#rei gives no shits

[justatalkingface]

More thoughts on the Rebel!Todoroki AU

I'm now actively thinking on this. Why.

My main thought starting this line of thinking is about how none of the Todoroki's ever blow the whistle on Endeavour in canon; while some of it (a lot of it, unfortunately, knowing Hori) is probably about not wanting to ruin his life, since they've secretly loved him all this time or whatever, it's probably also based in a few more practical facts: not wanting themselves to get dragged into the mud, wanting not to drag their mother into the mud, and an Endeavor-born lack of faith in heroic accountability which is completely canon, to the point where they may have gotten assassinated if they made too big a stink about it. While those same practical motivations are still there, so no blatant call outs of what he did, in this AU there is far less mercy in how they discuss Endeavour to outsiders.

Fuyumi, here, is still rather soft spoken, and when she talks to reporters, she always leaves them with a positive impression, until they review what she actually said, and not how she said it, and they realize she never once actually referred to Endeavour as her father, or as someone related to her, or in any sort of relaxed way indicating that they're family; it's just 'Endeavour, Endeavour', over and over again, always carefully proper in how she refers to him by his hero name, which is de facto his job title.

Moreover, they then realize she never says anything nice about him; hell, she barely talks about him at all! Summed up, she basically says that, 'Yes, I have heard about a hero named Endeavour' and that 'Yes, I have heard he has done (this newsworthy thing); I heard about it on the news just yesterday'.

It leaves every interview she gives ultimately unusable for how utterly empty and lifeless they all are.

Natsuo, meanwhile, is less subtle. And by less subtle, I mean he has one line about Endeavour he gives to anyone who asks him, every time he's asked about him: "Every day I wake up I pray he trips over a banana and dies."

Nothing else. He says that one line, says bye, and walks off, and has done this for years. He's a cryptid like figure for those that pay attention to this kind of thing, and in the hero forums more focused on the celebrity end they have long running debates on if he actually means that, or if this entire thing is this strange, elaborate joke he's been running on anyone who pays attention to him; he never goes into any other detail, and every other Todoroki refuses to comment on this, even Endeavour (if for different reasons than his children).

Rei... the thing is with Rei is her life is kinda utterly destroyed. Natsuo and Fuyumi care about things like their reputations, if they'll be believed, and her reputation, but Rei herself? Nah, she's gone through eight cycles of the stages of grief while she's been trapped in the psych ward, and Rei no longer cares about those petty things; at this point in her life? Rei wants one thing, and one thing only:

To kill Endeavour with her own hands.

And since she decided that, she started acting better, to get good evaluations and to get her husband to visit her as she gets 'cured'; she lies and lies and lies to every therapist about whatever they want to hear, she acts calm and sensible and buries all her negative feelings deep down inside her, while carefully practicing small, but controlled uses of her Quirk in ways that no one else can tell.

And she does this for years, slowly cycling into a deeper insanity, because as it turns out? Endeavour doesn't actually care if she's 'better' or not; he got what he needed from her, and while leaving her locked up is a money drain, he's got the cash to burn and it's more convenient for him to just have his inconvenient wife locked away, far from the prying eyes of the media, than to let her out and risk an incident of some kind. By the time he actually does go to visit her, she's at a level of fucked up far beyond she had ever been outside, even at her worst, and there is zero hesitation in her when he finally appears before he, repentant. As it turns out, all her children have grown up, but they've all drifted further and farther away from Endeavour as they aged; he lives alone now in his massive house and the last time he got a chance to talk to his prized heir in private, without the cameras watching, so they could have a real conversation? Shoto froze the hand that touched him solid before walking off without saying a word, and it was only then that the reality started to sink in.

Rei then acts, as she has been for years now, and the second he lowers his guard, he stabs him in the face with a shiv she made out of ice. Here, Endeavour doesn't get a cosmetic scar from a Nomu, no. Here, he loses an eye to his wife.

And as for Shoto? Well. In this, at least, he is his mother's son: Shoto well and truly does not care about the media; he was burned by them when he was young and grew up distrusting them, and never once saw a reason to change that stance; at this point, he basiclly considers them more noise pollution more than anything legitimate, and the media classes that UA put the students in in their third year did nothing to change this impression, no matter how hard Present Mic tried.

As a hero, Shoto is many ways... raw. He doesn't focus on how his costume looks, or talking to his fans, or getting his image out there, or even having an image, he just... saves people, half out of defiance of his father's way of life, where saving people is just a tool to help his image rather than being a reason in itself, and half out his genuinely good nature.

Out of spite, he's reverted to an older form of heroism, and people noticed that. There are plenty of hero 'traditionalists' who see him do his own thing, be blunt and uncurated and hate it, but he nevertheless has a steady and growing fanbase for how straight forward he is; among his fans, he's known as the 'Rebel Hero' and over time he eventually took to calling himself that because he never really bothered with a hero name beyond 'Shoto'. He's never been able to break into the highest ranks of heroism, and probably never will (not that he cares), but in sheer amount of fans he's actually in the top twenty or thirty of heroes in Japan.

To be fair, he only gets away with it because he's Endeavour's son, because he never needs to generate his own popularity when the media loves to use him for an easy scandel when nothing's going on, and when his sheer notoriety protects him from the worst abuses of the Hero Commision, because unlike others, if Endeavour's son, the one everyone knows and is an active hero, was to suddenly disappear, Japan would lose it's shit, and they're smart enough to know that, even if Shoto himself isn't away of how dangerous the waters he treads in are at times.

All of this, of course, makes his response to questions about Endeavour infamous: he says absolutely nothing.

On the rare, rare, rare occasions he deigns to talk to a reporter, if that reporter dares to mention his father the same thing always happens:

First, he uses his version of the Endeavour patented, 'I don't care if you live or die so I'll gladly walk over your lifeless corpse' stare on that reporter for about thirty seconds. Then he walks off without saying a word.

And then he never acknowledges that reporter's existence ever again.

And this is not because he's trying to spare anyone's reputation, or even to try and harm Endeavour; his contempt of the media is that low that he genuinely thinks talking about his father with them is a complete waste of time.

...Well, anyways, beyond all that, a few more thoughts on this AU concept as a whole: there is no Dabi here, he genuinely died. There is, in fact, no AFO at all, and the greater plot of MHA basiclly isn't happening; All Might is, depending on when whatever story is happening is in the timeline, either in his final years of heroism or retired, and with no successor, because Izuku ruins Shoto's glorious clusterfuck. The people are there, sure, but society isn't quite at that point of seconds away from falling to pieces, so they're all in different places (if I commit to more world building on this I'll try to figure out where the more relevent people actually are). If this ends up with a greater plot beyond 'various stories of AU Todorokis', I like to think it'd focus on the HC as the main villains in how they're controlling and perverting heroism.

I like the idea of Shoto killing his father and going on a villain origin story as part of a long running psychotic break, I really do, but I honestly also like the 'Rebel Hero' dynamic I literally just came up with today; I'm conflicted. As kind of a middle ground it's easy to put off Rei's confrontation until years after he becomes a hero, and even justify it (because, you know. Never coming to see her is an Endeavour thing to do) so I can get both, but it feels like a cop out, like I'm refusing to commit.

Meanwhile, while working on how Rei is thinking (that is to say, I took the canon blank slate and blatantly made shit up), I'm wondering if I should make her a villain, here; after stabbing Endeavour, she escapes, and takes on a lot of the Dabi energy this story doesn't really have. No real development, just the idea of it: I'm still on the fence if it's good or not, but I think it's interesting so I'm mulling it over, and waiting to see what happens in my rotten swamp of a mind.

I think this is one of my few non-critical posts? I don't think it belongs in the usual 'mha/bnha critical' tags I use, anyways.

[reybeeze]

rewatching good omens and the way crowley unapologetically watched aziraphale eat in e1 is fucking insane i love him

[334iwatchshit]

please remember that luke skywalker adopted rey and fin a few years after marrying din djarin and and opening his jedi school on mandalor with their green rat son.

[metukika]

minori high school content yay or nay

[laugtherhyena]

Big fan of how the Ayame/Rei relationship evolves in -2+2

[camojacketfag]

Julys vinyl additions

[bred-is-a-dumb-name]

When you're buddies but you're also daddies idk

[ecstaticasusual]

(( the Keitoin siblings ))

*made-up mic mechanics* Intellectual exchange

[harapeveco]

You can have every knk anniversary art as treat

[haunted-x]

The devil couldnt reach me so he gave me petulant bpd .

[pinktoonie]

Of course his eyes are on Kazuki, watching his reaction to Miri with her mom, reading him like an open book as usual. He hates seeing Kazuki distraught and he knows it's killing him. But Rei stays quiet.

However, this seems like a moment where Kazuki is saying something on top of the ferris wheel, that gets quite a reaction from Rei. He's probably resigning to the idea that they need to let Miri go (which btw fuuuuck that and the mom) despite how much it'll hurt. I'd think it was some sort of admission (cuz ferris wheel heh romantic), but Kazuki is glum af and Rei reacts kind of angrily (determined?) in addition to shock to whatever he says. Idk, but

Rei isn't going to let this family go without a fight. He has something worth protecting.

[sugar-and-spite]

tw pet death

it's hard seeing all the posts that are like, it's going to be over tomorrow, this is it. bc today is just the beginning for me. i have to say goodbye to my baby in a few hours and i'm not ready. i don't know if i could ever be ready for this. and it's not going to magically be over tomorrow. i don't know if i'll even be able to feel anything about the outcome of the election

[ocdhuacheng]

endeavor you piece of shit cocksucker im gonna rip you to shreds

[quasarifxxy]

Thinking about how Kazuki was about to do the exact same thing Misaki did when it comes to Miri which is sending her off to somewhere "safer" before considering what she'd feel until Rei talked him out of it!!! I am devastated

[tokyogruel]

youd think a girl who is totally full of herself, thinks shes always in the right, and expects to be praised for it would use Atashi instead of Watashi

and would also see herself as a human being and not a giant monster

but here we are

[pinnkchampagne]

I hate when my friends feed my delusions, it's like, no he doesn't love me back he doesn't even know how I am