horikoshi some benefit of the doubt... which sadly I am since he wouldn't have had a career if he'd always been Like That. And to clarify I'm not saying that he shouldn't be EXTENSIVELY critizised, I'm just saying that (depressive as it may be) we shouldn't forget how heavily character popularity rankings can affect the writing of an ongoing manga.

Bakugou was literaly introduced bullying kids and suicide-baiting the MC but he also consistently ranked N1 in the pools and Shouto N3 so bye Iida and Ocha these three are the main trio now. Envore was literaly introduced through his familial abuse, referred to Shouto as cattle to All Might's face, and even in his disturbingly self-serving flashback (y'know the one where he acts like he's a poor little meow meow for neglecting any kid he can't force into "hero training") it's still heavily implied he commited marital r*pe... but after One "Cool" Fight he kept breaking Top 10 so redemption it is anyway, I guess.

You have no idea how much I hate that this is where BNHA ended up. But amongst the many things that pain me over it one of the biggest ones is the knowledge that Horikoshi didn't get here Alone.

You aren't wrong in that fan opinion are a big part of why Horikoshi tanked the MHA narrative. However shifting blame from the author to the fans doesn't sit right with me at all.

It's, like, writing 101 that you aren't supposed to pander to a specific group of fans. Horikoshi chose to do that. He chose to cheapen a decent story to appeal to the masses. As a writer, you (and your editors) are supposed to decide the direction of your story. Not your fans.

I would also like to point out that while Bakugou WAS getting very popular among a lot of fans, he had almost as many critics in the beginning. Most of Bakugou's fans at the time were literal kids who didn't know any better. Taking that into consideration is a complete blunder on his part.

And in regard to Endeavor, by the time that "cool" fight happened, he had already decided to redeem Endeavor. In fact, I'm pretty sure that fight was deliberately meant to show off how good of a hero he was to the audience. Endeavor didn't really start getting fans until his redemption arc started.

Also, while Izuku does get a lot of flack, he's been consistently high in character popularity polls and Horikoshi still treats him like shit. Same with All Might and Uraraka.

(Character polls are consistently rigged, so we really shouldn't count them anyway)

So yeah, the fans aren't great judges of character. But it was Horikoshi's literal job to know his narrative and characters better