#but the destro challenge was pretty easy

[thotsforvillainrights]

Okay hear me out so I was watching the “Hazbin Hotel” series that is streaming on prime video and as I was watching the show I got to thinking? What is the? LOV had a S/O whose quirk is similar to Alastor the radio demon from Hazbin Hotel (S/O has a regular voice, but only uses Alistair radio voice only for show)

and the first time they fought against the heroes or the MLA (re-Destro’s army) and they saw S/O’s transform into there, demon form (because that’s part of their quirk) and the LOV were like “that is terrifying, but also amazing at the same time!” And it made them fall even more in love with their S/O😅

I haven't watched this show to be honest. I remember only seeing the original (which I think is the pilot?) way back a few years on YouTube. I'm hearing the pilot I saw wasn't even canon but whatever, it's all I got to go by haha. From what I can remember, he seemed to be super strong and creepy but also pretty funny here and there. I see things on social media about the show but it's mostly videos of the songs and cosplays. Anyway, wish me luck because I did no further research for this and I'm sorry lol)

headcanon|scenario|imagine|match-up|drabble

-Impressed but a little scared: Surely Compress will tell you outright after witnessing you in action, that he's impressed (and whispers that he's a little scared). Up until this point you probably didn't display the full ability of your quirk. You never felt the need to and (yes, I'm capping your power) after using it you need to recharge for some days and possibly a week or so. It was a 'use fully only when needed' kind of power. He's not sleeping with one eye open, but he knows if you ever for whatever reason decided to do so that you could eliminate him and everyone around him. The danger never scared him too much. Twice knows you won't hurt him, but he also is careful not to step out of line. It's not like you don't love him as much as he does you...it's just that if one day you decided to turn against the villains then he knows he wouldn't be safe. This is BEFORE he harnessed his ability. Afterward he's a little more secure. Also is more than impressed and proud of you!

-In complete awe: (and yes I know Kurogiri wasn't available for the battle but if he were then you'd get a lot of praise from him) Spinner would have a small jaw-drop moment when he'd seen you pull your power out. He probably didn't know it could be so intimidating! He probably feels a small swell in his chest thinking of the bit of pride he has for you already increasing by the day. Then again, Spinner is proud of you for anything you do no matter what. Also in complete would likely be Magne too. She's going to be your biggest fan even if you were quirkless, but she assumed the opposite considering your voice changing on a whim. Feel bad for everyone else having to listen to her brag about you on a daily basis!

-Doesn't care and means it: No offense but Dabi likely doesn't care all that much. I mean, yeah he's slightly impressed but you won't see him fanboying over you or anything. However, your ability does make him take a second to look over his own. Perhaps he'll ask you to go toe to toe with him one of these days. Just be easy on him! Muscular is more along the lines of 'it aint shit unless you can beat me in a fight with it'. He challenges you just about everyday. He's pretty cocky to be honest. Refuses to admit you could possibly be stronger than him even if it's true. Not to be rude or anything but Moonfish doesn't care what your ability is or is not. All he really cares about it you. Which could both be an 'awe' or 'oh...' moment depending on who you are as a person. He doesn't mean anything negative by it! Just doesn't care is all.

-ACTS like they don't care but actually does: Shigaraki would pretend as much as he wants to but everyone knows he's rather amazed by you. He's always been this way with everything in the relationship concerning you. He's not all that open with you when it comes to how he feels. It's not till later in the relationship that he ends up opening more and more for you. So at the beginning "Yeah it's kind of cool I suppose but it really doesn't concern me in the least bit what power you have. It's about how you use it to benefit us and our organization." Then later it transforms into you being his heavy hitter on the team. He's conflicted between putting you on the frontlines because of your power and wanting to keep you safe near him instead.

[danielanightmare]

Monkart Vettel Baskervile x reader

Warnings: old and cliché

Requested long time ago but the one chapter about  Vettel x Mysterious! reader was cringe to me so I decided to delete it) anyways on to the story and Vettel may seem a bit of oc...

. . . . . . .

(Your pov when you were 14 just pretend you were 14 )

"Go! The winner  is (Name) ( Last name )!" Monster referee said as I and (monsters name)won against that (random boys name) who challenged me. The boy fell on his knees in disbelief. "No way I lost to a girl.." - the boy said . I rolled my eyes and said "Every boy that lost to me says the same thing, and I even went easy on you, but you still failed to beat me. " After I said that, I started to walk away  leaving the guy alone.  Ask why boys aren't used to girls being monkart racers? Well the truth is there aren't many girls that plays monkart in my town. That made me an easy target for the bullies, but I didn't care at least not until when they started to physically hurt me and gave me a scar on my right eye. Until I got enough and got my revenge until they beged for mercy from me. "Fine, but if you get in my way again I'll finish you" - I said and started to walk away from the alley way until I saw a man with black and gold armor standing in front of me. "Who are you?" - I asked to the mysterious man "I see the fire in your eyes, come with me I'll help you to get more stronger than you was before" - he said ignoring my question. I looked at my monsters eyes and she nodded.

(Time skip one and a half year later your pov)

I walked to the main hall after I arrived from the tournament because Destro said I have to meet someone. After I walked in, I saw unfamiliar boy with black spiky hair which curves upwards with red tips he has green eyes, his outfit is black and yellow coat with pointed ends, black and red T-shirts under the coat, black leather pants and yellow and black sneakers and also you can't forget his black and yellow fingerless gloves. "I see you're already arrived, (Name ). Well, Vettel let me introduce you to (name) your partner in crime" - Destro said  I blinked twice and I looked at that Vettel guy that seemed shocked as I am. Then Destro explained everything "So you say I  can't deal it on my own?" - Vettel asked

"No, I actually think you and her would make a good team don't you think" - Destro told him and Vettel widened his eyes then he turned to me our eyes met... and we glared at each other, after our little eye contest I stretched out my hand infront of him for him to shake , he looked at my gloved hand for a moment then shook it.  So it's the start of the new friendship I guess..

(another time skip by 2months )

By those two months me and Vettel became pretty good team and friends, we both have almost the same attitude. I actually developed feelings for him but didn't show it. I shook off the thoughts and walked up to the balcony to refresh my self from my thoughts.

(Vettel's pov)

I decided to go to the balcony to get some fresh air but soon as I got there, I saw (name) there. I actually got a bit romantic feelings for her. It all started when I  started to hang out with her. I thought about saying that I like her. 'And the only way to find out if she likes me is too kiss her.'- I thought with a smirk

(Your pov)

I looked at the sky admiring it's beauty, but then I felt someone's lips on mine, as I looked at the person, I turned red because it was Vettel, but then I secretly smirked and kissed him back. After a moment we pulled away for air. "So you do like me" - he said with a smirk I rolled my eyes  "And what if I do?" - I asked suspiciously he smirked and whispers to my ear "then will you be my girlfriend" I blushed "sure" - I answered and he kissed me. Again...

-DanielaNightmare (from wattpad) full book:

[saigontimemd]

TWO CHALLENGES IN ONE DAY, BABY! THAT’S HOW WE DO IT!

[shig-a-shig-ah]

Okay, but lets say i want to catch my sluty mla commander with my love web. All I have is my wits, fairly decent looks (nothing too fancy) some random geek data and my complete incapacity to be sexy on purpose (not a flirting bone in this body and not a big fan of casual sex because dunno how). What do i do?!

Original post

Brutally honest answer? It’s going to take a lot of work.

Here's the thing: slutty PLF Shig is not thinking about love. He's a man busy with taking down hero society, and pounding tight little holes night after night is just his way of having a good time; he's basically committed to working out his stress at the same rate good old Re-Destro is storing his up, and he has a lot more fun doing than it old baldy does with hoarding his, that's for sure.

He’s also not about wooing or being woo’d—there’s no thrill of the chase for him, and if you think playing hard to get will make you stand out from those lining up for their turn in his bed, you’re sorely mistaken. He really is in this for the easy attention and the instant gratification—it’s probably the one area of life where he  doesn’t want a challenge.

So unfortunately, if you're not there to put out and you’re not one of his people—and by his people I mean the League, as opposed to one of those MLA holdovers he doesn't actually care about—then the sad truth is that he's probably not going to pay much attention to you, at least at first.

All this is to say that you’re going to have to play the long game, and you’re going to have to be subtle. Shigaraki might be willing to tolerate the MLA members’ sycophantic tendencies if it’s getting him laid, but outside of that context it’s not going to earn you anything but derision. And unfortunately, he’s already starting with a pretty low opinion of most of the MLA, so even earnest efforts to strike up a conversation, or to catch his attention through producing good work, are going to be met with indifference at best and suspicion or scorn at worst. Instead, you’re going to have to find a way to earn his attention in a way that lets him think noticing you was his idea.

The easiest way to do that is probably to set your sights on befriending some of the other League members first. Yes, it’s a little shamelessly instrumental, but it never hurts to make more friends anyway, right? Toga or Jin are definitely the safest bets for getting an in with the main group, but in this case it’s Spinner that you’re going to want to forge a connection with, because we see time and time again that he has the most in common with Shigaraki, at least as far as things outside the real of annihilating hero society go.

This is where that geek data will come in handy. Spinner is, obviously, a huge nerd. If you can bond with him a little over video games there’s a good chance this is eventually going to create your opening with Shigaraki. (Just make sure you don’t lead our sweet gecko boy on in the process; he doesn’t deserve that.) Maybe Spinner will invite you along when he and Shigaraki have plans to play Super Smash Bros., because a third player never hurt, right? Or maybe Spinner with look to Shigaraki to defend him during some heated debate over differing opinions on something or another. (You’ll get major bonus points here if it turns out that Shigaraki actually agrees with you.)

It’s only once you’ve finally managed to get some kind of casual friendship going with Shigaraki that you’ll want to step it up a notch. You don’t necessarily have to be an expert flirt—I actually think keeping it subtle would be better, because again you want him to think that moving towards anything romantic/sexual was his idea—but you do need to plant the seed in his mind. Getting him looking at your body is one way to do that; again, you don’t want to overdo it, but tight pants or a low-cut shirt are an easy way to make him notice the assets. You could also consider casually moving the conversation towards otome games/eroges just to plant the image in his mind, if you know what I mean.

From there, Shigaraki’s probably going to do the rest of the work. It might take him a hot minute to realize that he has some little crush forming, but it’ll happen—he’ll find himself in bed with one of those easy conquests wondering what it might be like if it was you he was fucking, or he’ll go down to the bar and find himself irritated by the inanity of the three minutes of small talk he shares with these people before they whisk him off to fuck, because they’re just not as interesting as you. And eventually, he’s going to realize that he’d rather be off somewhere playing games with you sleeping with any of those people. He might be irritated by that realization at first, but Shigaraki’s also smart and persistent; it won’t take him long to realize the solution to those newfound frustrations is to level up his relationship with you.

[robotlesbianjavert]

MVA is a Matryoshka Doll of Character Development & Framing: Yes This is About How the Anime Failed. Whatever.

Breaking it down, the My Villain Academia arc serves two (2) main purposes in the overall narrative.

→ Put the League of Villains back in a position where they can be a credible threat to the heroes after losing All for One and their potential partnership with Overhaul falling through. Obviously accomplished by upgrading Shigaraki / Twice / Toga, giving Shigaraki the Meta Liberation Army, Ujiko’s assistance, Gigantomachia’s loyalty, etc. 

Of course the anime undercuts all of this by letting the heroes know what the League is planning before the League can take advantage of their new position (ergo narratively giving heroes the advantage, as seen in the manga’s war arc) before we even get to see HOW they got all these cool new toys. So why bother. That’s a different sin that the anime has committed, we can put this on the backburner.

→ Pseudo-reboot the direction of the story so that villains are characters on equal standing with the heroes, rather than being obstacles to beat up. This involves a lot more factors, but it’s all rooted in how the arc and characters are framed, and how the characters are developed.

I talked a bit about my concern about the sympathetic framing of the League in MVA way back when we first learned about the anime arcs being shuffle here (my triumph of objectivity). The gist of it is that the arc switch undermines the way the League are portrayed as underdogs—broke, aimless, and relatively weak compared to the heroes and the army coming for their heads—and I was right! Worse, they didn’t just undermine that underdog framing, they straight up didn’t bother. There is zero context for the League’s situation post-Overhaul, pre-Gigantomachia. No explanation for how they have to rob other villain groups to get by, that their equipment is breaking down, that they have no solid end goal or means to achieve anything of note. Just a challenge from Ujiko and Gigantomachia that loses a lot of pressure without understanding the sorry situation the League is in.

Tellingly, they don’t even let the League kill the fantasy racists. Who doesn’t want to see the fantasy racists get murdered! Outside of the existence of the CRC being an interesting bit of worldbuilding that confirmed the existence of heteromorphic discrimination, which is likely to continue playing a role in the manga, it’s an easy way to let the villains be villains while allowing the readers to go with the flow into this villain-focused arc, without having to be outraged by their actions.

From the get go, we’ve lost the framing that made MVA an arc worth paying attention to when it was first released, which indicates a) that the anime doesn’t care about the actual purpose of this arc outside of setting up a flashy hero vs. villain fight for season six and b) that we shouldn’t expect much from the rest of the anime arc. Even if they get the technical aspects of it right, we’ve already lost the weight of the narrative.

MVA is also obviously known as being the big push to develop the villains as characters. We’ve gotten some character development for them before (Twice and Toga’s adventures with Overhaul, Shigaraki’s consistent growth from “brat” to a capable villain and leader in his own right), but MVA is the first arc solely dedicated to their stories and humanization. However, there are “tiers” of character development and focus here, nested within each other, that are tied into the arc’s narrative structure.

Getting them out of the way: Dabi and Compress didn’t get to do much, though we do get to see their relationships with the League in action, plus stuff like Dabi’s quirk limits which come up later. Otherwise, their actual storylines only come into fruition or start with the PLF Raid arc (which in itself is dependent on MVA but that’s another argument). 

More memorable and meaty is the development for Toga and Twice. We learn more about their backstories, we get to see them push themselves to the breaking point for the sake of survival, Toga gets to evolve her quirk while Twice finally uses his to its full potential. We also get to understand their personal philosophies, relationships with society, how they view the world around them, and their loyalty to Shigaraki and the League. And with the manga’s underdog framing and the life-threatening situations they were thrust into (plus at the time they didn’t have guaranteed plot armour the way the students and heroes did), the audience wants to root for them, even if they’re the bad guys!

Toga and Twice’s development are undeniable highlights of the arc, contribute strongly to the story as a whole, and justifiably receive a lot of attention. However, they are also primarily moments nested within the arc, tying into their personal ongoing storylines (Twice’s starting with the Overhaul arc and ending tragically with the PLF Raid; Toga’s storyline carries on into the PLF Raid with the loss of Twice and her confrontation with Uraraka). But they aren’t the primary storylines of the arc.

A primary storyline of MVA is in Shigaraki being able to identify the direction he wants to take the League in and make that a reality, as well as answering the questions of his past. MVA starts with the League’s aimlessness and with him revealing how little he remembers of his origins; the arc climaxes with him regaining his memories and having the confidence and strength to earn the Ujiko, Gigantomachia, and Redestro’s loyalty and resources, giving him the means to finally enact his dreams of destroying hero society. Toga and Twice’s development is encased within Shigaraki’s storyline, and that storyline provides a concisive beginning and endpoint structure of My Villain Academia—

Except Shigaraki’s narrative structure is encompassed by a layer even beyond that: Spinner’s story. When the arc begins, before Shigaraki can discuss his dream of a destroyed horizon, Spinner is the one challenging him about the League’s lack of direction and purpose. When the arc ends and Shigaraki stands victorious, Spinner is the witness who now understands that the destroyed horizon can be their reality. Spinner is the one watching Shigaraki throughout the arc, Spinner’s gaze is emphasized at the beginning and end of Shigaraki’s MVA storyline, and Spinner is the one who undergoes the most radical change from frustrated Stain flunky to Shigaraki’s devoted follower.

To paraphrase from @stillness-in-green, My Villain Academia is “about what Shigaraki coming into his own looks like to the people watching him”.  To Re-Destro, to Ujiko and Machia, and most importantly to Spinner.

It’s been frustrating enough over the past two years to see people who have read the manga discard Spinner’s role in the arc just because he isn’t a basic easy pretty boy didn’t get an elaborate flashback sequence the same way that Toga, Twice, and Shigaraki did. Seeing the anime not even bother emphasizes that lack of comprehension. But why does it specifically matter that the anime screwed over the Spinner & Shigaraki premise of MVA?

Aside from the anime’s decisions taking all the weight out of the story: In the current manga, Spinner is the only one left at Shigaraki’s side who is specifically loyal to and cares for him.

Barring executive meddling, Horikoshi changing his mind on plot points that he set up, and straight up bad writing (which can all very well happen): You don’t go through the effort of developing a character like Spinner, explicitly in conjunction with your main villain, as the framing perspective of an arc that is so vital to your story, without having a plan for that character. With the way Spinner is positioned right now, there’s a lot that can be done with him! And if that potential does get utilized, then the anime lost out their chance to give that potential its due.

Between the immediate loss of set up and context, tossing the pseudo-protagonist framing of the League, and gutting the emotional core of Spinner’s developing regard for Shigaraki, the anime adaptation has already lost. The rest of the episodes could be perfectly competent, but without the actual base of the arc it all falls flat. Hell, they could stick Spinner’s confrontation with Shigaraki in as a flashback in his fight against Trumpet and it won’t matter; that just nests Spinner’s story within Shigaraki’s the same way Toga and Twice’s is, when it should be the other way around.

Of course there are other reasons why MVA anime arc is set up to fail without reany spect for the source material (I know that the MLA got screwed over in the PLF Raid arc but that’s no reason to not even TRY with introducing them into the show properly just LET Rikiya be his fun, threatening, and engaging self!), but the fact of the matter is that I’m not going to get my Spinaraki AMVs and I want to fucking die about it.

[ihatetaxes99]

Lately my mind has been hovering on what may become of Compress in the main manga. It's intriguing to think of, because he's a character who has had so little closure to his current exit and seems to have so much potential for a true conclusion. Under the assumption that he's even still alive, of course. So what do I think will come of him? Well, I can certainly start with what I don't think will happen.

I am of the belief that we won't see (the original) Atsuhiro again in a combat situation. Furthermore, I don't believe he will ever break free of whatever hospital or prison he may be housed within at this point. For one, the state his body was left in last we saw him makes it unlikely that he's ever going to be very physically active again, so if we were to get him leaping around like he used to, it would be a bit of a jump in logic. And quite frankly, BNHA is nearing its grand climax. It is extremely unlikely at this point that any of the apprehended villains, with the possible exception of Mustard whom I feel has a pretty good shot at returning in a minor role, are going to make their return. To have them arrested, broken out and then promptly rearrested or killed within less than a hundred chapters is... Well, it's not fantastic writing, to put it lightly. So yes, I do think Sako, as well as Re-Destro, Trumpet and Geten, will remain incarcerated for the remainder of the series. It's a sad fact, but the most likely one to take.

But, what do I think will become of our favourite magician? Well, the way I see it, we have two options, going forward:

1) Earlier I specified that I don't believe Sako will return to combat in his original form. That last part is very important for, as those of us caught up with the manga know, Toga now has her hands on Bubaigawara's blood. I'm sure you can tell where thos is going. While it's not really how I would most want to see him make his exit, the idea that we may see a Compress Double in the coming future seems somewhat likely to me. If nothing else, seeing a version of him in the final battle is not off the table, if a far weaker version who will probably get crushed off screen.

2) This is the idea I personally like more, but it is one that seems less likely than the former as of now. Personally, I'm a fan of the idea that we will at some point get a Sako interrogation chapter. Think of the Tartarus Meeting chapters, where a hero or heroes will end up sitting down and talking to Atsuhiro. Their initial goal would be to get information on the League from him, but it would soon become clear that he is unwilling to offer up what they want and the interrogation would instead turn into an opportunity to learn more of his true backstory, what led him to his current point. He can then be used to truly challenge the ideologies of those interviewing him. Sako is perhaps the best candidate for heroes to use to reflect on their own society, for unlike Tomura, Toga and Dabi, who are mostly made sympathetic through their origin stories, Atsuhiro is a polite, mentally stable and otherwise completely respectable member of society. I'm not sure if I would go as far as calling him a "good" person, but he stands as the single best (living) example of someone who could have done great things had they not been twisted by their disgust in the system. I truly do consider Compress the best character to open these questions because of how sane he is in comparison to his colleagues. He's simply a very easy point to force the self-righteous heroes to think a little more about their impact on the world. And in this hypothetical interrogation chapter, Atsuhiro Sako would be able to leave the series gracefully, with a "I have no regrets, heroes. Can you say the same?"

Of course, none of this is likely to actually happen, with Horikoshi's current writing, it's more likely that he will never appear or even be mentioned again. Such are the tribulations of being a fan of such a minor character.

[stillness-in-green]

If it's any consolation, I'm sure that the Advisors and the rest of the MLA (Re-Destro, Trumpet, Geten) will show back up sooner than the final arc, just because we're going into Year 2 and the students would find great 1 on 1 or team opponents with the Advisors. Re-Destro and Geten are heavy hitters (and Geten could be tied to Dabi, Shoto and all that somehow) and they were locked up with Mr. Compress and Machia, but who do you want to see first from the Advisors?

Thanks, anon; I certainly do hope we'll get to see more of them.  Admittedly, my main concern is that I so liked what was going on with the Paranormal Liberation Front that even if we do see all of the MLA types again, if it's only in the context of speedbump battles for the students, that's still going to be a letdown.  Better than nothing, to be sure, but I really do want them to join back up with the League, even a League that's confused and out of sorts under All For One's hand.  I love RD's big spiritual-awakening-flavored crush on Shigaraki, the cross-organization tensions and relationships, just as much as I love the depth the MLA brings to the world outside of just what's going on with the heroes.

I'm fairly frustrated with how the MLA fared during and after the raid, largely because it's awfully hard not to conclude that, if what we have right now is all the erstwhile-MLA are ever going to come to, Shigaraki would have been significantly better off if he'd just killed them all and shacked up with Ujiko for four months.  And that would be such a waste!  The end of My Villain Academia was such an enormous triumph for Shigaraki! I want his victory to amount to something more than what we've seen, something that shows that both his strength and his mercy will pay off for him in the long-term, will be a concrete benefit to him rather than, with the benefit of hindsight, the reason everything went so wrong.

Particularly with Re-Destro, since Horikoshi saw fit to have Dark Shadow all but one-shot the man, and Edgeshot defeat him off-panel, it's really not going to mean much to me for him to have a big fight with students unconnected to anything else.  The drama's rather gone out of it at this point.  That's particularly the case since, if he's no longer connected to Shigaraki's plot, it's that much easier for him to just be off-paneled and forgotten about.  But, if Rikiya gets looped back in with the League, if his gratitude and admiration of Shigaraki mean he still has a role to play in Shigaraki's arc, that makes it much easier to get invested in any fights that role will lead him to. Ditto the MLA more broadly; it's categorically ridiculous to present that organization with the kinds of numbers, breadth of influence and legitimate grievances they have, only to try to sweep them back under the rug exactly like Shigaraki accuses heroes of doing with everyone they can't save. 

To say the least, I'm pretty invested.  But I appreciate your consolations and am trying to hold out hope that we'll get some good stuff with them yet!

My anxieties aside, and to hit the other portion of your ask--who would I like to see first among the Advisors?--hit the jump:

(All nicknames and shorthand are taken from this post.) 

Well, it'd be nice if they could all get at least as much to do as the Eight Bullets back during the Hassaikai arc, seeing as they got a similar splash page spread introducing all their faces.  There are considerably more than eight of them, of course, but even if they never get more attention than e.g. Galvanize or the hose-faced guy who iced Midnight did, at least then we'd have some idea of their power sets and at least one angle on their personality.

Assuming we aren’t going to get full breakdowns on every single one of them, there are still four things I'd really like to see happen with the MLA/the Advisors: the student fights we're expecting, the jailbreaks we're being told about, the reunion with the League I'm praying for, and for literally anyone in the in-world media to try and get their side of the story.

Student Fights: Seeing the guy who killed Midnight again is as sure a bet as any of these get.  Momo is an important enough character, with enough sustained arc, that she will have to get something else to do before the series is over.  Taking command of a group battle against real opponents--ones with more responsiveness and agency than Gigantomachia--would be in-line with what she's been moving towards so far.  I would, however, love it if that fight would be more challenging than a straightforward battle of tactics.

I headcanon Hose Face and Scarecrow as, respectively, an ex-con and a dude with physical disabilities--both people who have ample reason to want to change the series' status quo irt human rights abuses in prison and overly restrictive quirk use laws.  I'm not expecting the canon to validate me on what amount to wild guesses, of course, but I want those Advisors in particular to have motivations more nuanced than, "They're quirk supremacists; who cares why they're willing to put their lives on the line over this?"

A feel-good revenge match in which a bunch of teenagers lay the smack down on characters whose humanity the audience is asked neither to know nor care about would be lazy, and counterproductive to the series' current thematic concerns. Give Momo her victory, by all means, but don't give it to her easy.  A confrontation like this would be a good way for the less central Class A students to begin wrestling with the question of who, exactly, heroes "save" and what it is that people need to be saved from, exactly the way Deku and Uraraka and Shouto are now wrestling with these questions.

As far as other fights go, I'd also love to see Brand and The Question pop up again. They're probably the two I'm most curious about purely in terms of what their quirks are.  Why does The Question wear a mask, and what's he like that he wound up in Mr. Compress's chain of command?  And with Brand, what kind of quirk does he have that's powerful enough to land him a ranked position in the Guerilla Warfare Regiment but indirect enough that he fights with a sword?

Prison Breaks: I wouldn't expect this to be particularly involved, probably more of an aside than anything, but I want the Bindi Ladies to spring Hole Punch Face, thus getting us an angle on what's going on with that particular trio.  Aviator Teeth can come too because I want at least some hints about what his deal is.

I'd also love to watch Horikoshi even attempt to retroactively justify some of the logistics of the single-day capture and subsequent detention of 17,000 super-powered, combat-trained people.*  I mean, I don't think there are any feasible explanations for that, but I'd be curious to see what he'd come up with, especially if every possible answer just makes Hero Society look worse! We have only ever seen Tartarus as an example of the prison conditions in this country; I'd love to hear more, and an MLA-focused jailbreak would be a great way to show it.

PLF Reunion: Of course, my number one thing to see with a reunion is Re-Destro being just as dismayed as Spinner is over Tomura's possession.  I crave more serious attention being paid to Rikiya's profound awe over Shigaraki's freedom, and would love to see his reaction to Shigaraki apparently losing that freedom.

Aside from the obvious, though, if the PLF does start piecing itself back together, I expect to see Sanctum again, given the attention he's gotten so far, and the fact that he's now the highest-ranked member of the Tactics Regiment.  It'd be great to get some explanation for how he can possibly be "the longest-serving member of the Liberation Army," given that the Army was generations old already when Re-Destro was just a child.  (If we do get that information, I imagine my own explanation will be jossed hugely, so I would also be happy to take time with Sanctum that doesn't explain the discrepancy but also doesn't invalidate my headcanon.)  

In the context of the regiments reforming, I'd also like to see Nimble and Aster, both because this manga needs more women, and because I'd like to see more of how Spinner and Toga interact with the people they were nominally commanding.

Media Attention: Trumpet's my number one hope here--the lack of any look into the state of the government in HeroAca Japan has been a total let-down since his introduction**, but I was particularly annoyed that the last time we saw him he was smiling (albeit in a fairly haggard way), giving me hope that we might next see him doing his part to portray all of this in a light that would sway public opinion.  And then literally one chapter later, we get prison guards talking about how the Hearts & Minds Party, a perfectly legitimized political party with representation on the national level, has been perfunctorily dissolved less than twelve hours from when the raid started.  How is there even an argument that the system heroes were upholding desperately needs to change?

I'm very tired of the media in BNHA only ever showing up to beg for/demand that heroes tell them what’s going on, particularly those damn press conferences. Journalists do investigative work! Newspapers employ reporters to actively seek out news!  Reporters in free countries don't just sit around waiting for the government or heads of major industries to graciously hand them press releases!  For heaven's sake, Trumpet was the head of a major political party.  People should be foaming at the mouth trying to get a statement from him!  

Especially with public trust in heroes breaking down, there should absolutely be intrepid reporters out there looking to get to the bottom of any of the layered conspiracies the public's just been hit with and told to just write-off as a bump in the road on the return to normalcy.

Anyway, Trumpet's the obvious choice, but if I could be sure the manga would validate my headcanons about Nimble and Scarecrow's disabilities, I'd be happy to put them in this position, too.  Trucker Toad would be another good candidate, if there's any basis to my idea that he is or used to be a transport driver who's seen a lot of the country outside the areas e.g. the Top Ten Heroes are patrolling.  He's obviously a good candidate for getting back to that idea of anti-heteromorph bias, too.  But really, I'd take anyone who can give a cogent explanation of the MLA's position on self-determination and the various ways Hero Society has exacerbated quirk-based discrimination.

Anyway, that's about where my thoughts are on where I hope the MLA people are and what we might see of them.  Thanks for the ask!

--------------

*Or as many as 100,000 more than that, depending on how through the statement, "Their bases around the country were also attacked, and their supporters rounded up," was meant to be.  An influx of 116K people, incidentally, would triple Japan's current carceral population.

**Why! Why would you introduce a politician and then never even glance at your setting's political situation??

[hamliet]

Hope to have sent all correctly but this is to say: this is the place AFO took Dabi , spinner and slept after the attack. Now I’ll check for you the time.

I think doesn’t really comply to the case , but AFO demanded for one of them to stay awake and basically take care of Shiga’s body. Now the deal is: I’d expect endeavor waking up being on the news. So while Touya is talking the news wasn’t still of public domain. In fact Enji just woke up from surgery I supposed. AFO inform us that he started his breakout right away , the same evening. But he arrived at the house at the dawn. Basically is tomorrow already. So Bakugo could have wake up 2 days of calendar or less. It would be

- Jakku happen on 1st of the month (to make math easier) AFO and league arrived on 2nd. Bakugo took two full days from Jakku to wake up , that’s mean a full 2 and a full day 3c waking up on 4th or

- Jakku happens on 1st, AFO escapes in 2nd. Bakugo then wake up somewhere in the day 3rd.

Because Shigaraki needs recovery I think no issues on AFO behalf to have him rest the whole 2nd day. This means that the whole league is resting through days number 2 and 3 when Bakugo wakes up. And if we opt this option we know that Bakugo’s waking up is the same of Enji, when he meets Rei and Dabi’s monologue starts as well.

If we pick the second option the reason why we hadn’t seen spinner or skeptic is super easy: AFO said and demand for one of them to patrol. And I think that why Dabi is alone , shirtless on the sofa. He’s just rehearsing what happened (giving us his flashback) while doing what AFO asked. If so, spinner is most likely sleeping (or taking care of Shiga).

So yep : this is the same house. AFO took all of them there , but Toga (who’s wandering somewhere) and most likely Touya is patrolling while Spinner takes some rest (or take care of his new reason to live).

Also i think I’ve already sent you a geographic thing (maybe you thought of it as too boring :( )

But I think it’s possible to roughly track down toga. Now , I’ve found some posts which claimed that Jakku showed Tsukasa clinic (the clinic in which works Deku’s doctor). MHA city has been told being 2 hours by train from Tokyo roughly. This we are extreme close by our main cast ‘s houses. Infact it was said they were born in one or another prefecture , but not which one. Because all students were living in their houses before training camp we can easily supposed that all students have it less than one/two hour by train from ua. So either the main city should be in Shizuoka or in yamanashi, but most likely not in Tokyo special prefecture (because it was said all might agency is in Tokyo, like they aren’t in Tokyo ). Thus if it’s all correct, I think Toga is currently very far from the league and she will take a loooong road to make her appearance again on her mates side. This or Toga will be seen with the main cast.

And last but not least (I swearc the last):nope , AFO doesn’t give a damn of PLF. nor do Shiga nor Dabi. And nor did toga or twice . Maybe spinner and compress were ok with that but... this can be seen throw tiny details (yep I love details!).Shigaraki : after he defeated Re-Destro he had an durala moments and asked “you have money right?” So nope , he didn’t care he just wanted financial stability. Infact if you look at the panel in which hawks meets the PLF attendants you can see that all league is in the right of the table while there’s only one empty chair , at redestro’s right. Symbolically it makes no sense: the leader should be in the centre or his best man should be on the right (the right hand man). I think the seat was empty because the league never lost its identity. They were their own pack, and put redestro, the most annoying one as far as possible , and near “Shigaraki” (who wasn’t there so everyone was happy)- Dabi: he of course couldn’t care less about the PLF. he cares about the league at the very best. He was also the only member wkth toga to share a regiment with Geten. Now , this two aren’t compatible. I think Shigaraki to calm the waters placed toga because she’s a sweetheart (he also sent her to overhaul) and Dabi because he has his own agenda, so he does what he wants. Now , I think Dabi only cared about skeptic. For many reason too long to explain I think Dabi already knew everything about Tomie before Deika. But now with a satellite he could broadcast everything on the national tv. Soooo he never cared (like anything really) but he found something useful- Twice: when hawks entered in the PLF his assignment was speaking destro’s book. Infact he was assigned to Twice regiment but we can see him trying to explain Twice something. Now , hawks read all the book (his coded message) so I guess he was trying to teach Twice what it talked about it. It means twice doesn’t even care about the PLF ‘s ideals.- Toga , Compress and Spinner: they had never express about PLF, but Compress said to love the league not the front , same goes for Spinner. This also makes sense for the regiments: Shiga picked the most adorable villain , who could face even Overhaul without losing her composure (toga) and the one who’s always missing (Dabi). Spinner and compress puts lots of heart in their doings , so I guess sooner or later a conflict would have arisen. But from toga and Dabi? It won’t happen. They are both smart and sly, one is adorable and flexible, the other has a devil may care attitude and he’s always missingShigaraki liked PLF because of his friends. Toga was sad about her torn jacket. In 220 Compress said “if we accepted Overhaul deals we would be eaten sushi by now!” And immediately what their first dinner ? Sushi, liked compress said. I think Shigaraki didn’t have a clue about Touya, but there’s one thing he always did: doing what he wants. Network and recruits was a suit of Dabi, and thus Shiga provided him with new toys and more money. Twice wanted company , and he had. After all Shiga said that he wants to destroy anything but what they likes; they can do what they wants to, and everything is for their sakes.AFO.... he clearly doesn’t care about anything but himself.‘I really disliked , Shigaraki forever. He ditched Toga; as well, he said Compress to “not worry about”. And where is compress now ? Under arrest. Nice. We saw Dabi fixing his own stamples with no aid, so he needs health care but he wasn’t given any (what a overlord of evil, couldn’t he steal a doctor? No healing quirks up to his Darth Vader’s helmet?) and instead what he does ? He puts someone on patrol - most likely Touya himself , but he’s hurt and tired too. I really loved Spinner insight. He’s the closest to Shiga. He can tell AFO isn’t him. Because I really doubt Shigaraki would have ditched two people and leave another one with pain and health issues (as much as he could provide) to check the area. So summing up, the league is the league imo. They are the core. And i reeeeeally hope that their well defined identity in the group will rise to kick AFO from their club.The more I think about ... the more I think that the apple of chaos it’s Toga. She has a twisted but great theme with “love”. She “loves” Izuku, and she “loves” uraraka. She was also the one who questioned Shigaraki who reassured her (they are his allies , they can do what they like). But AFO doesn’t care at all. AFO wants to erased and most likely kill Deku. So it makes sense pulling her out of equation. But when she’ll be back... I don’t know what it might happen. She might be the first to bring a clash maybe ?Plus we have another very interesting detail, now about Tartarus. Which is Kurogiri. In fact police asked Aizawa and Mic to go and see him. Now , If you remember, All Might had that adorable gig with sugar and the students asked about Aizawa. All might said it was an emergency call. Now emergency means “reach a place quickly”. However in chapter 253 we got to see Mic’s car. Now , I’ve been there. You won’t find any car like his in japan. Well , if it’s a Japanese car. I considered it could be an old model (toyota’s had this shape in the 70s 80s, kind of). But the vertical striped makes me think of a dove challenger. Same with the splits on the hood, made to cool down the engine. These are pretty much traits to have dodges in media. Another peculiar thing is the wheel is on the left.This means that while we don’t know we’re Tartarus is exactly , it’s surely near UA , , in a prefecture near the coast. This is because if it were further , Aizawa and Mic would have need to book some train tickets and then reaching the place by car with police or renting. Also, when All might and Aizawa meet the parents in chapter 96, they were driven here and there by someone else (a loft offered by the school). Instead Mic is driving his own American car with the wheel on the left. Most likely they received the call and Mic immediately hop on car with Aizawa. This means that wherever it is , Tartarus is very close to UA, most likely in the same prefecture.Then if we considered how Tartarus is , it can’t be in Tokyo bay ( you can see the other side by sight , while Tartarus is isolated) but I’d place my bets on either Chiba prefecture (where Kirishima and Ashido are from) or Shizuoka (where the main trio and many others are from). That being said, I’d place my odds on Shizuoka because the majority of character are there and because Yaomomo is from Aichi. I took her because people like Kirishima or Mina aren’t that rich and don’t have a massive mansion - their family could have transfer or they can make an effort to go to UA. While I can’t see Yaomomo’s family giving up their house, becuase it’s that big; and aichi shares a border with Shizuoka, while Chiba doesn’t.Basically this to say: probably UA is based in Shizuoka , were also Tartarus and Jakku are. And if this is all correct AFO positively ditched Toga, who’s now in Shizuoka while others are in Niigata. Not so kind of him.

Ahhhh cool! Thanks so much! 

[linkspooky]

Shigaraki + Eri: Born to Destroy

Shigaraki and Eri are both characters told by their abusers that because they were born with a destructive quirk, it means they were born to destroy. Both children internalized this idea. The only difference is Eri was saved while she was still a child. and Shigaraki was explicitly not saved and failed by the hero system at every level. 

Yet, a certain part of the fandom insists that the comparison between these two characters is meant to show that Eri is meant to be someone who can be saved while Shigaraki having grown up to be a villain is therefore an example of someone who due to being a villain cannot be saved. That Shigaraki’s only role in the narrative now is a villain to be defeated, and therefore unlike Eri he no longer deserves to be saved. 

But to believe All for One’s lies that Shigaraki was born for destruction, that he enjoys it, is the same as believing Chisaki’s lies that Eri was born to hurt the others around her too. What people are missing is that Eri does not exist to be the “good guy” version of Shigaraki. It’s the other way around, Shigaraki is a much more important character than Eri whose arc is central to the whole narrative, Eri’s entire purpose for being in the story is to prove that Shigaraki is someone who should be saved. Let’s explain under the cut. 

1. Eri and Tenko

Eri is a character who is intentionally designed to call immediate visual parallels to Shigaraki. They both have long, uncombed white hair. They both have red eyes with severe bags underneath them. They are both obviously scarred, Shigaraki has scars on his face and Eri is perpetually covered in bandages. 

The intention is clear, not only does Eri look like Shigaraki but she also looks the exact same way Tenko did almost immediately after he was traumatized. Red eyes, hair turned white by stress, covered in scars. 

Eri not only parallels the scene where Tenko ran away from home immediately after losing his family, they also parallel the fact that both of them were racing through the crowds, hoping, desperately, that just one person would save them. 

They are both frightened children running away while being covered in scars, but here is the reaction that Eri gets, compared to the reaction that Tenko gets. 

This is a trick on Horikoshi’s part, using the visual art to convey framing. Framing is a technique of writing where ideas are written with the reader in mind, ensuring that the reader is able to understand what the author is trying to tell them. In other words it’s the characters within the story reacting to events in a certain way, as a device to convey the author’s intention or what they want you to understand. 

In the most basic terms if Deku saves a person, and all might pats him on the head and says that he did a good job saving someone. Then the message conveyed is that saving people is good. Events happen in a story and framing conveys a message. 

Then look at the difference between how these two scenes are framed. Eri is still cute, visually appealing, she has wide eyes and looks like an innocent lost child. When Tenko raises his eyes to look up at the old lady, his eyes are sunken in, his face is withered, and he looks like a monster child. The difference in this framing is to show the difference in how Eri and Tenko are perceived, even in the exact same circumstances, Eri is a child that needs to be saved, whereas Tenko is an ugly child that everyone looks away from. 

Horikoshi is not framing it this way to reinforce the idea that Eri is good and deserves to be saved, and Tenko is bad, rather he is showing how other people perceive Tenko as ugly in order to show their hypocrisy. The entire point of the scene in Tenko’s case is how wrong it is in the entire crowd not a single person tried to save him. 

Eri, and Tenko were both born into abusive households. A mother who abandons her daughter at the first sign of trouble, blames their child for everything, and then leaves her with the Yakuza was probably never much of a good mother in the first place. 

However, after exiting their first abusive household instead of heroes they were both found by villains who only had an interest in manipulating them. 

Chisaki, Eri’s father figure, and AFO Tenko’s father figure both repeatedly tell the children they are watching that the reason that they were born with this quirk is that they want to destroy. Both of them come to accept that it’s their fault for being born with this quirk, that they want this, that they exist to destroy. 

They both accept the lie that they are told. Their quirk manifested because they wanted it to, their quirk went out of control and killed their father because they wanted it to. They do not see themselves as tragic victims, but as the cause for all of the destruction around them. 

There is even a deliberately drawn intentional parallel to when Eri loses control of her quirk once again at the end of the arc, and when Shigaraki loses control of his quirk fighting against Re-Destro. 

They both hear the words of their abusers, and then lose control of their destructive quirks. The only difference being that Eri is crying and Shigaraki is laughing but this does not mean that Shigaraki is a bad person that lovs destruction, and Eri is a good person that hates when her quirk destroys and is therefore an innocent victim. 

The ways in which they lose control just manfiest differently. Shigaraki has been taught his entire life that destruction makes him feel better, that he was meant to destroy and that it was a good thing, he was literally groomed for this purpose. Whereas, Eri was taught that her destruction was a bad thing specifically to make her helpless and to not fight back against Chisaki. Eri was cultivated to be helpless, whereas AFO cultivated Shigaraki into someone who would actively want to destroy after AFO was gone. 

It’s almost like the environment they were raised in makes the signs of their victimhood manifest in different ways or something. Shigaraki’s laughter is no less of a cry for help then Eri’s crying. Shigaraki only laughs because he’s been pushed past the breaking point, had a trauma flashback in the middle of battle with a man who is trying to kill him, and has not eaten or slept regularly in a month. Yet, Shigaraki losing control is read as him being evil, and Eri’s losing control is read as her being a victim. 

The point being that if Chisaki was wrong when he said that Eri was made to destroy, then All for One was also wrong when he said that Shigaraki enjoys destruction. 

Chisaki and All for One both positioned themselves as Shigaraki and Eri’s father figures, and then used that position of power to control their entire lives. Neither of them saw Shigaraki or Eri as a person, only a tool for them to use to further their own ambitions. Therefore, neither of them could have known Shigaraki or Eri as a person. Everything they say about them as a person is wrong, because they only care about them to the extent of what they want to mould both children into. 

2. The Theme of the Overhaul Arc 

So, what were we as the leader supposed to learn from the Overhaul arc?  A simple answer would be “Heroes should have a frightened child in front of them, even if they’re not asking for help”. However, if the theme were just that we would hae what I call a no duh theme. 

A no duh theme is basically when the theme is so obvious that it’s kind of pointless to read about it in a story. For example if the theme was so simple as “killing people as bad” my response would be “no duh.” The point of stories is to develop ideas and learn something from them, so something has changed by the time you started the story to the time you finish it.

For example, Deku’s goal is a really vague one. I want to save people. Heroes save people. Those are pretty general statements. If Deku is the main character of the manga, his goal has to develop or change in some signficant way otherwise why are we following Deku this entire time? If he’s the same character at the beginning than at the end, then what is the point? 

The Deku from chapter one would have rushed to save Eri too. The entire point of the arc was not just saving Eri, because as far as hero-work goes saving a crying child who is a victim of a villain is pretty standard. The point is to bring up the idea of what saving people means. 

Of course no true hero would abandon a frighten child, of course Deku’s goal is to save everyone, but those statements are very generic and nonspecific. Not only that, but it’s also basically what All Might’s Goal was to begin with. Deku as a character has to surpass All Might, not just be a second All Might imitating his hero.

The point of the entire series is for Deku to grow into his own type of hero, and learn the kind of hero he wants to be. It’s easy for him to say “I want to be the hero who saves everyone” but now the story must challenge him to live up to it. Now, while Eri was a difficult fight, and was in pretty difficult circumstances to rescue her from, she also was a pretty black and white victim. She’s a crying child begging for help, of course you would want to save her. 

However, there are several ideas brought up in the process of saving Eri that are obviously set up for later cases where saving someone could be more complicated than just punching the bad guy and saving Eri from his hands. Even Eri herself is a more difficult situation because like any other child, the words that are told to her by the person who controlled her life, stay inside of her, and she cannot overcome them on her own until somebody else provides and outside perspective. 

Midoriya is met with someone who does not want to be saved. Who tells them to leave him alone, because of their abuser who controls their reality, who believes they cannot be saved and only exist to bring pain to others. Midoriya ignores that because he knows that it’s the words of their abuser speaking, and decides to save her anyway. 

The entire arc is a baseline. If Deku cannot save this person, than how can he become a person who saves everyone. It’s a test of what Deku really means when he says he wants to become a hero who can save anyone. 

The overhaul arc is an introduction, the first real taste of the difficulties and complexities of saving people, and also of it’s importance. Deku does the right thing and chooses to continue seeing Eri as a victim, rather than believing the words of her abuser. Even when eri herself believes them, because she is a child who literally has not been shown any other alternative. 

Therefore, thematically the end result of this path, for Deku to become a hero that truly saves everyone he has to grow into the kind of hero who can save Shigaraki as well. A victim who does not want to be saved, a victim who believes everything their abuser told them, a victim who believes they were born to destroy. 

It’s easy to sympathize with a crying girl like Eri. Shigaraki is a character who is much harder to sympathize with, and yet there are such obvious parallels between Midoriya and Shigaraki that it’s impossible we’re not building up to a conrontation where they sympathize with each other.

This is something that we are told over and over again in the story. That Shigaraki is a crimminal now. That he is not somebody that can be sympathized with, that he cannot be saved, only put down like a rabid dog. 

That heroes only exist to save good people. However, the central conflict of the story is literally this. That in a society of heroes there are people that do not get saved, not only that, but it is these clear and obvious gaps in hero society that creates it’s own villains. 

As pointed out by here twitter user [@ribai1] Images sourced to them. 

Shigaraki is a symbol of every victim that falls through the cracks of a hero system. In a way he is like a violent jungian shadow of society, which rises up due to society’s ignorance and neglect of the situation, of people like Shigaraki and Eri. 

Spinner is a NEET who is ostracised both for having a quirk that morphs his entire body, and also a weak quirk. He was someone who locked himself away from society because he could not handle it. At the same time Shigaraki is also someone who was raised outside of society. Due to that fact his perspective is that of an outsider looking in. Shigaraki speaks to Spinner because just like spinner, all of the good things about being accepted by society, friendship, camraderie, being accepted by others, being saved by others, all of these things are unavailable to Shigaraki the outsider. Hence why both Shigaraki and spinner lead relatively empty lives and are desperate to have some kind of cause that is against this society that does not welcome them. 

Shigaraki speaks to these people, because he is their symbol. He’s experienced the same things as all the outcasts, due to the fact that his entire life was destroyed, by Shimura Nana’s neglect, by a hero abandoning her child, by the system failing to save Shimura Tenko when he was in trouble, by All Might choosing to turn a blind eye to the child she abandoned and not even knowing of his existence, all of these factors build up to make Shigaraki the central victim of what is essentially the entral conflict of the hero system the ALL MIGHT VS AFO FIGHT. He has suffered the same way the outcasts have and thus he speaks to them. 

Shigaraki and Twice are both people who suffer from heavy mental illness, due to the fact that they suffered several consecutive ‘bad days’. Not a single person from that society reached out to help a hand, they were expected to handle it entirely on their own. Even though Twice was a sixteen year old who lost his parents in a villain attack he got no support. Even though Shigaraki was a child, not a single hero came to rescue him.

They both represent the irony that a literal society of heroes, will not save people like this, Shigaraki and Twice because they were bad, ugly victims. They both present their mental illness in an in your face, disturbing sort of way, despite the fact that Twice is a friendly guy looking for someone to understand his problems, despite the fact that Shigaraki is an orphaned child who is acting this way because the only father figure that took him in was a villain and he believes he owes him. 

Shigaraki and Toga are both labeled as outsiders because of their quirk. Both Toga’s own parents, and the Meta Liberation Army believe that it was Toga’s own quirk that drove her insane, and not her parents calling her a demon child and telling her to repress themselves. They only happened to be born with the quirk, but because nobody will accept them as who they are it comes to define their entire life.

Shigaraki and Chisaki are both children who were orphaned and picked up by a crimminal syndicate specifically because they have a powerful quirk. They are both raised into tools that have all of their humanity stripped away from them. And even then they feel obligated to pay back the people who used them, feeling like they owe them because it is their only paternal figure.

Shigaraki heavily parallels both Dabi (if he is Touya) and Shoto, as well as Hawks, because he was raised not as a child to be loved but as a hero. His primary reason for being picked up was because of his quirk. Todoroki and Shigaraki were raised as successors for another person, and not allowed to be their own person. They were both exposed to extreme amounts of violence when they were young. Shigaraki and Hawks both had their entire childhoods destroyed to be a tool of opposite sides, one a villain and one a hero.

Shigaraki even parallels Midoriya, as a quirkless kid who wanted to be a hero. Who was only bullied and put down, even by his own family members for just wanting to follow his dream. 

Not only that, but timing wise the Eri arc is literally also the first time we see Shigaraki drawn in a much more human light, and how different he is from the villain that first raided UA at the start of the manga by how he interacts with his allies. 

That there is a human behind the mask of a villain. 

Therefore, the Overhaul arc brings up the idea that saving people can be difficult, painful, but it’s also ultimately worth it to save victims who are in pain no matter how hard it might be. The reason this was brought up was not just for Eri’s sake, but to lay the groundwork for Shigaraki being saved. Because saving people is what heroes do. 

Shigaraki is center to that theme, because he parallels every victim in the manga and is the second most important character to the central conflict of the manga (the fight between AFO and OFA) to Deku himself. Which is why it’s important to understand that neither Shigaraki and Eri were born to destroy, they are both victims reacting to their individual circumstances. 

For Deku to grow as a character, for his words “I want to save everyone” to actually mean something, then he’s challenged to understand someone like Shigaraki who is difficult to understand, and that Shigaraki is also a part of everyone. 

[sparda3g]

My Hero Academia Chapter 232 Review

It appears the climax is on the horizon. Actually, the magazine spilled the bean on the news, so the ending is near. But the arc must showcase the power of the main boss that is Redestro, now with Twice closing in to save his precious friend, Giran. Can Twice win? Well, this is hype time, so no, he won’t. But this chapter offered more than demonstration with the clarification on the Meta Liberation Army’s purpose and the big boss fight is fast approaching.

One thing I should comment about Twice. Despite the last chapter more or less wasted on the reactions on his doubles going extreme, he does bring some energy to this arc with plentiful dialogues of non-sense, but in a good way. I dare to say he’s carrying this arc as much as Jim Carrey in Sonic the Hedgehog movie. Granted, it’s not out, but first impression wise, it would seem to be. Moving on.

Twice explains even further about his multiply goes faster when the original does the creation. Good to know, I suppose. It makes up for his clones to be represented by the League, including Shigaraki the Leader. Again, Twice does make it lively with his interactions and absurd lines. Yeah, it kills panel spaces, but in this case, it’s amusing. It’s not going to be easy, because now it’s the time for Redestro to show off his real power.

At first, Twice clone tried to save Giran, but got smacked away to oblivion. It’s a good thing it was a clone, or else, it would have been a bloody mess. The second time they tried, they did it with Compress and Dabi, only now we get to see Redestro’s quirk. Actually, I can’t say as it wasn’t announced, but we could assume it’s gigantic. His arm grows large and smack all of them away. Well gee, I wonder who he will face as well. It’s not like the League has a giant to show up one day. Okay, I’ll be nice; I’ll wait and see, because it’s not established what his quirk is. I wonder why his sleeve remains intact though. But hey, at least it will be flashy with taijutsu combat and gigantic size battle.

I find the reunion a bit charming since it’s with Twice and Giran. Poor guy has to realize that his best friend’s fingers are really cut off. Redestro now find Twice unacceptable to their cause; now willing to kill him. Well, that hardly went anywhere. I know Twice will stay with the League no matter what, but it could have enlightened better. Anyway, Shigaraki Clone is around to fight the main boss, but not without a backstory to boot.

In midst of fighting, Redestro suddenly talks about a mother that gave birth to a baby with meta ability. Despite a random segue timing to exploit a backstory, though I guess talking about a dream was a heads-up, I thought it was good.  You don’t see any vision of the backstory aside from a woman and a baby, so you could only draw the images in your head. Long story short, it was a dark time with people hating on meta abilities, so they took it on them, with words that echoed, “This is just a quirk of my child.” She was killed and the baby was abused with no freedom. It changed when they established the system for the use of quirk due to the rise of heroism. The problem is, it’s still not balance as it only restrict to those without permission, hence heroes under law.

The twist behind the story is, Destro was that child that was abused by the hateful society. It’s kind of odd because in hindsight, why not have him as the main villain here rather than his son, who was once hidden until now. Like the Doctor said, who knew he had one; certainly until the plot demands it. Basically, the son is carrying the torch and keep the world reminded of the legacy. Who said a child isn’t born evil? His agenda is to incite rebellion against the state; to pursue true freedom. It makes sense to me, based on his introduction. Yes, it is dirty work, but whatever it takes. There’s just one problem: this should have been an arc with a hero.

This concept of rebelling against the system could have been pretty interesting, but what good it will do if it’s with another villain? It doesn’t help that this Shigaraki is a clone; not like he will give a crap about it. This is like revealing the big secret in Attack on Titan to someone who knows already; why should that be effective? If it was a hero, or Deku to be exact, this could have challenge the foundation of free will and use of quirk. I mean Deku did a heroic stuff back in chapter 1, no license and such, so it could have worked. What’s there to carry forward if it’s a villain versus a villain? I understand why Redestro is taking on the League, but perhaps it would have been better if it was a three-way battle. Maybe the idea is to eliminate Redestro before the next arc, which would be disappointing for an interesting concept to be wasted like this.

The other problem or maybe the reason for this arc to flow this way, is that the backstory isn’t really demanding a deep insight on the system and morale. I know it dropped a mention on the government, but I doubt Kohei is going to go deep into it. Unlike in Naruto with Itachi’s big reveal or Pain’s motivation, it’s simply just a guy who carried the family’s legacy of righteous moral on freedom, but society remains unfair and cruel, so they respond with violence. Maybe due to lack of depth world building, this arc was designed as a one-off thing for the Army; care more on the League’s development. If so, that’s pretty disappointing. I still have my fingers crossed to be wrong, but I got a feeling I’m being optimistic.

The cliffhanger is intriguing, though I can see the arc concluding very soon. The real Shigaraki decays the tower, though why the guys weren’t affected, and bring it down to the ground. That’s a nice shortcut to reach to your main boss. I do like the last page with the two leaders in their most detailed artwork yet. I doubt the main fight begins or at least fully focus on them; we have other battles to worry about for now.

Overall, I enjoyed this chapter. It’s not clear on what Redestro’s quirk is; we can only assume it’s gigantic based. The backstory was good, which means the end is near. I may have problems with the idea that seems more appropriate to have heroes involved, but I’ll enjoy the ride and think over the execution when it ends. At least the artwork has been pretty solid. My Villain Academia is entering the climax with the two leaders meeting face-to-face. I don’t think we will skip other battles, but we can expect more words exchange. Will the legacy carry on, or fall and decay to oblivion?

[stillness-in-green]

Spinaraki Week, Day 3: Emptiness | Harmony

Hope it’s closer, hope it’s somewhere When it’s over, hope we don’t care I’ll be there, too, there when it comes true So take me down with you

A fan soundtrack — with accompanying fanfic shorts, if desired  — for Shigaraki and Spinner, from Gigantomachia, to Jaku, and beyond.   

(google drive  |  youtube playlist)

Below the cut, the fanfic shorts and links to the lyrics.

forever or never  — cinema bizarre  //  take me under  — man with a mission  //  so cold  — breaking benjamin  //  silver lining  — hurts  //  all i need is love  — sakai mikio  //  stay alive  — may’n  //  fake wings ~ bitter sweet ver.  — kajiura yuki  //  roads untraveled  — linkin park  //  all of my days  — alexi murdoch  //  shØut  — sawano hiroyuki

                                                 ———–

Track 1 |   Forever or Never

They were two weeks into fighting Machia and Spinner right in the middle of another series of complaints about what kind of food Shigaraki was eating—as if he could even make time for anything more complicated than supplements and protein drinks when getting enough sleep was way harder to manage—when Shigaraki made up his mind, leaned forward, and kissed him.  

“S’nice that you’re worried about me,” he said to Spinner’s gawping.  “But if you’ve got something to say, you should come out and say it.”  He was floating on sleep deprivation, the world too many colors, too bright and too fuzzy, and Spinner sitting right in front of him, the most colorful splotch of green on the smudgy brown woods, pink eyes staring—they’d been staring a lot lately.

“Machia could break me in half tomorrow.  Tonight, even.”  He laughed raggedly.  The knowledge felt like his family’s hands—too heavy, nausea-inducing, but still offering an endless freedom.  “I don’t want your last words to me to be, ‘Shigaraki, you need more carbs.’”

“…Well, you do!” Spinner sputtered, but he set the latest round of pills and juice packs down roughly in front of Shigaraki and beat a hasty retreat. Shigaraki watched him flee; a lazy grin sat on his face with alien comfort.

  Track 2 |   Take Me Under

Somehow, even though he looked like he was about to pass out mid-stride, Shigaraki was still pulling away from him.  Everything he touched dissolved into flecks of ash, while the zealots on the bad end of Spinner’s blades remained doggedly fleshy, snarling and wrathful, all shouting voices and grasping, tearing hands and maybe Shigaraki had nightmares like this, maybe he was used to them and that was why he cut through it all so easy.  

Spinner dragged his arm through another vicious slice, dragged his legs through another step, focusing on Shigaraki’s narrow shoulders.  Don’t go without me, he willed.  Bring me with you!  I wanna see it too!

  Track 3 |   So Cold

“Not gonna talk about Stain-sama anymore?” Shigaraki asked, an edge of challenge leaking into his voice.  Spinner had been weird since Deika, hanging on Shigaraki’s words with a hushed air of attentiveness that made Shigaraki too aware of the sound of his own voice when he’d hardly ever worried about that kind of thing before, and definitely not among allies.

Spinner flushed, the suffusion of red across his scales suggesting he had a bit of chameleon in there somewhere, but not a very cooperative bit.  He rubbed his neck, looking away at the common room the League had requisitioned for their private meetings.

“….Maybe now and then?” he hedged.  “I mean, he was the reason I got out.  I’m grateful to him for that.  But it's like I said back at the shack.  I joined the League to find a purpose.  It wasn’t—it wasn’t ever about Stain himself, exactly.”

“You find something better?” Shigaraki tipped his head on one side. There was a vague itch in his chest, a wiggling little need to hear about this new purpose—it was a leader thing, probably; he got Mr. Compress his sushi, and Toga was never shy about what she wanted, and now here was Spinner ready to spill his big goal.  Like getting a 100% complete, taking stock of what it was going to take for his allies to get what they wanted.

Spinner looked back up, expression weird—eyes a little wide, vulnerable, like he’d just been hit or he was bracing for it, but the set of his mouth around his beak firm.  He looked at Shigaraki like he was trying to stare a hole through him, but he nodded.

“Gonna tell me what it is?” Shigaraki pressed.

“It’s…  You don’t need to worry about what it is.”  Cagey asshole.  “We just gotta keep going.”

Shigaraki drew his nails down his neck almost idly, a simmer of dissatisfaction in his skin, holding Spinner’s gaze long enough for him to go through both awkward shifting and a stubborn bounce back.  His eyes were clear—too clear, Shigaraki thought, and it hit him.  

The horizon.

He folded forward, struck to laughter, though the annoying feeling in his chest worsens.  Spinner had showed up all enamored with Stain’s ideas about a purge this, a cleansing that.  Or course he could see the appeal of emptiness.

“Who’d have thought you were fucked up enough to want that?” he murmured, snorting when Spinner stiffened in offense.  “Okay. We’ll keep going, then.”

  Track 4 |   Silver Lining

Shigaraki after the first stage of the surgery looked pale—even more so than usual—and drained in ways even Gigantomachia hadn’t left him.  He didn’t want to talk about how it went.  He pressed an unselfconscious kiss to the corner of Spinner’s mouth and leaned against him, listening and nodding to Spinner’s faltering report on how things are going with the Front, chipping in now and again with an opinion or an order. To Spinner’s immense relief, he even managed a few sarcastic comments.  

When Ujiko came for him, Spinner almost couldn’t breathe, didn’t even really try until the black gunk welled up in his throat to send him back to the villa.  He wiped his mouth after coughing it all up and straightened.  

There was work to do.  

  Track 5 |   All I Need Is Love

Endeavor hit him with another blast of fire and the meaninglessness of it all pulled laughter out of Shigaraki like broken teeth.  He let himself fall back from the force of it, landed on feet that seemed to know what to do with only minimal guidance from him.

His body hurt—hurt in ways he’d really thought he was past feeling, but then, fire had always been a particular brand of all-over pain—and the feeling in his chest was worse.  The awareness floated at the back of his mind, a list of cold facts pinned up in his brain under a spotlight, cognition in the style of lepidopterology.

Heroes had found the lab. 

The Doc had kept that lab hidden for longer than Shigaraki’d been alive.  The heroes had to have gotten new intel somehow.

All the possible sources for new intel were holed up in the mountain villa.

Flying heroes were rare, but not so rare that there wouldn’t be more fighting him here (Majestic alone would be doing a better job playing keep-away with Eraser Head) if they weren’t occupied elsewhere.

The conclusion sat at the bottom of the list: Machia was on his way, but Shigaraki wouldn’t know who he’d lost until the moment the big gorilla got here.

Still, there was just the barest trace of comfort there—Machia was on the way, and either the others had made it or they hadn’t, and soon he’d find out whether Spinner meant it or not, about wanting to see this horizon.

   Track 6 |   Stay Alive

Earlier than expected, Toga had said.  Spinner clung onto Gigantomachia for all he was worth, eyes on the horizon as the chaos of the battle at the villa finally receded behind them.  His heart pounded so hard it hurt, throbbing with the memory of Shigaraki at the bottom of that crater in Deika, his tangled hair and bare shoulders all but glowing, pearl white, in the shafts of pale sunlight filtering back down through the scattering debris.  Shigaraki tucked up against him in the cheap bed Ujiko kept in the lab, tracing his fingers along Spinner’s scales with unthinking abstraction, not afraid, not disgusted, not even paying all that much attention.  

Spinner had been helpless then and he was no better now, terror thick in his throat as he watched the horizon for anything—the hospital, a telltale cloud of dust, a sign, just—just anything to give him a bit of hope.  

  Track 7 |   Fake Wings ~ bitter sweet ver.

Shigaraki hadn’t regained consciousness yet.  His burns had healed, but the deep, dry fissures in his skin wee slower to close.  They corkscrewed down his arms and speared out viciously over his chest, cicada shell cracks, and who knew what had been trying to pull itself out of that body when Spinner and the others had finally made it to him?

Two crevices ran up either side of his spine in eerie symmetry, each branching once before continuing up, angling along the inside edges of his shoulder-blades.  Spinner tried not to look at them more than he had to—every time he did, he’d get horrible mental images of wings shuddering their way free, sticky and wet with blood and enzymes.  

He smiled.  Spinner reminded himself of that every time he sat down to reapply hydrocortisone and calamine.  When he saw us on Machia, he looked at us and he smiled.  

It had looked pretty ghoulish, but a lot of Shigaraki’s smiles did.  More importantly, though, he’d looked at them with recognition.  Whatever had been brewing in him to make him look like some kind of haggard, slough-skinned revenant, Spinner had watched it recede when Shigaraki’s red eyes fell on them, on him.  

He dared to run one hand over Shigaraki’s hair, rinsed painstakingly clean by Spinner and Mr. Compress as soon as they’d gotten settled in the tiny, two-road hamlet Skeptic had directed them to.  They were laying low for now, hoping to meet up with stragglers from the villa, Re-Destro and the rest, but Spinner couldn’t make himself think about it with any clarity.  Not when Shigaraki was still out and they didn’t have Ujiko around to tell them what was wrong.

Wake up, Shigaraki. Please.  Please.

  Track 8 |   Roads Untraveled

“Did you see it?”

“Shigaraki!”  Spinner started violently when Shigaraki whispered the words.  “You’re awake!”  

“And you’re loud,” Shigaraki grumbled.  Pain ran a latticework over his body; he wrestled one arm out from under the sheets someone had tucked him into and examined it.  A freshly-healed scar spiraled up his arm, putting him vaguely in mind of narutomaki.  Skimming the injury, his eyes caught on the hole in his palm and it struck him, foggily, that he didn’t actually know if Sensei had always had those or if they came with Air Cannon.  

Sensei.  He thought the name slowly, deliberately, letting the syllables prod at his own mind, seeing if there was any response. Nothing poked back, though he still felt strange, emptied out and scraped back into a new container, all mushed up from the transition.  Weird. Nothing he couldn’t get used to, but still.

Spinner was still talking, he realized belatedly, and tuned back in in time to hear, “I’m sorry we didn’t get to you sooner.  It just got so crazy so fast, we—”

“Spinner,” he interrupted, because there was a ring of shame in Spinner’s voice and Shigaraki wasn’t in the mood for it.  “What’d you think of it?”

“Of what?” Spinner asked. He’d changed clothes, out of his polka dot vest and dark cargo pants and into a plain cotton button-up that fit him too tight around the shoulders.  Not one of his, and not his style, either, so probably a loaner, or stolen, which meant they were in another hideout.

Shigaraki briefly debated whether he was angry about that and immediately decided that anger was much too intense for how empty he was feeling at that moment.  He answered Spinner instead.  

“You know what.”  

It took Spinner a second to put it together.  He might have done better if Shigaraki had stopped staring at him for a minute, but Shigaraki didn’t much feel like doing that, either.  Spinner’s awkwardness was comfortably familiar.

“It…  It was amazing,” he answered finally.  “Practically the whole city was gone.”

“Bigger than in Deika?” Shigaraki asked, more for confirmation than reassurance.

“Way bigger.”

“Papers have a death toll yet?”  

“They’re still just talking about casualties—a few thousand, ‘expected to rise.’  But Skeptic says they’re way underreporting.”  

That’s still too low. They must have figured us out, Shigaraki thought, even as Spinner frowned, somewhere between angry and distraught.

“Hawks got information out somehow,” he went on.  “I’m sorry. We should have—”

“We didn’t.  That’s all.  We’ll just do it better next time.”  Shigaraki tried to lever himself up.  Immediately, Spinner leaned in next to him—not trying to browbeat him into resting, which was a nice change, but hooking an arm around his back and giving him a good sturdy vertical surface to brace against.  Or maybe just rest against.  Fuck, he was tired.  I’m gonna kill the Doc; super-regeneration is supposed to work better than this.

“How’re you feeling?” Spinner asked anxiously.  Spinner was—weirdly comfortable.  Warm.  Solid.  Shigaraki lost whatever his response was going to be, letting himself go lax against Spinner’s side.  “Shigaraki?”

“Feel like I’ve been cold since I got out of the tube,” he answered, too tired to bother with anything but the truth, to which Spinner immediately held him closer.  Heh.  Bonus. “How about you?  Find anything to fill you up while I was away?”

“Not that I’ve got to show you.  The whole villa was—” Spinner paused, frustration giving way to suspicion.  “Was that a dirty joke?”  

Shigaraki snickered and leaned back, pulling Spinner down into the bed with him.  Spinner fell with a muffled yelp.  “Eh.”

“I don’t believe you,” Spinner said, but quietly, and didn’t follow it up.  Slowly, his hands found their way up to Shigaraki’s face, those sharp claws of his infinitely careful as he pushed back Shigaraki’s hair.  “Gonna sleep some more?”

“Gonna make me?”  It didn’t sound like such a bad idea, honestly. Spinner would have told him something by now if wherever they were wasn’t safe.  

“I don’t think I could if I wanted to,” Spinner muttered.  “You got really ripped.”  

The confused, not quite envious tone dissolved Shigaraki into dry cackling.  Of all the shit to focus on.

“Guess I did.”  He decided to let himself have the moment—no telling how long it’d last, after all—and relaxed with a sigh into the circle of Spinner’s arms.

  Track 9 |   All of My Days

Shigaraki slept in his arms.

There were a thousand other things to worry about, things Spinner had sworn he’d start thinking about as soon as Shigaraki woke up, but that boat had obviously sailed, seeing as Spinner’s brain had decided that now was the perfect time get stuck on things like, Thank god he’s still him, and, How did it wind up like this? not to mention a repeating chorus of, I’m so glad he’s alright, and a bunch of fragments like, I never thought I— and, Back then, I—

He exhaled, stirring Shigaraki’s hair.  Splayed lazily on his chest, Shigaraki snored softly, undisturbed, drawn back from hazy-eyed detachment by that last burst of laughter, which had been cutting and mean and perfect—and, judging by how fast he’d dropped back off, had also tired him right back out.  He’d gotten heavier, which Spinner already knew from muscling him around the house for the last two days, but like this, his weight just felt right.  Reassuring.  

Savior and liberator, those were the words Re-Destro used for Shigaraki, and Spinner had always rolled his eyes about it, because it was too much, flowery and over-exposed.  But when he thought back on his life before, just a set of scales stretched thin over a hollow ache, just fitful anger with nowhere to turn but inward…  

He sighed again and tightened his grip, just a little.  There was a lot ahead of them still, bad news to break, temporary separations and permanent losses.  But despite that, just in that moment, Spinner felt—okay.  Like things would be all right.  Like the moment he was in was enough.  And it’d been such a long time since he’d felt that way that he couldn’t even bring himself to feel guilty for it.  

Shigaraki slept in his arms, and Spinner let himself breathe.

  Track 10 |   Shout

The little house they were in—a guest house, the impersonal decor of which had not survived half a week with Toga, Mr. Compress and Skeptic all under one roof—was steadily transforming into their new base of operations.  Gigantomachia had been hollowing out a space below ground, dank and shabby compared to the repurposed flood cisterns beneath the villa, but it was slowly filling up with people—stragglers the old MLA smuggled in, because Hawks might have figured out who the Army’s heroes were, but even he was never going to get a full member list; the Army hadn’t even kept one.  They’d been doing the hide-in-plain-sight operation for generations, and being back in a scenario where they could get raided again mostly just seemed to fire them up.  

Shigaraki was back on his feet again like he’d never been off of them, scars—what was left of them—faded to thin white lines and mostly hidden behind his clothes.  He was right back to black, too, courtesy of a fashion expedition Toga and a few local kids had run to the nearest town over.  

The news was still going crazy; no matter where Spinner went in town, there was always a boxy little TV or an old radio on with people standing around paying keen attention to the complete meltdown happening across the country—the destruction of Jaku City, Shigaraki’s escape, the discovery and capture of Ujiko, Endeavor’s connection to Dabi (which Shigaraki had apparently figured out half a year ago, in the aftermath of that very first Vanguard Action Squad attack), Hawks’ disfigurement, quirk-erasing bullets, the resurgence of the Meta Liberation Army—a 24-news cycle wasn’t enough to cover everything, and while “vindictive glee” wasn’t quite what Spinner had had in mind back when worried about keeping morale up, well, he still wasn’t going to complain.

They had their feet under them now.  Every day, plans were being redrawn, the math being refigured: subtract the element of surprise from the MLA’s operations, but add in the damage done to the Hero Billboard Chart’s precious top ten; take away the Noumu, but wait, actually, maybe don’t, because just how impregnable is Tartarus, exactly?  Shigaraki was free, and if he wasn’t quite at 100%, well, Ujiko wasn’t going to be around to finish the job for a while, so there was nothing for it but to move forward, and the way forward stretched before them unobstructed.

Shigaraki still planned to tear it all down, stone from stone—if anything, his fight with the heroes in Jaku and finding out about Twice afterwards had left him even more determined.  Somehow, no one seemed to mind.  The ordeal had burned their leader clean and sharp, a light burning at the end of the universe, impossible to blot out.

Spinner had never felt more ready to take on the world.