#greatest gift of all - giving me an excuse to talk way too much about aizawa

[karliahs]

Aizawa, Present Mic, and All Might for the character ask!!

thank you anon!! here we go:

aizawa:

favorite thing about them

god i was hoping someone would ask aizawa for this but also. picking one fave thing is so so hard

this is kind of cheating but my fave thing might be...contrasts. like how in so much of his screentime he's lazing around, so languid and barely present, and then when needed he explodes into motion with this insane fighting style that's clearly the product of years and years of hard work. and how he has his whole strict teacher thing where he is harsh and scares kids on purpose, but is also capable of this incredible gentleness - the overhaul arc alone has so many examples, him with ochako & mirio & izuku...argh. his flat neutral monotone that then makes it so impactful when it breaks, like when he finds out about shirakumo/kurogiri and there's this incredible rage. i love that he's easy to interpret as kind of a hypocrite! it's extremely fun to play with in fic. i love that iconic all might line in the ep where aizawa's introduced - in your own strange way you're a very kind man, aizawa - and like that's...that's the thing. the kind and the strange. you've gotta have both for it to feel like aizawa

god this is already so long. please know that i could continue for like 19 more things and am actively restraining myself from doing so. thank you.

least favorite thing about them

hmmm i was gonna say the fact that he is a relatively minor character in this anime, but i wonder if he'd have quite the same impact for me if there wasn't that space to kind of read around the canon moments?

so i guess maybe the ways he falls victim to other flaws in the logic of the show, its biases and faults...mineta is a big one. i actually kind of hate the scenes where aizawa kind of offhand scolds/warns mineta for stuff bc it's so...inadequate. and kind of more damning than if he was never shown responding to it at all. but as with everything else concerning mineta i find it's best to just ignore it entirely

favorite line

"There's a difference between sacrifice for others and throwing your life away." and the parts that follow (approximate bc this was me scribbling down quotes while i watched): "When these naive kids get the two mixed up, I can expel them, give them a little death so they'll learn. That way they know what's at stake and they'll strive to reach even higher."

i just adore this encapsulation of the strange kindness embedded in his weird teaching philosophy. and maybe my favourite thing in this show is how it grapples over and over again with the intersection of self-sacrifice and self-destruction (even if for me it's maybe better at asking these questions than answering them).

it's also just very satisfying to have been writing aizawa having this exact perspective for years and then seeing it laid out so simply. there is a difference. and he's dedicating his life to trying to teach it to these kids.

brOTP

okay it's weird to use the word bro about a mentor-student relationship, but if we're taking this one to mean any platonic dynamic then...gestures to the number of midoriya & aizawa fics i've written. i just think they're neat...and i love aizawa's perspective on self-sacrifice playing off the way my boy mido is just...Like That

but also eri!! and shinsou. and i've been enjoying the hints of midnight-aizawa friendship in vigilantes especially

OTP

erasermic...honestly i find their dynamic equally interesting whether it's platonic or romantic but still. way back in 2018 when i first wrote bnha fic, i was very erasermic-focused. i enjoy the flavour that's v common in fic where they just in the background are secretly married, it's very cute. but in my heart of hearts i have a particular attachment to the erasermic variety where they have not at all figured their shit out by the time canon starts, bc i think it's so juicy and excellent if there's been some level of longing there for fifteen years, but they're still for one reason or another holding each other at arms length

nOTP

i don't really care for eraserjoke. i'm only just about capable of enjoying the joke of their interactions anyway, but if you put genuine romantic intent there then...bleh

random headcanon

torn between doing a sad one or a funny one. uhhh (spins mental wheel) i think he had a terrible energy drink phase in his early 20s in which he was like it's fine it's fine i can utilise caffeine to stay awake longer when required. it's logical. it's fine. and then it very much wasn't fine and since then he cannot even look at one without feeling a little bit sick

also sneaky second one: like many characters in this show, i do think he has some level of chronic pain. bc holy shit those usj injuries.

unpopular opinion

uhhhhhh. i don't know how many of my aizawa opinions are truly unpopular. i guess...i often see in fics him referring to his kids as stuff like hellions/hell class to their face. which i get bc i think it probs started out in more lighthearted crack fics etc and then spread through fanon. but I was surprised in rewatch by how formal and at times polite he is to the kids, like he's blunt but I think his variation of strictness precludes that kind of thing. behind their backs...possibly

song i associate with them

oh man I actually…don't have any aizawa songs. which is wild given how much real estate he occupies in my brain. if other people have aizawa songs, please tell me them

favorite picture of them

best hairstyle best look...i could and do stare at the gif version all day

i can't believe how long this has gotten....others below the cut

mic:

favorite thing about them

performance!!! how the idea of performing yourself is so baked into the whole character! the levels where like...it seems like an intentional joyful performance, but can also have sad flavours of hiding behind a mask to stay safe. and it's also very fun to bounce him off aizawa, who I think also performs himself if in a different way

i accidentally scrolled really far back in my notes app the other day and found a bunch of notes-form fic from 2018ish, one of which included a note at the end reading "loving present mic is lgbt culture bc complicated relationship with self-performance and artifice and also have you seen the way he dresses" and honestly. i stand by it

least favorite thing about them

once again i was briefly tempted to say the fact that he is such a minor character, but also i do enjoy that space to expand on stuff myself

okay this feels mean but...when i switched from subs to dubs i liked all the new voices pretty much immediately...except mic's. it's a reasonable choice to dial into the goofiness like that but...it took some getting used to for me for sure

favorite line

"Some people have arbor ardor but I'm more of a city kitty, ya dig?"

this. is the perfect line of dialogue actually. no notes. i think about it and the textpost referring to it as "the most delightfully gay thing" said tumblr user had ever heard...all the time.

the wordplay. having fun with language. the phrase city kitty in itself. we don't deserve present mic.

brOTP

shirakumo...it's interesting to me that the vibe i got from vigilantes is the strongest friendships in the trio aren't between mic & aizawa? like they are friends for sure but I got the vibe both of them were closer with shirakumo than they were with each other. that shirakumo mic friendship ahhh...

and I'm forever thinking about that panel of aizawa climbing the rope, mic left on the ground. aizawa coping in a very specific way that kind of…leaves mic behind. mic's grief. the feeling that he's lost both his closest friends all at once. ahhh.

OTP

hey look it's erasermic again

nOTP

i don't really have one! i don't often see him shipped with people other than aizawa honestly

random headcanon

i sprinkled a bunch of mic headcanons into the last chapter of swim or drown that i still like a lot...one is a little mention of him cooking. i like the idea of him being one of those people who doesn't like to make a recipe the same way twice, measuring with his heart and playing around a lot with big flavours...everything he makes either slaps or is inedible

unpopular opinion

hmmmm i think a lot of the time he gets kind of morphed into this profoundly well-adjusted dude to play off aizawa, and i don't necessarily object to that! i've arguably done it myself. and it's part of the comedy of taking these two weirdos and deciding they have a profoundly functional domestic relationship off-screen.

but i find it interesting to consider the inverse too - with his rage, especially. one of his earliest scenes is him suggesting using his quirk on a bunch of random journalists (maybe as a joke but...hm). and there's a line about what he's gonna do to the people responsible for making nomu that made me go "MIC. BUD" out loud to my screen. i think it's entirely possible he has dealt emotionally with...nothing, ever.

song i associate with them

i hadn't consciously connected this before, but thinking about it i think dirty imbecile by the happy fits could be a mic song

favorite picture of them

if i can cheat and use a gif then it's this:

i just love his wind-ups to gestures so much. he's so extra and it rules

all might:

favorite thing about them

how hard he tries. all that work for all those years because he cares about people and wants them to be safe. i love that little shot of young toshinori running towards the future like...even with all that insane power, it's about the work of it. the long, hard graft of trying to make the world safer

least favorite thing about them

i.......sometimes find the america gimmick distractingly silly

favorite line

gah i think it's the line after kamino to midoriya when he says "I will dedicate myself to raising you." like......them......and i also really love the whole speech where he talks about deciding he's going to live. idk it really moves me to see him discovering new purpose after he'd accepted that he was going to basically destroy himself for the world. picking yourself back up after that...finding new things to keep you going...

brOTP

midoriya!!! the mutual admiration, the devotion, all might bringing izuku into this world he's longed for for so long, izuku making all might remember the hope and idealism that almost burned out of him after all those lonely years. i'm nuts about it

OTP

i kind of like aroace all might honestly!! erasermight is cute though...

nOTP

don't really have one

random headcanon

hmmm i imagine him being kind of relieved when the dorm system was implemented and all the teachers start living on campus too. i imagine his living spaces at least for the last few years or so have always been...large, objectively comfortable, but very empty and lonely

unpopular opinion

aha this one might be very unpopular, but of all the stuff all might gets criticised for from the early eps, i actually get him telling mido he can't be a hero the most...it's definitely still bad! but i can really see it from his POV...like he's basically been fighting a war for decades. and for like 5 years he's been doing it basically alone, the people in his life unwilling to watch him do this to himself anymore. and it feels so necessary and vital and also he can feel his ability to do it draining more and more everyday, this awareness that any day now he might fall and leave a space for all that darkness to sweep back in...i feel like if any teenager, any child, looked at you and asked if they could head out onto that battlefield too, without even the weapon you've relied so heavily on...no is a really understandable answer! not a good answer, but very explicable in character terms at least

song i associate with them

the whole beat the champ album by the mountain goats is about wrestling, which i really like as a bnha heroes analogue because it's about fighting but also artifice, deliberate creation of identity, so a lot of beat the champ songs ping me when i think about bnha heroes and all might especially...there's a part in the legend of chavo guerrero that always makes me think about all might and midoriya: "and I need justice in my life, here it comes"

favorite picture of them

okay i love the whole scene in the forest where they're bathed in this golden light but also. maybe instead it's this:

iconic