#let me be pretentious manga elitist

[hanihive]

[get-shiggy-with-it]

Ch. 1

Shigaraki Birthday Week! MINORS DNI DO NOT PUT THIS ON TIKTOK

Pairing: Tomura Shigaraki x fem!reader

Word Count: 3k

Warnings: reader is marked fem cause Tomura is a little sexist and hates you cause you’re a woman, no pronouns, incel!shiggy, collage au/no quirks, tomura is an asshole, gratuitous swearing, like so much, shiggy has a dirty mouth, mentions of shigs being anxious, let me know if I’ve missed something

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6

Summary: Tomura gets stuck taking an English class to graduate and is partnered with you, a bitchy try hard (his words not mine) for his final project. But over the course of the semester he finds that while he hates everyone, he might hate you just a little...less. 

AO3 mirror

The door at the back of the room creaked open and jarred Tomura from his half-sleep state. He didn’t look at who’d bothered to slip into this fucking class late, and instead tried to let the prof’s inane droning on Timothy Whoever The Fuck’s 18th weirdo letter book lull him into day dreaming. 

He only made it about a quarter of the way back into his boredom induced coma until he was dragged unwillingly into wakefulness once more. 

“Sorry, could you plug this in for me?” 

Tomura jumped again when you leaned over to whisper to him, computer charger in one hand, gesturing to the outlet on the wall by his head. You’d left the typical courtesy seat empty between the two of you and he stared blankly at the way you leaned your weight on the vacant chair. 

He recognized you.

The classic, dumbass teacher's pet who was always front and center of the room, iced drink at the ready looking like you belonged on the set of some god awful college b movie. 

Well, almost always. You certainly had that loud ass drink, but you’d tucked yourself at the end of his row towards the back of the room and was clearly a bit embarrassed for bursting in almost 15 minutes late. 

Tomura swallowed hard as your shirt gaped in the front. It took an immense amount of control to not gaze outright into the swell of your chest. 

“You good?” you asked softly, head cocked like you were straight out of a fucking manga panel—tits on display with that stupid innocent, puzzled expression.  

“Uh yeah, sorry,” Tomura mumbled. 

You offered him this gross, clearly fake smile—because why the hell would you be grinning like that if it wasn’t just because you wanted something from him—as he threaded the cord behind his chair and plugged it in. 

“Thanks,” you replied and turned back towards the professor, typing away cause you actually take notes in this class. 

Of fucking course you did. 

Probably trying to impress everyone with how you typed practically every word the prof said. Tomura decidedly did not take notes, and didn’t really pay that much attention in general. Usually he just played some trashy phone game under the desk or dozed with his head against the cement wall. 

It had gotten to that portion of the semester when it was warmer outside but the buildings still had the heat cranked all the way up, especially here in the basement where the classroom was. That environment along with his usual hoodie/joggers combo created grade A napping conditions that Tomura took full advantage of. 

As a rule, he actually cared about school and he did relatively well. But this was just some dumbass liberal arts requirement course that had nothing to do with his actual major, so he was perfectly fine with coasting. Why his comp sci degree required him to take a fucking Restoration era English class, he had no clue. Apparently neither did his advisor other than that the ‘administration recommended it’ so their students would have a ‘well rounded learning experience.’ 

It was almost certainly just a cash grab to make him take more credits than was necessary to graduate, but whatever. He was here now. And so were you. Your presence was overwhelmingly clear, typing away and smelling like one of those insanely specific laundry detergent label scents—fucking rolling meadows and grandmother’s clean linen or something like that. 

He’d never sat this close to you before, but that didn’t stop you from annoying the shit out of him for the previous whole half semester and going since it was just now passing midterms. Long enough for him to have pegged you as a textbook try-hard, pick-me bitch. You contributed to discussion at every opportunity, turned in shit early, and debated other classmates regularly enough to disrupt his in-course sleep schedule. 

The way you dressed pissed him off too, with a particular style that was enough to stand out but not so over the top that it would cause disinterest from any potential mates.

And now you were filling his corner of the room with the overpowering smell of freshly washed hair and demanding he do things for you. 

Fucking disgusting. 

“Tomura Shigaraki.”

He jumped a third time, attention directed from his lap to the front of the room where the prof stood, listing out names from the board. He heard your name next followed by Kai Chisaki. The list was projected on the board as well, grouping everyone into twos or threes with “Final Project Partners” listed in bold Helvetica font at the top. 

Only fucking English profs used Helvetica. 

He vaguely remembered mentions of a final presentation—one of like three grades in this class cause the prof was almost certainly a sadist. 

No, not almost—definitely. Otherwise he wouldn’t have stuck him with you and that weirdo Kai pre-med student who insisted on acting so elitist you’d think he already had his fucking M.D. 

One time he asked Tomura to move seats at the start of the semester because he looked “dirty” and Kai liked to sit in the back—which, fair enough, it wasn’t like Tomura showered as frequently as he probably should but what the fuck??  

With you rushing in late, chest out and panting every now and again from your apparent sprint across campus, Tomura was certain he’d be subjected to a whole 6 weeks of watching you try to mount that fucking Kai dude instead of actually working. 

This was going to be a nightmare. 

From the end of the table, he saw you shifting and turned to find that stupid fucking smile flashed his way once again. 

If you had a tail, he’d bet it would be wagging. 

“Hey, well that’s convenient,” you chuckled and plopped down directly next to him, sliding your noisy ass drink across the table with you and brushing against his thigh when you shifted your bag to the side. 

“Yeah,” he nodded.

It most certainly was not. 

But Tomura would never say that because—as his roommate put it so kindly—he was kinda a pussy. 

People made him nervous, they always had. That’s why he liked computers so much. Code made sense, there were clear rules and when something didn’t work out, he could fix it eventually, but you couldn’t see people’s codes. You had to fucking guess at shit and it made his anxiety skyrocket which the sides of his neck and finger tips suffered for. 

So he cowered like the fucking dog you probably thought he was instead and kept his eyes on the floor, letting you set up in silence. 

“Who was our third?” you asked, glancing around the room. “Sorry, I was busy making a shared drive and I came in  late so I missed that last bit.”

Why the hell did you feel the need to apologize all the goddamn time? Seriously, who would believe you were actually sorry for being irritating as hell. 

And god if he thought you were irritating. 

“Kai,” he grumbled simply as the man in question sauntered over to the table and fucking Clorox wiped down the seat before sitting.  

Tomura watched your smile falter just a bit and grinned inwardly at the slip in your fake little persona. But you didn’t say anything more, just moved your chair back so the three of you were in a semi-circle and pulled up a few pdfs on your laptop. 

“Cool, so I was looking over the directions on the syllabus last week and I set up a little work delegation thing so we can distribute everything pretty evenly,” you jumped right in, tone matter of fact in the down-to-business manner he was used to hearing from you during class discussions. 

It was better than you so clearly forcing yourself to be overly polite, and he honestly couldn’t really care less if you wanted to take charge of this thing. You seemed kinda bossy, but he begrudgingly admitted that your suck up behavior did mean you sort of knew what you were talking about. He was just here to pass and you might actually make that a lot easier. 

It was okay as long as he was taking advantage of you, he told himself. And you would be too stupid to notice, so he could play your game and play pretend nice all the way to an A. 

That walking condescension on the other hand— 

“I’m not doing that,” Kai huffed through his ever-present mask. 

Tomura wasn’t actually sure he’d ever seen the bastards face without it. 

“What?” you laughed awkwardly. “Yes you are, you don’t really have much of a choice.” 

You stared at your classmate who simply stared right back with his own, equally confused expression. 

“Why do you look so surprised?” you asked after a moment of silence. 

You weren’t smiling anymore and your voice had dropped down about a fucking octave. At least you sounded more like a person and not some wannabe uwu gamer bitch.

“People don’t talk to me like that,” Kai looked at you down his nose, legs spread wide and elbow resting on his knees. 

Tomura could feel the pretentiousness wafting from him in waves, and waited with bated breath for you to get kicked off your pedestal. Just a bit though, he did need you around to do most of his work for this thing. 

But in a shocking turn of events, you just laughed dryly twice and turned back to your laptop screen, mumbling as you did. 

“Really? Well they should.” 

Tomura would have laughed too, but he didn’t feel like inflating your ego. Kai on the other hand looked a bit like you’d just spit on shoes and furrowed those stupid, plucked thin eyebrows at the back of your head. 

“So Tomura, you code right?” you asked, turning away from Kai completely to address him. “I just remember you saying you were in comp sci when we did introductions.” 

He was taken aback by the knowledge that he existed as a person in your head outside of this room for a moment and simply nodded—suddenly feeling far too hot in his black on black sweats and hoodie. 

God just talking to you made his skin burn. 

“Great, cause we’re allowed to chose the medium we present in and I was thinking of taking it in a more creative direction cause I’ve had this prof before and he eats that shit up,” you begin to ramble again, scrolling through a bulleted list, shifting the screen for him to see. 

“Right,” he murmured, still surprised you’d thought this far and not...actively hating what you’d brainstormed. 

Well, it was a bit juvenile and you clearly didn’t know what you were talking about but the concept wasn’t horrendous. He could work with that and it shouldn’t be too hard. It kinda seemed like you’d overestimated a bit with how challenging it would actually be and saddled yourself with most of the heavy lifting. That or you were just a control freak which was a little more believable.

He wished you would stop looking at him over the edge of the screen. He could feel himself starting to sweat. Rivulets falling down the nape of his neck and racing across his bare chest under the sweatshirt. Tomura sorta regretted not wearing a shirt underneath but he knew that he wouldn’t have taken off the insulating layer even if that had been an option. 

It would just mean you had more drying, pale as fuck skin to look at and judge him for because he knew that’s what you were doing. Fucking vapid and shallow like everyone else. 

“It’s really rough so far, but I have it the gist outlined,” you indicated to another tab and then turned back to Kai who had been sitting silently glaring daggers into your back. “So, Kai, since you’re in STEM I figured you’d be okay with doing more of the preliminary research—”

“I don’t think so,” Kai interrupted, shaking his head and pushing off his knees to lean back in the cheap, plastic seat. “Look, it’ll be easier for all of us if you two just make it look pretty and I can handle the oral presentation.” 

You gaped and looked to Tomura with this pathetic fucking incredulous stare, like you thought he’d back you up. 

Which actually, now that he thought about it was probably a good idea—he did need you to remain somewhat cordial with him—but he certainly didn’t care enough to defend you in any way. Kai was a dick, sure, but he wasn’t gonna let you rope him into being your white knight or whatever. 

He settled for a similarly disgruntled downward twitch of his lips. The movement pulled at the cracking skin which stung as it tore open even more. Tomura felt the familiar crawling feeling on his neck and shifted in his seat to resist the urge to scratch. 

He couldn’t pinpoint why exactly you staring at him was so uncomfortable. He didn’t like you, he didn’t care about you and by extension didn’t give two shits what you thought of him, but anything he might have said shriveled on his tongue when you spoke or looked in his eyes too long. 

Tomura had never made a habit of talking to females and they certainly had never wanted anything to do with him either. 

Maybe he was fucking allergic or something. 

Whatever the case, you seemed to take his half frown as a sign of solidarity and leaned back in your own seat. 

“Okay, look,” you retorted. “If you’re seriously not gonna at least try to cooperate, then there is actually an option to do the project by yourself and I suggest you take it.” 

The look on your face was distinctly impolite. There was a sharpness to the set of your jaw that Tomura had never seen before, but it looked practiced enough that he could bet it was simply the snake that resided in every woman just waiting to come out. 

“Look sweetheart—” that masked jerk began, also for some fucking reason looking to Tomura for support. 

For someone who was very much used to blending into the background scenery, this was the most eye contact Tomura had ever made in a day. 

Except on the rare occasions his roommate had friends over and he had to make the dreaded trek from his room to reach the fridge. 

“Oh yeah I’m not doing that,” you closed your laptop sharply and rolled your eyes. “I get it, but I’m really just trying to graduate. I don’t think this is going to work out and you,” Tomura froze as you shifted your gaze to him once again, “seem okay, so Tomura and I can just work this out by ourselves and you can find a different group.” 

Kai scoffed behind the black layer of fabric covering his mouth and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Whatever.” 

Tomura watched him saunter straight out the door as the room was filled with the shuffling of notebooks and zipping of backpacks. 

“God,” you huffed and turned back to him. 

His raw skin burned under the new wave of heat and accompanying moisture that slicked his skin when you scooted closer to him. That clean laundry and shampoo smell was suffocating from this proximity. 

Did you fucking bathe in the stuff? 

He was becoming increasingly aware of his less than pleasant aroma and the fact that you not scrunching your nose up in disgust just out of some stupid, ingrained need to appease him. 

“Well, that was...weird,” you chuckled in a way that was probably meant to break the tension. 

Unfortunately Tomura felt more like he was about to break out in hives if you came any closer so it really just ended up making the atmosphere ten times more awkward. At least for him. You, somehow, remained resolutely unaware. 

“Mhm,” he hummed in response and picked silently at the skin of his fingers. 

“Anyway, I have a meeting in a few but we can trade numbers and pick a time to meet up sometime tomorrow maybe?” you suggested, quickly saving the steadily degrading vibes of the conversation and pulled out your phone. 

He really hated the full body pulsation that rushed through him at the thought of getting a girls number. It made him fucking sick at himself for falling into your stupid trap to get him interested. Was your plan to just use him to get a good grade or whatever and then block his texts?

It wasn’t like Tomura didn’t know about his status as the class ‘freak.’ That one guy everyone whispers about and makes sure not to sit next to. And he knows you know, so why the hell else would you act so nice?

He wanted to say something scathing in return. That he could do the whole thing by himself too—which he definitely couldn’t but that was irrelevant—and that he didn’t need you bossing him around either. 

“Sure thing,” he said instead and took your offered phone all too eagerly, typing in his number and watching as you shot off a text back so he’d have yours. 

His phone buzzed against his thigh and he jumped a fourth time, but you seemed not to notice as you packed your bag and grabbed your basic ass drink. The ice clattered against the tumbler, dropping cool condensation against the searing skin of his hand. 

Tomura shivered as you waved over your shoulder and slipped out the door with another rush of students. 

He sat silently in the empty room for a moment, trying to process the last hour. He pinched himself idly, wondering if it had all been just a weird dream, but the results were inconclusive. A minute or two passed before he pulled out his phone to scroll through the list of reddit and discord notifs to find your text. 

Unknown Number:

— pEopLe DoN’t TaLK tO mE liKE ThAt 

— not very plus ultra of him...smh

— anyway, library at 6 tomorrow ?

 Tomura caved, digging his nails into the side of his neck and hissed at the pain, confirming the day's horrible reality. 

[md3artjournal]

Ranting about gods know what o_o;;;;;?????

While I was studying as a Studio Arts major, I remember going to galleries and being faintly aware that my professors were training us to enter the art gallery world, and I felt...I hated the gallery world. Not only did I not dream of having my art up in a gallery, I felt a bit of disdain at the idea.

Art gallery art wasn't what touched me, inspired me, got me through my depression and suicidal stints. It was pop art, like manga, anime, even fanworks, that meant something to me. But that professional art world seemed so full of an air of elitism. And what's more, they scoffed at all that art I loved, just because it was "popular" subculture. I did not dream of getting into a gallery.

Even though I would learn years later through social media and things like TheArtAssignment, that pro artists are actually pretty down to earth, I remember going to galleries, even the small ones, and feeling this artificial pretentiousness. Elitism, sterility, everything feeling framed too important to have a personal experience with it. Gallery opening events full of fancy people, in fancy clothes, while I tried to eat brie before it got too warm and started to taste funny, while everyone else went for the wine. It was a weird time. And nothing as emotionally, personally impactful as all the pop art produced by geeky subcultures. In retrospect, maybe it was just the dean of my art college who projected that pretentious elitist attitude, but he did effectively create that sense of the gallery art world for me, which lead me to decide, that I did NOT want to be a part of it.

I can only count a few times I actually enjoyed a gallery visit. Takashi Murakami's Superflat exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles was fun. I love flat, graphic, hyper stylized art styles, and he was inspired by anime/manga, even though the whole exhibit felt like a sarcastic jab at the entire subculture. I still loved it. Cute mascot characters, an anime short in a small theater with floor seating, giant ecchi statues, etc. It was a great time. Then there was a small indy gallery showing that my cousin and his friends opened a little art show at. Very industrial, grimey, dark, DIY garage feeling. It was great. An exhibit by one of my professors, at a gallery unconnected to the school. Her art was good, but I can't say I felt comfortable. That sterile, white-walled gallery space again, so quite, while the art asked you to interact...I just didn't know what to do. The space made me too intimidated to feel, let alone interact---Even though one of the art pieces was candy! I love candy! Still too afraid to have some in that setting, even though eating it was the point of that art piece! ~_~; Honestly, I can enjoy even the big pro gallery spaces sometimes. I remember wandering through LACMA (perhaps a children's museum section?) with its natural or varying light and private atmospheres in some spaces, and that felt more like an introspective walk. In that exhibit, I felt like the big open spaces were not encroaching white walls glaring to put me on the spot. It just felt like the wandering I like to do when relaxed and introspective. And a few rare times, I've felt like that in even the big white-walled elitist galleries too. Like the Getty Museum, when I could just sit and stare at a painting. Though, only when big crowds of school field trip students weren't crowding me out. So I have to wonder if museums with less modernist design are personally more comforting to me. Granted, an overly ornate and filigreed room can make me feel just as disconnected, as a modernist interior can make me feel unallowed and out of place. I guess I just have to find that right mix. And it'd really help if I don't have to feel the eyes of gallery owners watching me so they can make a sale. I'm not going to buy your giant paintings or write an article about your exhibit. My professors made me pretend to do the latter.

I don't even know what I'm journaling about anymore. My problems with the pro art gallery world? I was watching another video explaining the industry of financial tax subversion through art collecting, and I just remembered too much of my personal gallery experiences to pay attention to the video. Maybe I just wanted to vent that I could maybe enjoy meditating in a gallery, staring at art, but the idea of joining all the elitism and condescending atmosphere? Ugh. No thank you. I'll be over here with manga, anime, comics, and sword&sorcery novels. And have you seen videogames? There so much good art out there in the pop culture world, but the art gallery world looks down on it all. ...Or maybe it was just that dean of my art college. He certainly did project that. (And then he tells us in our senior seminar that if we aren't willing to trade sexual favors to gallery owners to showcase our art, then *we're* the ones being snobs??? You're a priest, for gods' sake! Don't tell me to whore myself out!!! JFC) I remember when I was younger and suicidal MUCH more often, I used to look up at the tall bougainvillea flowers overhead on the staircases at school, whenever I could, because it was the one objectively beautiful thing in that place, amidst all my mental/emotional torment. And that beauty would force my depression away, at least for a few moments. Then when I got older and away from all that school and environments that made me depressed and suicidal, suddenly it wasn't just one or 2 places that seemed beautiful. Suddenly, everything looked beautiful. There was beauty everywhere. It was in all the small, everyday places that no one had time to really look at. All he manga that gets thrown out everyday, promo posters with fantastical concept art, every bit of pop culture and packaging had someone trying to to make it as pretty and effective as possible. There was beauty everywhere. From tiny flowers in the backyard, to the graphic design on label packaging. And it really irked me how the elitist attitudes that my art dean projected about the pro art gallery world, would never recognize the miracles and beauty of the every day. Anyway, I just wanted to vent/reminisce a little, about how much I didn't want to be apart of the pro art gallery world.

---And maybe also how I hate artificial scarcity and planned obsolescence. I know these terms are more applicable to the current designs of tech, like smartphones. But I was a printmaking student, and one of the reasons why I loved printmaking, was the easy production of multiples. I have an anxiety over losing things and the feeling of things not being there for me when I need them. So having multiples, having the ability to create a surplus supply, has always comforted me. To this day, it's difficult for me to start a project until I know I have extra supplies in stock, to give me room to make mistakes and try again. But printmaking, photography, and all the other reproduceable art in the pro art world is strange. They're more concerned with artificial scarcity, *constructing* rarity, in order to make items "more valuable". I had people tell me that they would buy my blockprints if I'd destroy the blocks that I took so long to lovingly carve. I loved carving those blocks. They are physical memories I want to keep. And you want me to destroy them, destroy their ability to produce more art, just so the prints I sell you can be "rare"/"valuable"? It didn't have to be rare! That's an artificial rarity! In my book, that's dumb! I'd much rather there be enough copies of art for more people to enjoy, for copies to survive through time and disasters, for more memory of my art (accomplishments, ideas) to exist, even if just for me. I'd rather the ability to produce more would always be there for me if/when I'd ever need it. I'd much rather be mass producing pop art, functioning like ukiyo-e in its day, than monoprints for artificial scarcity, just for rich people to ascribe arbitrary amounts of money. At least in the pop culture, I know that art means something to the buyers. When I buy fanart from artist alley or official art merch, it's because I love those characters, that story, and the impact, experiences, and emotions they've given me. I won't be some artificial scarcity elitist, generating tax loophole investments for condescending Mundanes, who don't even care about the art, that they ascribe arbitrary costs to.