#idk to what extent that's a deliberate choice on everyone else's part vs how much it's just their music taste

[notquiteaghost]

everyone else when they get the bluetooth speaker at work puts on top 40 pop hits. me i get the speaker and i say now we are all going to listen to the garages

[incarnation-of-victory]

I wasn’t initially planning on saying anything about this scene, but since it’s generated a decent amount of discourse, I’d like to add my two cents, because it is about Bakugou after all.

So, do I think Bakugou shouldn’t have been used for comic relief here? No, I think it's fitting because Bakugou is often used for comic relief, and I feel like this scene is supposed to come off mixed to us. We're supposed to find it funny, but since we also are the only ones privy to the full extent of Bakugou's feelings right now, we're also supposed to feel a little bad for him, because we know he's frustrated and worried about Deku and wants to check up on him, but he’s been stopped short from seeing him right now (though nobody else is allowed to come in either, so everybody loses). I also think it makes perfect sense for them to physically restrain Bakugou to stop him from moving. It's partly for his own good so he won’t reopen his wounds, and it's evident that by how desperate Bakugou is, he won’t listen to any kind of reasoning, so they have no choice but to resort to this. The students also don’t want Bakugou to disturb the rest of the patients in the hospital, hence that one lady going “At last, some relief!” I also think it's clear that his classmates are relieved to see that Bakugou is not so gravely injured that he still can't move around and yell. They're glad to see that he's awake at the very least. On the other hand, Bakugou does claim to Best Jeanist that he's not actually as okay as they think he is: whether he means emotionally or physically is uncertain. How seriously we’re supposed to take Bakugou’s confession of not being alright is also unclear. Whatever's truly the case, let's just assume that Bakugou is indeed, physically well enough right now to be out of the woods.

This leaves my only real gripe(?) with this scene: nobody acknowledges why Bakugou’s acting so emotional and out of control to begin with. Granted, I don't think anything anyone can say will stop Bakugou anyway, but an attempt at acknowledging his feelings would be nice. I mean, in 298, we already had Sato & Mineta warning Bakugou that if he kept moving around like that, he might die. So yeah, they did acknowledge Bakugou's physical state, but what about his emotional state? Why couldn't anyone say something like, "Bakugou, I know you're worried about Deku right now, but you need to slow down?" or "Man, Bakugou's really that determined to see Deku, huh?" or idk, just any kind of recognition of why he's acting that way?

Which leads me to the 2 ways I interpret their reactions in this scene: a) the class 1-A students & others there aren’t supposed to really understand Bakugou's behavior here because they don't know the full extent of what happened between Bakugou & Deku, or how Bakugou truly feels about him. One hint of this gap in understanding could be from the flashback sequence in 284, when Uraraka mistakenly thought that it was Bakugou's decision to use explosions against Deku for Black Whip training. The inclusion of that detail is very deliberate in showing a disparity between how people used to view Bakugou vs. how he actually is right now, particularly in regards to Deku. Hell, even I thought it was Bakugou's idea until Bakugou claimed otherwise. 

And/or maybe it’s like b) when Bakugou got tied up at the Sports Festival: people rarely try to understand why Bakugou acts the way he does in the first place. It's easier & more convenient to just to scold him or put a muzzle on him. And the thing is, everyone did get that Bakugou was mad there because he felt like he won an unfair fight, but nobody tried to sympathize with why he'd feel that way (except Aizawa later, when he stood up for Bakugou at the press conference). It's not that I expect anyone to be particularly successful in talking down Bakugou, but an attempt at acknowledging why he's acting that way is enough to feel like the other characters have some respect for his personal feelings & desires.

And it's not like I'm asking them to psychoanalyze every single time Bakugou blows up: obviously it's not going to be that deep every time. But this is an extreme case here, and even then, Uraraka only made a surface observation of Bakugou being louder than ever (which is odd: Uraraka’s ability to understand Bakugou/his relationship with Deku has always been somewhat inconsistent).

Anyway, I don’t like how the opposition to any critique of this scene has devolved into "those stupid Bakugou stans overreacting and woobifying their uwu poor bby Bakugou" or even claiming that this is just “bkdk shippers being mad.” While I do think some people are blowing this scene a little out of proportion, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to interpret this scene as another instance of people not truly understanding Bakugou, particularly because there's been multiple precedents for this kind of situation before. Also, there's no need to bash or condescend people who have strong negative reactions to this scene: they're entitled to expressing their feelings. Saying that people are reading this wrong and need to shut up is just an attempt at shutting down any kind of conversation that you disagree with. You don’t get to dictate what’s reasonable to analyze or criticize and what’s not.

Everybody wants their favs’ struggles to be taken seriously, trust me: this isn’t just a Bakugou stan thing. Earlier in the series, nobody really cared about Bakugou being used as the butt of the joke because a lot of people didn’t like him, so it was framed as “heartless bully gets his just desserts.” But now that we know Bakugou a lot better as a person, and that we know that yes, he is indeed a human being with feelings like anyone else, it makes sense why a lot of us would feel more sympathetic toward him. 

Personally, I’d just like it if other characters pointed out Bakugou’s true feelings more often, because I feel like Bakugou’s a lot more reasonable than they give him credit for, so the things he does often fly over their heads. Even some fans reading the series still have trouble grasping Bakugou’s true intentions, which is why it can be helpful to have other characters spell them out for us (i.e., All Might recognizing that Bakugou is worried for Deku). I mean, I’m genuinely surprised that they are people who are completely caught up with the manga and still don’t realize that “there being a dissonance between Bakugou’s true intentions and how he appears on the surface” is a big part of his character. But when the characters in-universe even act like this, I guess I can see why (but it would also be helpful to note that it is… indeed possible for characters to have more than one feeling or motivation for something…). Though I will admit that people can take this to the other extreme too and make him seem softer or more persecuted than he actually is.

In conclusion, this scene didn't bother me too much, but I also couldn't help but feel somewhat off-put by how all the reactions to Bakugou were missing the whole picture, but I feel like that’s kind of the point.