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stillness-in-green · 1 year ago

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On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XXI-B + Conclusion, Final War-B: The Hospital Attack)

To preface before I start documenting these final four chapters, there’s been a lot said (not least by me) about how wildly out of touch the resolution to this plotline is. While I didn't set out to rehash all of that again, it turns out I can't actually talk about how the series portrays heteromorphobia without talking about how it resolves it—if I'd wanted to do that, the place to stop would have been with the last post. This whole piece is also destined for AO3 eventually, so it needs to be readable for those who don't follow me on tumblr. Therefore, if you've been following my #heteromorph discrimination plot posts for a while, there are portions of this post that will be pretty familiar territory!

If you're new and want my full breakdowns, you can find them in my Chapter Thoughts posts or in this pair of posts rounding up the asks I’d gotten on the topic. Here, I will simply say that I don’t think Horikoshi’s fumbling of the plot can be read to mean that all the stuff I’ve documented thus far was just me reaching too hard, reading stuff into the manga where nothing was intended. While I’m sure some of it is—I definitely went out on a few limbs!—I think the main answer to, “How can heteromorphobia be such a well-thought-out depiction of a logically foreseeable form of discrimination while also having such a terrible resolution?” is, “Because the mainstream opinion about how best to handle discrimination is wildly different in Japan than it is in progressive American circles.”

That doesn’t mean I’m willing to wave the wand of Cultural Differences over this resolution and forgive everything—there were plenty of Japanese fans critiquing it as well![1]—but it does somewhat modulate my feelings about it. In any case, let’s get to it.

1: Most of what I saw was on Twitter, but there’s a Japanese site called bookmeter that’s kinda goodreads-esque, and which had several critical reviews posted for the volume, including one that felt like every point laid out was something I’d complained about as well. Super validating, but a shame it was necessary!

(I'll be changing up my formatting just a bit in hopes that I can find a way to present sub-sub-bullet points that tumblr won't choke on in this 13K post. Pray for me.)

Chapter 370:

O We open with a scene which we’re led to believe is about Spinner but which the end of the chapter will reveal to be about Shouji. It’s shockingly open about the extent of the discrimination Shouji faced, and there’s worse yet to come, but here we find people throwing stones at him, telling him to die, saying he has dirty blood that will defile the land, that he should stay inside the house, and that no matter how much time passes,[2] they will never accept “his kind.”

2: Viz renders this as “no matter how much society progresses,” but the word jidai means something more like “the times”/”the age,” and the progression term used can mean improvement, but in the circumstances, probably just means forward movement. I think the intention is more like, “No matter how much the times march on,” if only because it would be very odd for the people yelling this vitriol to frame it as themselves resisting progression. After all, bigots don’t typically think of themselves as “regressive” compared to everyone else’s progressiveness; they think of themselves as normal or valuing tradition compared to everyone else’s moral laxity/perversity.

So, remember how I talked about the spiritual/religious charge to the language the CRC used to talk about their “sanctuary” and the League/Spinner’s presence in it? Here’s the full scope of that. It’s about kegare, a Shinto concept of uncleanliness associated particularly with blood and death, and while that’s normally something that can be purified simply by undergoing the proper ritual cleansings, when something is, in itself, intrinsically unclean, no amount of purification will fix it; you can only keep it sealed away. Hence the yelling at Shouji not to leave the house.

The spirituality-based discrimination calls to mind the burakumin, originally an outcaste group of people who made their living working with all the aspects of life Shinto considered kegare—butchers, tanners, executioners and the like. They were made to dress and cut their hair in ways that identified them on sight, barred from entering temples or schools, and lived in their own villages. The laws mandating much of this were abolished in 1871[3] and urban sprawl gradually rolled over burakumin villages, turning them into slum areas. While today it’s not uncommon for people to not even know they’re descended from burakumin lineage unless they’re specifically told,[4] more subtle discrimination does endure. While it’s clearly not the only inspiration, there’s a lot about anti-burakumin bias that’s reflected in heteromorphobia.

3: Albeit not without considerable and violent protests against the liberation of the burakumin/the idea that they were henceforth to be allowed to hold other occupations and become ordinary citizens. Arson, destruction of villages, attacks and deaths—all things considered, the anti-Kaihourei riots are probably a decent place to look for inspiration on the historical massacres Spinner’s #2 will be talking about shortly.

4: Or find out because someone who knows the significance of those old neighborhoods finds out first and they’re suddenly on the bad end of some discriminatory act or another.

O We find out that the group Spinner’s leading consists of fifteen thousand people, that number split between PLF remnants and ordinary civilians who support the PLF’s cause. It’s unknown exactly how that split breaks down, but based on how the rest of the attack goes, I think it’s probable that the group is mostly civilians—if it were more PLF, it probably wouldn’t be so wholly defanged by Shouji’s big plea for peace. So that’s what we might call a “bad look,” that fifteen thousand ordinary civilians feel so incredibly hard done-by that they not only flock to join a known terrorist, but that they do so for the purpose of attacking a hospital.

O They’re opposed by about two hundred police and heroes, the relevant of whom for our purposes are Present Mic, Rock Lock, Officer Gori, Shouji, and Koda. With the exception of Present Mic, who will in any case be heading inside very shortly, they’re all minorities of some sort, with Rock Lock being very visibly, obviously Black, and the others being heteromorphs. None of them are immediately thinking about the composition of the crowd, but rather about how difficult the crowd is being to handle.

O Rock Lock yells out that the rioters are too organized to be some random mob, a dismissiveness that gets him shouted at by the Spinner fanboys—tragically their only appearance in all of this!—that, “Folks with human faces just don’t get it!” I have to assume that putting Rock Lock in this scene is no accident, but rather is there to make the rioters come off as short-sighted, so deep in their own pain that they lash out at someone who, if HeroAca!Japan is anything like present day Japan, almost certainly understands better than they think!

The phrasing, in any case, points towards the dehumanization that heteromorphs, especially animal-associated ones, are subject to. After all, as Re-Destro might point out, in the post-Advent world, isn’t it the case that any given heteromorphic human’s face, no matter how strange it may be, is de facto a “human face”? Yet the vitriol from the Spinner fans clearly reflects how internalized it’s become for them, that they don’t look “human,” despite the fact that “looking human” means nothing at all in the time of quirks.

O Koda gets called a traitor by an elderly beaked heteromorph from, apparently, a rural area, underscoring what’s been alluded to a few times prior to this, and which will be laid out explicitly in a few pages, that heteromorphobia is far, far worse in the countryside than it is in the cities. Mr. Beak assumes—correctly, it seems[5]—that Koda’s a city kid, because why else other than ignorance would a fellow heteromorph stand against them?

5: Koda’s from Iwate Prefecture, which is only above Hokkaido in terms of population density; a bit of research suggests that its largest city, Morioka, is considered to be a mid-sized city. So that’s definitely the hard upper limit on exactly how “big city” Koda could reasonably be. That said, Shouji also identifies Koda as someone who grew up in a city, for which I assume he must have at least some basis.

O Spinner’s #2 fulfills the promise of his early shorthanded characterization of being a fiery, well-spoken zealot by standing on top of a building over the mob and exhorting them onward with revolutionary, inflammatory rhetoric. And boy, does he bring up a lot to talk about!

Demagoguery for Fun & Profit

O Quirk counselling and quirk education? Phony nonsense, he says. That’s a fairly confusing grievance to bring up in this context, so let’s consider what he might have in mind.

• For quirk education, I would contend that BNHA has shown very little of it, in spite of having Academia right there in the title. The academics in question are about Heroics, after all, not quirks in and of themselves. Here’s the complete list of what I would say the reader has seen that could be qualified as actual education about quirks:

Aizawa telling the kids(/low tier villains at USJ) some broad generalities, things like a very basic explanation of how quirks work on the genetic level or how they’re classified. Most of this is delivered in the context of how his quirk works; the only outlier that immediately comes to mind for me is his explanation of how quirks are like muscles, and can be strengthened via training.

Mirio and Tamaki’s middle school class doing “quirk training,” which is framed as a P.E. class and is specifically aimed at finding ways for each kid to be “useful to society,” not about them learning anything about quirks in a broader sense.

Endeavor’s recent reference to Nedzu’s alleged “quirk morality education,” about which I have already registered my skepticism.

The bit in Re-Destro’s monologue to Shigaraki where he mentions he was taught not to judge others by their quirks. It’s hard to judge how applicable this is to normal society because Re-Destro was raised in a cult, and the book shown during this sequence was released by Curious’s publisher.

So of those options, what is #2 talking about? I’d say the last one is probably closest to what he means: don’t judge others by their quirks. But of course, people judge others by their quirks all the time. Family, classmates, teachers, people in the same neighborhood, heroes and police—we see examples from literally the first page of characters who are being judged by their quirks or lack thereof. While that judgement doesn’t apply only to heteromorphs, they are, by dint of their visibility, going to face it everywhere they go, regardless of whether any given situation—say, going to the grocery store or on a date—involves quirks or not. So, whatever lessons people in this society are getting about quirks and judgement, they clearly aren’t absorbing them.

It also bears pointing out, of course, that #2’s personal affiliation is with the Metahuman Liberation Army, and he definitely shows signs—as I’ll get to in a bit—of the quirk supremacism that group is so unanimously painted with in the endgame. So while the supremacy he’s preaching is about heteromorphs rather than quirks more generally, he could well be saying quirk education is phony because he’s all for judging people on their quirks! However, his criteria for that judgement differs from both forms of judgement taught by the society he’s railing against—what they practice and what they preach.

• Then there’s quirk counseling, a practice the story most prominently associates with Toga, who’s barely a twitch of the needle away from baseline (though her abuse is not wholly without reference to her appearance, in that her natural smile is repeatedly branded as scary or deviant). So why bring it up in association with heteromorphs? My suspicion is that a heteromorph—especially a heteromorph with an animal-associated quirk!—being visibly “different” in some way makes the people around them hyper-sensitive to behavioral “deviations.”

For a start, you see that hyper-sensitivity brought to bear against Toga. Curious contends that Toga’s sense of “admiration” was a perfectly normal thing, but it was the tie to blood that made it wholly unacceptable. It’s notable that, before she snapped, Toga was never shown to actually want to hurt people: the bird was already injured when she found it, her friend got a scrape the way any child might, Saito was involved in a fight Toga had no hand in. She hurts people now because a lifetime of rejection and dehumanization, but Toga’s admiration of blood was not intrinsically indicative that she’d grow up to be violent; people treated it that way because of cultural attitudes towards blood and blood-attraction.

So, might the same sort of thing be true of e.g. animal-associated heteromorphs? That they might exhibit behaviors which would, in different circumstances, be totally fine, but which they’re judged for unduly harshly because of cultural beliefs about the animal they resemble? Let me just spitball a few possibilities:

A cat heteromorph who, as a child, showed affection by nuzzling. That’s fine when a literal kitten is doing it, and funny and cute when a baseline child sees a cat doing it and imitates it for fun, but when the cat heteromorph does it, he makes people uncomfortable, makes them wonder if he lacks self-control, comes off as weird and too-forward. So his parents rebuke him and bring him to a quirk counsellor to break him of the habit, leading him to feel ashamed and alienated from a harmless natural impulse.

A snake-headed girl is the first heteromorph in her family line and the way she stares at people so fixedly, never blinking, creeps them out, makes them feel like she’s dangerous. She isn’t and has no intention of being so, but she’s sent to quirk counselling anyway and the lesson she learns is to just never look people in the eye at all.

A condor heteromorph develops a morbid interest in corpses in middle school. He doesn’t want to eat them, he’s not some kind of cannibalistic animal—at least that’s what he told himself before quirk counselling, where his counsellor, like his teachers, assumed that his interest had to be tied to animal instincts. He wanted to be a mortician, or join the police and get into crime scene investigation, but when he told people that they just looked at him like he was already holding a fork and knife. (He ends up getting into photography, and just has to live with the fact that now people have two excuses to call him a vulture.)

Two children—one with a plant-based emitter quirk, the other an eight-eyed spider heteromorph—are caught in the act of killing some insects by a local police officer. It’s the sort of innocent childhood cruelty you might find anywhere, and, indeed, when the officer calls their school about it, that’s what gets decided about the emitter—he was just a child who didn’t know any better. But the heteromorph gets recommended for quirk counselling instead—after all, spiders kill insects. What if this is an early warning sign for instincts towards predatory behavior? It’s important to nip these things in the bud.

That’s all off the top of my head or taken from some conversation with friends on the topic, and maybe it’s a reach, but it’s also a very plausible explanation for why a heteromorphic idealogue might bring up quirk counselling as a specific grievance—because, like the Villain-designation for criminals, it’s unevenly and unfairly applied.

O The next point #2 makes, and definitely the one that made the biggest splash in fandom at the time, is his invocation of a pair of historical incidents, possibly both but at least one of which was a mass murder targeting heteromorphs, carried out by a bunch of baseline types. He names them as the 6/6 Incident and the Great Jeda Purge. These are both stealth Star Wars references, though the former is disguised a bit better by being in the same format that Japan sometimes uses for naming events like attempted coups.[6] Given the image we see, it’s fair to assume the event in BNHA was similar.

6: See for example the May 15 Incident or the February 26 Incident, called the 5・15 Incident and the 2・26 Incident respectively in Japan. You see this in China as well, with the Tiananmen Square massacre being referred to there as the 6/4 Incident.

Notice that the perpetrators here are mostly holding weapons. Were they quirkless themselves, or were they avoiding using quirks such that they couldn’t be branded as Villains? Knowing the answer to that would give us a timeframe for this.

He goes on to declaim, on the basis of these events, that the history of the paranormal is one of persecution and oppression of those with “differing forms.”[7] The term in Japanese there is kotonaru katachi, 異なる形, which uses a different reading of the kanji in igyou (異形) and muscles in a verb conjugation, which has the effect of softening the harshness of 異 somewhat.[8] This would be a great catch-all term for those with heteromorphic bodies who might or might not have heteromorphic quirks[9] if it weren’t for the fact that literally the only person we ever hear using it is an anti-social zealot. No one on Team Hero ever makes this kind of distinguishment.

In any case, #2 is obviously over-simplifying to play to his audience—recall the baseline woman we saw back in that shot of Persecuted Early Quirk-Havers back in Chapter 59—but, as I’ve discussed extensively, being more visible does make one a more ready target. Also, of course, the presence of the CRC in the story lays the groundwork for this sort of historical horror story even long after the worst days of the Advent.

7: I provide my own translation here because the Viz one, “those who don’t fit the mold,” is vague to the point of uselessness.

8: The koto reading, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty rare, often tagged as archaic in words including it. The i reading is far more common, in words that denote wrongness, divergence, abnormality, and so on. But it may be less about the reading and more about the fact that adding the verb conjugation makes the term more of a descriptive phrase than a direct noun. As ever, take my talk about Japanese language minutiae with a grain of salt.

9: “Differing forms” is broad enough, however, that it could also be read as covering, say, people with amputations, congenital anomalies, or other sorts of non-quirk-related disfigurements from accidents or disease. As in real life, navigating the linguistic space between specificity and Othering can be tricky.

O Next, #2 rhetorically demands what excuse was given by those who perpetrated these slaughters? He answers his own question with the quote, “They give me the creeps.” Note how this ties in with my earlier suppositions about the likelihood of discrimination worsening the farther one is from baseline, as well as those about the necessity of putting up a good, positive, appealing front. It’s a perfectly intuitive leap, that more extreme variants of heteromorphy, or those who evoke negative associations—animals tied to rot or bad luck, people made wholly out of green ooze—are going to be more likely to be found “creepy” than those who look like e.g. sexy bunny girls or straight-laced guys who just happen to have pipes jutting out of their calves. Of course, that’s on something of a sliding scale; the more biased an area is against heteromorphs in general, the easier it will be to find oneself on the wrong side of that line.

O #2 presents the idea that society has reflected on their actions and made amends, or at least that’s how society’s narrative goes. Illustrating this, we see two of the three heteromorphs in the police force, as well as Nedzu. Interestingly, the panel does not include any heteromorphic heroes! I might guess that this is because heroes are meant to use their quirks to serve others; they’re really just enforcement tools, lacking any particular authority beyond a quirk-use license and some admittedly broad soft power courtesy of the social contract.[10] Conversely, a school principal and a police chief (Gori remaining the outlier here) have actual authority, such that the average heteromorphobia-denier can point to them as evidence that heteromorphobia doesn’t exist anymore.

10: Which is to say, I don’t get the impression civilians are required to take orders from heroes, such that they would actually get in legal trouble for disobeying. The fact that people do typically follow those orders speaks more to the power heroes wield via their association with the police force, as well as the general tendency of people to assume that someone in a uniform giving orders during an emergency is probably a professional whose orders it would be safe and wise to follow.

In the same panel, we also see a baseline guy palling around with a vaguely murine heteromorph dude (he looks more like a mascot suit mouse than an actual mouse, but he’s certainly nowhere close to baseline!), illustrating another way society wants to pretend it’s moved past heteromorphic discrimination. I can’t help but note, in regards to this specific pair, that the manga uses faces the readers know to illustrate the point about heteromorphs in positions of authority, whereas to make the point about baseline/heteromorph friendships, it has to make up a new pair to show us because the series hasn’t made the time to actually build any (heroic) relationships that actually look like that!

Now, one could argue that using familiar faces to underscore #2’s speech would imply that he’s aware of those faces, and while that’s fine for figures of authority, there’s no reason for him to be aware of e.g. Natsuo and his mousey girlfriend. However, the same would apply to anyone placed to demonstrate a random urban friendship crossing the “differing forms” line, including those two strangers. Who are those two, after all, that #2 is any more familiar with them than he would be of Natsuo and mouse gal?

Honestly, I think the best relationship candidate we have—a pair who would both communicate what the panel needs to communicate to the reader and who would feasibly be enough in the public eye to get pointed at for rhetorical purposes by an in-universe speaker—would be Kamui Woods and Mount Lady. Unfortunately, they don’t work because Horikoshi has never seen fit to actually reveal Kamui Woods’ real face, so they’re much less visibly “a baseline person being emotionally close with a heteromorph” than the random two Horikoshi made up.

O The oratory continues into discussing the divide between city versus rural views on heteromorphs, and this is, to me, the first clear sign that the series is beginning to lose the thread of this plot. Taking #2 at his word asks us to concede the heteromorphobia has been completely wiped out in cities, eradicated with that wonderful antidote called “education.” But discrimination very much does exist in cities! It may be less violent, less extreme, less vocal, but in the form of things like law enforcement bias, housing discrimination, microaggressions, the quirk counselling #2 himself brought up, it’s very much still there! Now, it could be that he’s just downplaying that discrimination to focus on the really ugly stuff you don’t see in cities, but I don’t know what his reasons for doing so would be? Not when there’s so much else he could say that would be equally inflammatory without alienating urban heteromorphs by dismissing their still very much present, modern suffering.

O He then brings up the talk of “light”—echoing Skeptic’s earlier rhetoric—and it not reaching those gathered at the hospital, so they must make their own, for people who’ve never once regretted the quirks they were born with can never be their heroes. What this primarily puts me in mind of is Hawks’s background with heroes prior to his father’s arrest—that heroes were only on TV, not present to save him in his actual life. Keep that in mind for Shouji’s response later on.

O Towards the end, #2’s speech finally tips over the line from what could plausibly be read as protesting unequal treatment to an outright call for supremacy. Notably, he doesn’t call for quirk supremacy, but rather for heteromorph supremacy—for the tables to be turned, the cards reversed, for them to not merely be equal, but rather to be superior.

It’s unclear how much of this he’s sincere about and how much is just convenient rhetoric disguising views that are more quirk supremacist in actuality. For many reasons, I want to read him in good faith: because the MLA originally struck me as being written in good faith throughout MVA and the first war arc; because #2 never once uses his quirk in this mini-arc, casting doubt on him having such an amazing quirk that he’d benefit overmuch from quirk supremacy anyway; and especially because it would be incredibly bad faith on Horikoshi’s part to make a character delivering a speech like this a total bad faith, manipulative outsider. Unfortunately, #2’s inner monologue in later chapters will make a good faith read all but impossible to sustain.

O Halfway through his speech, #2 unmasks himself, revealing both his face—dominated by four pairs of pedipalp-esque mouthparts, though the markings on his head are pretty eye-catching, too—and his scar. We’re never told how he got it, but the implication is certainly that he was attacked for his appearance. That may just be a conclusion it serves him to let people make, given his bad faith elsewhere, but thankfully the manga doesn’t go so far as to say that explicitly. In any case, his deliberate reveal turns his wound into a form of performance art, drawing attention to it, forcing it to be a part of the conversation—the polar opposite of Shouji covering his scars because he doesn’t want them to be a part of the conversation about him, and those scars being revealed because his mask is torn off against his will.[11]

11: This also fits a larger pattern of villains, by and large, choosing their expressions of vulnerability, making deliberate shows of agency in how their weakness is perceived by the broader world—Shigaraki taking his hand off for the first time, Dabi’s video, Toga approaching heroes with genuine questions, and so on. There are certainly exceptions, but generally if a villain shows his “true face,” it’s because they’re making a conscious decision to do so, and may be actively manipulating how that reveal is going to land. Conversely, heroes want to present a powerful, confident, untarnished image to the public, so their shows of vulnerability all have to be forced out of them after pitched battles or acts of violence. Heroes don’t make themselves vulnerable to the public on purpose, which feeds into the way the public then treats them when they are forced into vulnerable positions.

O Spinner’s a mess at this point, and the reason he’s a mess is all tied up in his faith in/desire to help Shigaraki. It’s not explicitly about heteromorphobia, but on the other hand, given that the thing that drove Spinner to be here at all was his horrifically low self-esteem caused by heteromorphobia, maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all. It may have taken Spinner longer than the Tenkos, Touyas, and Chisaki Kais of the world to reach the “fall victim to a dark influence due to the neglect and abuse you faced at the hands of Hero Society” plot, but he certainly got there in the end![12]

12: I call this The Sekoto Peak Problem, and it’s a big criticism of mine about how the final arc is framing all these conflicts as being solely brought about because Bad Faith Villain Men like AFO are scooping up vulnerable people and driving them towards violence, without acknowledging the much worse circumstances those vulnerable people might be in if they were just left to their fates. Touya, for example, if not for AFO’s timely rescue, would likely have simply died on the mountain long before Endeavor was able to find him.

O Shouji takes the mob to task for attacking a hospital without ensuring the safety of the uninvolved innocents within, a laughable bit of sophistry[13] that accurately foreshadows how disastrous his reasoning will be throughout the rest of these chapters.

13: It’s laughable sophistry firstly because the heroes knew this mob was coming but chose to leave Kurogiri at a hospital anyway; one can mount a very reasonable argument that Kurogiri’s teleportation power qualifies him as a military objective, which would make stashing him at a hospital an actual war crime in an international conflict, as well as negating the hospital’s protected status as a civilian object. It’s laughable sophistry secondly because it criticizes a Villain-led mob for failing to evacuate the building, as if said mob had exactly the same social cachet possessed by heroes, that they could freely walk in the front door of a hospital and start shouting evacuation orders with reasonable confidence that they’d be obeyed. Finally, it’s laughable sophistry because Shouji is quite simply wrong about the order of the actions he’s describing—the heroes’ evacuation of Ujiko’s hospital was concurrent with their invasion of said hospital, not precedent to it.

Chapter 371:

O Shouji accuses Spinner of taking actions that will set them back thirty years, which is just a really egregiously victim blamey sort of thing to say, placing the responsibility on heteromorphs for the crimes of those who hate them.

O Koda’s perspective gives us a flashback to Shouji telling his classmates about his history—his town and his scars and his reason for wanting to be a hero. It’s all material that works in the context of all the set-up we’ve gotten—the CRC and the religious inflection of their specific brand of hatred, the rural heteromorphobia, the hints about Shouji’s own discrimination, the attack on the Ordinary Woman, and so on—but that would have been far better served to have been integrated into the story more naturally. Koda has no specifically established relationship with Shouji (seriously, there is absolutely nothing; it’s shocking how out of nowhere his sudden deep dedication to Shouji is), nor does the scene he remembers have any specific flags for when it might take place,[14] leaving the memory feeling less like a natural extension of their arc than it is a graceless sequence muscled in to attempt to rouse some emotion in the audience when Koda has a quirk awakening he is not otherwise remotely in dire enough straits to have rightfully earned.[15]

14: Shouto and Bakugou being missing might suggest that they’re off at their remedial license course, which would put the scene somewhere in late September up through December (stretching from the aftermath of Overhaul to the introduction of the MLA), save that there are several other students missing as well—Sero, Iida, Sato, and Aoyama, none of whom where in the remedial course.

15: Nearly every other inarguable quirk awakening[※] we know of in the series has as a chief component serious physical injury: Bakugou, Ochaco, Toga. Geten’s is the only exception, and his is tied to the strength of his feelings for Re-Destro, which are clearly and overridingly his most significant character trait! Shouji is not anywhere near that central to Koda’s life, and he sure as hell isn’t injured enough to have gotten it that way.

※: By which measure I exclude stuff like the change in Shigaraki’s Decay or Mina’s acid attack against Gigantomachia. Shigaraki was explicitly just breaking through a mental block to access power he already had. Meanwhile, if Mina’s Plus Ultra moment had been a sudden quirk evolution, she wouldn’t already have an attack name picked out for it, nor would her horns have gone back to normal after it. Acidman: ALMA is an Ultimate Move, not Mina having a quirk awakening.

O The flashback itself calls for another subsection.

Ignoring the Difference Between the Personal and the Systemic for Fun & Profit

O The big thing here the description of the whole town coming out for a “blood cleansing” whenever Shouji touched someone. This is depicted as Shouji, probably a preteen in this sequence,[16] being savagely attacked with farming tools, the most visible of which is a pitchfork. This visual, as well as #2’s invocation of historical slaughters, is the darkest heart of heteromorphobia: a child being ritualistically assaulted in the open street as a matter of course, as a consequence for touching someone. This is the image you should hold in your mind as The Problem through all of the potential answers and responses that get trotted out through the rest of these chapters.

16: Visibly older/bigger than, say, Kouta, but also visibly younger/smaller than middle school Deku.

Before moving on, I do want to examine this image in just a bit more depth.

This is, firstly, the moment that Shouji got those scars, and it’s very important to note that what we’re being shown is likely not a random, representative sample of what the town “coming out in force for a blood cleansing” looks like. The strong implication is that this is in the immediate aftermath of the sequence we’ll see shortly of Shouji saving the girl from the river: he’s wearing the same clothes and shoes,[17] he’s the same size, and there’s a spray of blood from where he’s being struck across the mouth where he didn’t have his distinctive scars when he saved the girl. Does that mean the blood cleansings were typically not this violent? That’s hard to say. On the one hand, we don’t see any other scars on Shouji, and he wears his arms pretty bare! On the other hand, we never see any part of his body bare except his neck and arms, and since he can regrow his arms,[18] they’re not exactly conclusive evidence that he’s never been scarred there. Also, he does say talk about his situation—the scars he bears—as something other children in the country have to bear, suggesting that the norm is rather worse than a little symbolic gash across the palm or something! 17: In fairness, he may not own very much different, as I’ll discuss shortly. 18: The duplicated ones, at least. I seem to recall reading once that he could regrow the base set as well, but I’m still working on tracking down a citation on that.

Secondly, as was the case with the image of the historical massacres, the adults here are using tools/weapons in the assault, not quirks. As I mentioned in a footnote last time, them not using quirks to carry out this attack makes them merely criminals, not Villains, and therefore not nominally a Hero’s job to deal with. While I can’t imagine any Hero in the manga these days would stand back and let this go on, the absence still stands out—no Hero is participating in this, nor observing from the sidelines, nor trying to intervene. Heroes simply don’t figure into this picture at all.

Thirdly, we can see a few children in the background, both there with adults, I assume their parents. The child on the right is a passive observer, clinging close to their mother and simply watching; their father has one hand supportively on their shoulder. Neither parent seems distressed, insomuch as we can tell from their somewhat indistinct features and rather clearer body language. The child on the left is being actively held back by their mother, who’s standing with her back to the violence, her body interposed between it and her child. The kid is reaching out towards the scene, but it’s unclear what the intent is. Are they trying to intervene or do they want to join in? Neither child appears to be the little girl Shouji saved—the one on the right is dark-haired, and the one on the left—the more likely prospect just going by the body language!—is wearing a long, dark T-shirt instead of the little girl’s overalls. I suppose the left one could be the little girl if we assume she was hustled out of what she’d been wearing by her parents, eager to get her out of now-tainted (and also soaking wet) clothes and into something dry and warm and, in more ways than one, clean. However, that seems like the sort of thing that would take longer than what looks to have been a pretty impromptu, disorganized bloodletting, unless everyone just held off on assaulting Shouji right out on the street until the “victim” could be present.

Finally, there’s the pair of adults right at the center of the background. If anyone in this picture is actually related to Shouji, I’d put money on them being here, watching but not attempting to intercede. I don’t think it’s conclusive, though; the woman is thin and hunched, making her look older—I’d guess Shouji’s grandmother before Shouji’s mother. That hunched posture and her hands being raised to her mouth do give her the most obviously distressed appearance of any of the adult, though, to the extent that the person with her is focused on supporting her rather than watching what’s going on in the foreground—and forward attention is what I’d expect if the dark-haired figure is related to Shouji.

So that’s the image we have of the crowd—actively taking part or observing with varying degrees of reaction running from distress to indifference to, potentially, enthusiasm.

O Next, let’s talk about Shouji’s parents. He implies they were baseline—at the least they were significantly more baseline than Shouji himself, as they lacked arms “like his.” That makes it quite telling that Shouji’s parents are nowhere to be seen in his story beyond the simple mention of how they were different than him.

Now, I don’t want to suggest here that Shouji’s parents are completely irredeemable people. While I would imagine that—at least initially—they shared their town’s bigotry, having a heteromorphic child themselves would have exponentially increased the hardship of their own lives. In a town like that, I’m sure that many if not all of their neighbors must have come to regard them with suspicion of wrongdoing or transgression—recall the first page of the last chapter, where Shouji is accused of tricking the town in his having brought dirty blood to it. Hie parents almost certainly lost friends and likely became ostracized themselves, and ostracization in a small Japanese town can be a horrifying thing to deal with.

And yet, even with all that being the case, they didn’t abandon Shouji or give him up; they didn’t commit family suicide with him.[19] Assuming he wasn’t removed from their custody after the incident, they’re presumably paying his school and living costs;[20] likewise, unless he just ran away from home or is carrying out an incredibly elaborate deception about what school he’s attending, they almost had to support his desire to attend a hero school to begin with. In his situation, parents who support his desire to be a Hero is a big fucking deal. After all, between the winning and the saving, heroes will de facto be touching people all the time! If Shouji’s parents still live in his hometown, how do you think those people will take it when someone first realizes the Shouji family sent their kegare-riddled monster off to be a Hero?

19: The history of honorable suicide in Japan casts a very long shadow, and when it’s combined with the meiwaku culture, you get an underreported epidemic of things like parents who can’t see their way out of a bad situation taking their lives and their children’s as well, so as not to leave messy loose ends that others will have to bear the burden of dealing with.

20: I won’t get into whether or not the U.A. students’ parents are paying for any given thing on the following list, but here are some potential costs to consider, assuming that Shouji, like Uraraka, was commuting from an apartment prior to the dorms being implemented: tuition, school uniforms, textbooks, school supplies, school meal plan, food not served at school (e.g. breakfast and dinner or meals when the school is on break), non-uniform attire, personal care and hygiene, housing and transportation costs, a measure of spending money for unanticipated expenses or culturally expected gift-giving, etc.

All that being said, it’s obviously not a glowingly loving relationship, either. Think back to Shouji’s absolutely barren room in Chapter 99 and consider it in the context of the information we get in this chapter. Is he really so ascetic by inclination, or is he just used to making do with as little as possible? After all, it goes without saying that if him coming into contact with someone called for blood purification, anything he himself was in regular contact with was also to be considered incredibly impure. That includes his clothes, personal belongings and living space; even setting aside his parents’ view on it, who in his hometown would even want to provide or sell things to the family that they think will go to the child with the dirty blood that’s defiling their land?

Shouji’s parents’ absence is also glaring in other ways. For example:

They’re either not in the beating scene image above at all or they’re that central background couple hanging back and just watching; whichever is the case, what they’re assuredly not doing while their son is being beaten so badly he will still have glaringly visible scars years later is “trying to stop the violence or take the blows themselves.”

Shouji says he has one single good memory about his body, but his parents are nowhere to be found in that memory. Ergo, his parents have not given him a single moment of positivity about his heteromorphic form.

Parents of U.A. students were evacuated to U.A.—not just the ones near it, but even ones like Uraraka’s parents, who live at least a two hour drive away, in a wholly different prefecture with a third prefecture in between them and U.A. Every student we see in the departure scene in Chapter 342 is shown with their parents except Shouji.

To sum all that up, Shouji’s family situation is not maximally bad, but it’s certainly proximally bad.

O Next, we get Shouji alleging ignorance on the part of heteromorphs raised in cities, that there are still parts of the country in the modern day where stories like his happen.[21] It’s a milder version of the same assertions made by #2 and the beaky heteromorph last chapter, in that Shouji doesn’t suggest heteromorphobia doesn’t exist at all in cities, simply that there are extremes of violence that can only be found in the country. It still feels off, however, to suggest that absolutely no one else in Shouji’s class might ever have heard of this through any channel at all: being from similarly small towns, reading about an attack in the news, reading about factors that impact the public approval ratings for Heroes, going through a morbid phase in middle school and researching it, being talked to about it by their parents, etc.

21: The suggestion of the Viz translation of this suggests that city-raised heteromorphs do know this, but only because they’re read about it in textbooks. My sister-in-law, who does professional translation, tells me this was a subtle mistranslation of the original text, however; the textbook framing is supposed to imply a remove of time, not merely of distance.

It’s not as unrealistic a story beat here as it would be in an American comic, as Japan does tend more towards using silence as a weapon against bigotry—children won’t learn what they aren’t taught, and similar reasoning. Still, to portray the class as so unanimously ignorant reflects a deep incuriosity, be that in the kids themselves about the world around them or in their author about how the knowledge/perpetuation of discrimination spreads.

This is particularly the case when you consider the story’s handling of the Ordinary Woman—attacked in her own town because people were suspicious of a heteromorph out after dark, turned away from multiple shelters because of her heteromorph status. It’s certainly true that things got worse for heteromorphs after the first war arc, but for discrimination in that specific form to emerge, there needed to be something for it to draw on. The fear of villains and the association of villains with heteromorphs are the foundation for the upswelling in anti-heteromorph sentiments in cities.

O Mina’s reaction to all this is one of rather theatrical anger. That is, no one around her takes her broad declarations—that the world would be better off without the people who hurt Shouji—as anything more serious than hyperbole. This is, it would seem, the only sort of anger that’s acceptable to show in response to hearing a story like Shouji’s—empathy to the wronged, sure, but no real intent to confront the wrongdoers.

O Mineta stares into space for a second before emphatically apologizing for calling Shouji an octopus once—a call all the way back to his microaggression in Chapter 6!—and asserting that it wasn’t his intention to say Shouji was gross or anything. Shouji responds gracefully, saying it’s “only natural” that his arms would make people think of octopus.

He doesn’t go on to say, “But that doesn’t mean people have to say it out loud,” but it’s possible that Mineta’s apology is meant to suggest that regardless. At least, one certainly hopes this isn’t the author’s way of quietly absolving his more popular characters of all the times they’ve done the same thing! It’s notable, however, that none of the other Class 1-A kids that have done this are in the scene. Shouto and Bakugou, who have both used that kind of language in anger (and in the latter’s case, also just with no provocation whatsoever) are the missing elephants in the room, and even Sero, who was the actual person to call Shouji an octopus, is, in his absence, Sir Letting The Gag Character Handle This Apology So I A More Serious Character Don’t Have To.

O Shouji brings up the Heroes Who Look Like Villains rankings. We know the Number 1 on that list is actually Endeavor, per a movie bonus booklet, but bringing it up in this context does implicitly confirm that said rankings have an unseemly slant towards heteromorphs, and what did Skeptic say about Villains and heteromorphs again…?

O Shouji says he wears the mask because he knows that if people see his scars, they’ll wonder about them, and fear he’s out for revenge. He doesn’t want people to think that, so he covers them up. He’s praised for this by Tokoyami, and the narrative pretty clearly also thinks it’s admirable and cool. I have serious issues with this—chiefly that it’s prioritizing the oblivious comfort of the baseline citizens over the fellow feeling and affirmation of other persecuted heteromorphs—but I’m also curious to see if the mask will come back now that its meta-narrative purpose of hiding Shouji’s scars from the reader has been fulfilled. I note, for example, that Shouji is not wearing the mask in the color spread for Chapter 394, and the color art does have some precedent for being an early predictor of stuff in the body of the manga.[22]

Incidentally, while I’m talking about Shouji’s mask, I do wonder how effective it would even be for him to cover his scars up? I have my doubts for two reasons. First and most obviously, heroes are such celebrities, all over the news all the time, such that if Shouji really does get as popular as he intends to, there will be people who want to know what he looks like.[23]

22: The big one is Aizawa’s eyepatch. It showed up in two pieces of color art (the popularity poll results spread for Chapter 293 and the new art announcing the BNHA Drawing Smash Exhibition) before it was revealed in the manga. Both pieces released within days of each other in early December, 2020, three months after Shigaraki raked his hand down Aizawa’s face during the war and almost two months before the latter showed up in bandages in the hospital, with another two months to go beyond that before the eyepatch itself made it to the manga in late March. In a more stealth spoiler, the same popularity spread revealed Shigaraki’s blackened, burned face-hand two chapters prior to Spinner digging it out of Shigaraki’s pants. The 394 spread is also my basis for asserting that Mina’s horns have gone back to normal after her attack against Gigantomachia, compared to Shouji lacking his mask and Koda having his new horn in the same spread.

23: Edgeshot’s character profile page notes that his fans are split into two factions: those who’re mad to see his real face and those who think the mask is what makes him cool.

O More importantly, though, heroes have to be licensed, and Hero Licenses are photo IDs. Photo IDs don’t typically allow face coverage because not being able to provide a visual reference to what the bearer looks like defeats the whole purpose. While we don’t know what full-fledged hero licenses look like to say if they’re taken in or out of costume, we do know the provisional licenses the students carry showed them in their school uniforms, despite the fact that they definitely had working costumes by then:

Pardon the sudden screenshot. The manga has this shot, too, but the anime fills in the details of the text a bit more.

It seems probable to me that the photo on a Hero License must show the bearer’s face, so that if they’re tooling around a crime scene and a cop who hasn’t seen them around before asks for their license, it can reliably be used as a form of identification. (I wonder how Hagakure manages?)

Also, think back to the press conferences we’ve seen in the story, most recently the one post-war: at every one, the heroes are in serious, solemn black suits, not their costumes. So at any press conferences Shouji ever has to speak at in the future, he’ll have to show his face there, as well.

O We see a direct flashback to Shouji saving a little girl from drowning in a choppy, swift-flowing river as he says in voiceover that he’d rather cling to the single good memory related to his body than dwell on the bad memories. He very much uses his quirk to do it, with his right set of limbs used to hold onto the bank while his left ones reach out to the girl, extending out another few “nodes” of arm-length when he at first can’t keep hold of her fingers. As they sit and catch their breath afterward, the girl clings to one of his tentacles and cries. This is not quite what his entry in the Ultra Analysis databook was hinting at[24] when it said he wears the mask due to his scary face making a little girl cry; that’ll be next chapter.

24: My apologies for not bringing this up before; it’ll be covered on AO3. The gist is as detailed above; the databook came out circa the Endeavor Agency arc, so this was a known factoid about Shouji by the time this chapter came out three years later.

O Wrapping up the flashback, we’re left with Koda’s memory of Shouji saying that he knows it’ll take longer than a generation to tear down a wall that’s stood for over a century, so, just as previous generations have done, he’ll keep paying it forward, being the coolest hero the world’s ever seen, “to give good memories to generations to come.” Which sounds really nice when he says it that way, as opposed to the broader implication that people whose children have been or are in danger of being maimed by bigots should just keep their heads down and “keep paying it forward.”

The whole “be a cool hero and give good memories” bit is particularly egregious to my eye, for a few reasons.

How much good did cool heroes do for Takami Keigo when they were just on TV? Which is where Shouji will be, because in order to be “the coolest hero the world’s ever seen,” he’s going to have to be at the top of the rankings, and being at the top of the rankings means prioritizing cities, which means all those heteromorphs out in rural areas are never going to see him in person. And anyway, what’s stopping all those bigots from just changing the channel or going on a rant about Woke Mutie Agendas every time a heteromorphic hero crops up on TV?

How much did the visibility of previous generations’ cool heroes do for Spinner? Does Shouji think Spinner was super inspired and uplifted by seeing e.g. Gang Orca on TV using the emitter-like hypersonic waves his quirk gives him to beat up Villains, an undue percentage of whom are also heteromorphs?

It’s certainly nice that Shouji was inspired enough by heroes on TV to want to emulate them, but he is demonstrably not the norm when it comes to wildly disadvantaged and victimized heteromorphs. Also, I have to wonder how much his admiration of TV heroes would have done him if he’d gotten to the girl just a little later—say, in time to get her out of the river, but too late to be able to save her life without knowing CPR. As bad as it was for him when he saved a little girl but had to touch her to do it, can you imagine how much worse it would have been if he’d touched her and then failed to save her, being found or having to walk back into town with her body?

I realize that's incredibly dark, but it's the kind of question that presents itself when the story is so insistent on Shouji's exemplary behavior being the model for heteromorphs to follow in their own lives.

O Exiting the flashback, when Shouji calls out to the heteromorphs, we finally get a straight-out look at how disastrous this conclusion is going to be in the way he shouts that no, the people who hurt them weren’t justified, but that there has to be a better way, that they should think about how to use their rage—but offers exactly zero suggestions himself for what that better way might be, or what they should be using their rage to do instead.[25]

25: I have seen the argument put forth that Shouji is one (1) teenager, and one (1) teenager cannot fairly be asked to Solve Bigotry. To this, I would counter that if Shouji doesn’t have even one (1) single idea to offer, why is the camera lens holding him up as the hero who quelled a fifteen-thousand-strong mob with only words? He doesn’t have to Solve Bigotry, but if he’s going to be used as a counter for other peoples’ misguided but at least active attempts to address the problem, he needed to be better than a mere white knight for the status quo.

Spinner’s #2 calls Shouji out on this directly, saying that if the situation were that easy to resolve, it wouldn’t have come down to this, and accusing Shouji of having no feasible solution to offer, just childish and naïve egotism. And call me a hopeless MLA Stan and you’d be right, but truly, where’s the lie?

His efforts in this regard, however, wind up pushing Koda to what certainly has all the markings of a quirk awakening because it upsets Koda to see Shouji being “mocked.” Man, sure is a good thing quirk awakenings are just a dime a dozen and definitely don’t require life-threatening injuries and/or incredibly severe emotional distress over someone who means more to you than your own life, right?

O In a last little stroke of ugliness for the chapter, Spinner calls Shouji gross. Just to, you know, make it really obvious that the villains are all totally bad faith representation for this cause and thus can be safely dismissed. (Christ, I hate these chapters.)

Chapter 372:

O We get the flashback of Shouji and Koda asking All Might to assign them to the hospital defense group. Points of note:

Neither Shouji nor All Might can be bothered to use the Ordinary Woman’s real name, instead just referring to her by her size. Seriously, I get the intent behind insisting that she’s just an ordinary woman, that there’s nothing in particular stand-out about her in the current age; it’s pretty much the same deal as Shinomori saying that OFA can no longer be wielded by an “ordinary” person, with that phrasing being used to ironically emphasize that quirks are now seen as ordinary, while those without quirks are the unusual ones. However, it obviously wouldn’t work in-universe for characters trying to specify who they’re talking about to say, “That ordinary woman,” with the end result being that they have to grab for what stands out about her if they want to be understood—in this case, her obviously unusual height. In trying to emphasize that she’s normal, Horikoshi forces his characters to define her by what makes her stand out.

Koda says that if Shouji’s going, he is too, a moment that would really land much better if they’d had literally any interactions of note at literally any point prior to this exact moment. Frankly, even last chapter’s flashback is pretty thin on that front, since Koda is not one of the students who gets speaking lines when cuddling up to Shouji to comfort him. (I’m not even convinced it’s very in character for Koda to be one of the kids diving in for cuddles—he’s usually pretty shy!)

Shouji says that he could never call himself a hero if he were to stand back while the hospital attack plays out, implicitly emphasizing the role his reaction to his own oppression plays in his heroic motivation.

O Another flashback[26] gives us Koda’s mother discussing the possibility that he might get horns like hers someday, and what those horns can do, as well as mentioning that she used to have to put up with considerable mistreatment herself, and, lastly, telling her son to grow up into a man who gets angry when people mock those dear to him.

26: The sheer number of them crammed into this mini-arc really says a lot for how rushed it is, but complaining about the structural problems of the last few arcs would be a different essay.

Breaking those down, we’ve got:

The fact that Koda’s mom says he might grow in horns like hers suggests to me pretty strongly that her own horns are a quirk evolution she just doesn’t have the language to name as such. If it were just a matter of maturation, something that came in with puberty, there’d be no “maybe” about it. Given what we know about the context of quirk evolutions elsewhere, this in turn suggests that she did not exactly get her horns under peaceful, wholesome, uplifting circumstances!

This is backed up by her mention of the “real cruelty” she faced. Interestingly, this kind of raises some questions in relation to Shouji’s assertion last chapter that people like Koda who grew up in cities lack an understanding of the extremes of heteromorphobic violence that endure elsewhere. Did Koda’s parents move to the city from the country at some point when Koda was young/before he was born, and the “real cruelty” was out in the country? That might track with the overalls she was wearing. And of course, Koda’s mother was a younger woman then, so maybe it’s just the fact that heteromorphic discrimination was worse at the time. Either way, Koda’s mother is clearly open with him about the fact that she was mistreated because of her appearance, though she may have downplayed the severity of it.

The idea of Shouji being “dear to Koda” is immensely frustrating for how utterly groundless it is, based on absolutely no prior grounding within the story other than the general bond among the 1-A students. That’s just me complaining, though—more pertinent for this essay is the problem with how this moment frames anger. Like, the whole mini-arc has the same problem, but this chapter is particularly rotten with it. To preview: Koda’s anger is portrayed as righteous, as was his father’s, because their anger is about protection, about defensive reaction, about intervening with harm currently in progress—basically all the stuff Heroes are supposed to do. It is notably not about action based on past harm or proactive attempts to prevent future harm.

O Koda’s bird attack knocks Spinner’s #2 off the roof in one of the most egregious examples of, “I can’t come up with an actual counterpoint for his arguments, so I’ll just shut him up through force,” I’ve ever seen. Sure, there’s something to be said for not engaging bad faith parties in good faith arguments, but like… That guy already had a platform of his arguments—he was standing on the roof of a tall building! The author gave him several pages to make his pitch; the argument’s already out there in the readers’ minds! The only thing getting rid of him does is guarantee that the person the taciturn Shouji actually has to argue with is…Spinner. Who is not exactly a born orator at the best of times, and he’s very far from even that level here.

Now, #2 will get a few more lines next chapter, but they’re against one of the people on his own side. No heroic character has to argue #2 down; instead, they get to match wits with the literally drooling Spin-zilla. Which is a bit like stepping into the wrestling ring with someone who’s had a bag thrown over his head and his hands zip-tied behind his back.

This confrontation is, woefully, not the only place in the endgame where a heroic character gets all the time and freedom in the world to make their big pronunciations while their opponent gets shut down by some outside factor—interference from other villains, psychological decay, literal possession—but it’s in particularly stark relief here.

O Shouji contends that the crowd is letting their pain be exploited, which is a fair cop, but will become difficult to square with his praise of them next chapter.

O He says that these peoples’ children might be the next targets, presumably because of their actions here today. This is particularly maddening because it’s coming from someone who was, himself, already targeted as a child! Not because of anything his parents did, and certainly not because of anything bad he did, but simply because of the bigoted, backwards views of his town. Children already and still are being targeted! Shouji’s backstory is all wrong for this stand, and there’ll be another angle on that next chapter as well.

O Here we finally fulfill the promise of Shouji’s databook entry and see the Little Girl Crying Because His Face Was Scary. She wasn’t crying because she was just scared of his face in isolation, but rather because she sees his face being scary as her fault, directly correlating his wounds to her rescue.[27] Those wounds stand in marked contrast to what happens when other people save small helpless children from danger, and underlines the biggest problem with this whole resolution: the idea that simply Being An Hero will create change.

27: My big question is, “Given that him being in contact with her was so bad it got him scarred for life, how did she even sneak out to see him again to give him this tearful apology? Did young Shouji even want this apology, or would he have preferred she not risk the two of them being seen together again for both their sakes?

Now, it’s certainly likely in Horikoshi’s world that this little girl will, herself, grow up to be different from the people around her, that she won’t think heteromorphs are tainted. And like, that’s at least one less person being awful, right? And doesn’t every one count?

Sure, of course—but what happens when she runs up against that prejudice herself? Will she try to intervene the next time she sees a blood cleansing? Will she simply abstain from such action and teach equality in her own household without trying to change the village around her? Will she simply move away and leave her hometown worse for her absence? If she does stay in that town, will she herself become an outcast for her views—a form of silent, passive harassment that can be absolutely life-wrecking in those small Japanese villages? If she gets married and has children, will her husband have her back in trying to raise those kids free of hatred?

For that matter, isn’t there a chance that, being surrounded in people who think heteromorphs are tainted, that she’ll just internalize something like, “It was my carelessness that got that poor heteromorph boy beaten so badly. He was trying to help, and it only got us both hurt—him for the beatings, me for being in contact with his filth.” Like, she’s so young in that scene; she’s got a whole lotta years of having the anti-heteromorph narrative reaffirmed at her before she’s old enough to do anything different herself. It feels to me like the kind of thing that she could easily fall back into as she grows up, only to have a huge spiritual crisis about it once she hits her late teens to early twenties.

In any case, it's just a lot to put on a single child—on her and Shouji both!

O Spinner rallies enough to yell out a message of his own, but it’s just a quote of what he told his followers when he first sent out the call, not anything new to rally them, nor tailored to respond to what Shouji’s saying. This has been the danger of the plotline all along, and here it comes to fruition: in putting bad faith villains with ulterior motives[28] up against an underdeveloped character who’s hidden the evidence of his mistreatment from Day 1, someone with no apparent intention to ever speak up for others like himself, no one comes out looking good. Truly, heteromorphs deserve better rep.

28: #2 is the obvious one, but Spinner’s here in bad faith, too. While I’m sure he’s not totally indifferent to the matter of heteromorph rights, it’s self-admittedly not his current priority.

O That said, if what Spinner says is old hat to the crowd, it is new to the audience, and it serves to sharply up the ante on from what we knew previously about the persecution he faced in his hometown!

But it would have gotten better if he’d just put on a mask and dealt with it, amirite?

Recall that Spinner has previously only said that people in his town called him names—this is self-evidently many steps worse. Note, though, that it’s another example of the violence heteromorphs face not involving anyone using quirks—that is to say, nothing that’s a hero’s jurisdiction to deal with. That being the case, how much could Spinner get away with fighting back or running before the “it’s okay to use quirks in self-defense” stops holding? After all, is it still self-defense if biased cops[29] can accuse him of “escalating” the conflict? How far away can he get by climbing on walls before it becomes, to some small-town local Hero, unlicensed public quirk use?

29: If policing in HeroAca Japan still works basically the same as it does in IRL Japan, then in truly backwater areas, ones too small to afford the upkeep of a police department, an officer would be sent in from another area to live in a home attached to the police box. That being the case, it’s not a given that the officer would share the locals’ bigotry. That’s where we come back to the whole “what percentage of Villain-designated criminals are heteromorphs” statement and what it implies about bias in the law enforcement system. Also too, building a strong relationship with the community is absolutely essential to rural policing, and there are, oh, so many stories about what happens when someone new in a small Japanese town gets between the inhabitants and their “traditional spiritual practices.”

O Pig Nose Guy starts making an impression by noticing the doctors—most prominently Dr. Yoshi, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a baseline nurse—forming a human chain in front of the hallway leading to the Inpatient Ward. This drama is undercut on both fronts by the fact that Spinner is not looking for the Inpatient Ward, and in fact barrels right on past that hallway without even glancing in its direction. So, the mob stops because they’re struck to hesitation by a group of people protecting a part of the hospital that the mob was not even intending to assault in the first place.

O As part of stopping, Pig Nose Guy seems to have some sort of flashback to a time he saw Dr. Toad caring for an elderly baseline man. This raises a lot of questions to my by-this-time hyper-critical eyes.

What past circumstance brought Pig Nose Guy—presumably fairly rural, as most of this crowd is implied to be—to Central Hospital, the most technologically advanced hospital in the entire country? • If Pig Nose Guy is not rural, but was still so fired up about heteromorphobia that he joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital, wouldn’t that suggest that a lot of people in the story have been misleading us about the extent of anti-heteromorph sentiment in cities?

If the person in the bed is someone related to Pig Nose Guy—perhaps someone with a rare illness that requires specialized treatment?—why is the guy entirely baseline? If it’s just a friend, then they must be very close, given that PNG was willing to take a trip to the Tokyo metropolitan area to visit him. But if PNG is that close to a baseline guy, why did he ever believe that baseline folks are such a lost cause that he, again, joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital?

Why is this important, impactful memory one of a heteromorph in a caretaker role instead of being taken care of? To elaborate on why that question matters, a common issue you’ll see minority groups raise when talking about representation in media is the role any given minority character performs in their narrative—the gay best friend there to give the straight female lead advice, the Black person there to help a white person self-actualize, that sort of thing. This is not so much a critique of any given, specific character as it is criticizing the restrictions on of what demographics are allowed to be portrayed as full, rounded individuals in popular media versus which are relegated to stock stereotypes or supporting cast. This isn’t something BNHA addresses explicitly, but I do think we have some precedent for suspecting heteromorphs in this world have similar problems—think of the image for Class B’s play in Chapter 173, Gang Orca playing the Villain at the license exam, and, most egregiously, the Hug Me Corporation and its all-baseline-all-the-time image of bystanders and victims. That being the case, it really gets to me that Pig Nose Guy’s memory here has the man in the hospital bed being baseline while it’s the doctor who’s the heteromorph. Like, what does that communicate about his mindset, exactly? “Oh, I remember this time I saw a heteromorph who’d managed to actually kind of Make It in society and he was nice to the baseline guy in his care. But the spider guy leading us, he didn’t sound like he wanted us to be very nice at all. Is that what I am? Not nice?” On the other hand, if the whole point of this memory is to remind PNG that there can be peace and support between heteromorphs and “people with human faces,” why in heaven’s name isn’t this a memory of a heteromorph being cared for and supported by a baseline person? Why does the person doing the labor in this picture have to be of the oppressed class?

I hate this panel so much.

Chapter 373:

O The last conversation plays out between Pig Nose Guy, #2, and Shouji, revealing #2 to be a bad faith idealogue who thinks of Shouji with microaggressions and his followers as meatshield patsies. It’s real bad.

O Shouji says that the feelings that led the mob to come today are neither useless nor wrong, and that their willingness to keep thinking about everything makes them look like a bright and shining light to his eyes. However, he carefully does not engage with the fact that those feelings, which were previously aimless and directionless, were only stirred up and stoked to the point of “coming today” by the villains. It’s the same sort of thing the villains always get told, really—you may have a point, you have suffered, but when you act on that point, that suffering, then you’ve gone too far. All you’re really supposed to do with that pain is—what, exactly? Thinka bout it and choose to Nobly Endure?

O The last little bit of insult to this chapter, to my eye, is #2 getting an apology from some anonymous hero we’ve never seen in our lives, who says, “We’ve heard your voices loud and clear today. Sorry for not realizing sooner.”

Remember the bit where the person who apologizes to Shouji for the octopus comment is Mineta, the gag character, instead of Sero, the serious character who brought it up in the first place? Remember the conspicuous absence of Bakugou and Todoroki, who have actually used that language with conscious demeaning intent? This apology is the systemic version of that absolute unwillingness on Horikoshi’s part to let his sympathetic/popular/important characters look bad. It’s the same thing that led to none of the heroes who retired after the war being heroes the readers know and care about, the same thing behind the total collapse of the series’ critique of All Might. Heroes are allowed to be ignorant, but they are not allowed to be complicit.

Notice, too, what this random hero does not say, what Shouji does not offer, the absence that damns this resolution: any promises of concrete change. We’ve finally gotten to the crux of Horikoshi’s point, as delivered by Shouji, and it really does all boil down to this:

And I can’t overstate enough what a terrible resolution this is, especially given how Shouji’s own experience puts the lie to it. Remember, Shouji saved a child from drowning, one of the absolute most prototypical actions someone can do and get called a Hero by the bystanders/victims/evening news. The only thing he could have done that would have been more stereotyped would have been saving her from a burning building! He saved that little girl from drowning and the townsfolk attacked him with farming tools for it.

How much more heroic would he have needed to be? How much more of a shining light could he possibly have been? In what universe could someone with that backstory possibly think that the answer to systemic bigotry—violence that goes wholly accepted by the community and wholly unpunished by the broader society—could be this Model Minority bullshit?

Ultimately, for Shouji’s backstory to realistically have given him the motivation he professes, his actions needed to have changed the people in his village for the better. If the reader is meant to believe that Shouji’s “answer”—the premise that selfless heroism can change the hearts of bigots—then we have to see it. And, you know, even if that had been what we got, there would still be grounds to criticize it! It would still be a perhaps-too-idealistic depiction of fighting oppression; it would still put too much responsibility on the victims! But at least it would justify Shouji’s own stance.

As it is, we have Shouji choosing to believe in the changeability of people who specifically shouted while throwing rocks at him that, no matter how much the times advanced, they would never accept him. His answer does not entail a single non-heteromorph working to bring heteromorphs living in the darkness a light; it entails them kindling their own. As with Pig Nose Guy shutting down in the face of a memory of a heteromorph doctor, this resolution asserts the life-changing power of…being told that heteromorphs have to do all the work to make baseline people feel better.

Conclusion

Do I think that this terrible resolution means heteromorphobia was poorly set up or retconned? No, I don’t. I just think it means that Horikoshi is a Japanese man writing a Japanese story from a position of demographic privilege in Japanese society. I think he’s fully capable of setting up a detailed, intelligent, thoughtful discrimination allegory, a logical, internally consistent extension of the discrimination in the world around him to the alternate future he’s created—and then coming to a completely different resolution than I would because his context led him to different answers than I wanted or found acceptable. Compared to the U.S., Japan as a culture is more communal, more collectivist; they have less history with successful protest movements, more history with protest movements turning violently extremist or just being ignored by those in power. The idea of “not making trouble for others” is an incredibly deeply engrained value.

I have a decent idea why this resolution is what it is. I can try to make myself view it through the more generous, forgiving lens of Cultural Differences; I can fail to do so and instead conclude that this is portrayal is much less about Cultural Differences than it is yet another in a long chain of Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Author Writes Discrimination Allegory, Fucks It All Up Because of His Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Centrism. That doesn’t mean I believe heteromorphobia came out of nowhere, and I hope this essay has at least demonstrated that much, whatever you might think of its resolution.

——————————

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me, all! At 42,000 words and 93 pages in Word, there's definitely more I'd like to do with this, chiefly taking a spin through the Vigilantes spinoff, which I've always found to be very good at grappling with practical questions and concerns BNHA Core largely ignores. The character of Kamayan is particularly relevant to this topic.

However, for now, I'm going to take a break on this subject and turn my attention to something else. I'm not sure what it'll be quite yet, but meta projects that have moved towards the top of my list concern the ridiculous series of nerfs Toga has been subjected to in this endgame, arc thoughts on everything I hate about the stupid, stupid All Mech fight, and an organized argument for the endgame being chock-full of retcons that are obvious if you look at them for more than the five minutes it takes to read a chapter each week.

You may notice that all of those are pretty negative-sounding, and you would be right. Given that the whole reason I stopped doing my chapter posts is that I was weary of the constant negativity, the actual next thing I do will probably be to get back to one of my neglected MLA fanfic projects.

'Til next time, all!

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #octolad #plf advisors #my writing #preview for Vigilantes:#Kamayan is a crank and that distracts everyone #from realizing that Kamayan is also right

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shintin · 1 year ago

Text

Gunpowder Dreams

Chapter 2 (Shadow)

↳ Vash the Stampede x Female Reader

They didn't know a wounded man would show no mercy when they took the best thing he ever had away from him. What did they say? Don't poke the dragon if you can't take the heat; if you do, expect the flames.

Genre: explicit smut, toxic relation, romance, angst (Mafia au).

Warnings/Tags: +18, NSFW, Alternative Universe/Modern Setting, no spoilers from manga and anime, dominate Vash the Stampede, sexual situations, dub-con, graphic violence, gore, angst, toxicity, gun-play, manhandling, cunnilingus + fellatio, creampie, fingering, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, hair pulling, too many smut scenes, emotional trauma, and etc.

Song Recommendation: Royal Deluxe - Dangerous

Note: 1. Before reading this chapter, review the tags and warnings again. 2. Don't worry about the names. They are members of Gung-Ho-Guns. Not important.

Chapter Index - Next Chapter

Blood.

The first thing to trick your senses.

The moment you caught a whiff of what could only be described as the scent of evil incarnate, you wished it had been something else entirely. Then a sense of fear and urgency slithered in, whispering in your ear, "Wake up! You are in danger."

Those whispers turned into a song full of screeching and loud noises, filling your body with heart-wrenching panic. Coldness and ropes. You were lying on a stone floor with your hands and legs tethered. Your adrenaline spiked, and you barely had enough guts to keep silent.

Cracking open your crusted eyes, you found yourself in complete darkness. It took a second to process that a blindfold was strapped around your head. As the tight knot pressed against your skull, you felt a brand-new dizziness blossoming on your forehead.

Slowly, the blissful numbness of your awakening crumbled, leaving you with a chilling sensation akin to unexpected snow. You lost your breath when all-consuming pain was followed by an absolute agony engulfing your body.

God! Is this what it feels like to be alive?

Cause it couldn't be death. If it were, you'd be at peace. Although you left the house without bodyguards or your father's permission, you'd be damned if you didn't land a spot within heaven's gates. There was no way you deserved this crap.

Racking your brain, you tried to think past the pain and remember what the fuck happened to you. Vaguely, you recalled leaving a convenience store with shopping bags in hand and walking toward the parking lot. And now you were here… wherever that was. But not somewhere safe.

Christ! What were you thinking? Why you had to disobey your father, you pig-head? Ah! Is this some stupid joke, or were you kidnapped for money? Huh! Maybe you should let them know he won't even pay a penny for your ass! Or wait! Was this a retaliation for some shady business he was involved in again?

Another wave of panic crashed through you as you considered this possibility. Scenarios curtailed and evolved until you were a mass of anxiety and desperation. You could be in serious trouble.

Fuck—you were in serious trouble, and you had no idea how the fuck you were going to get out of it.

Breathing more heavily, your heart slammed so hard against your chest that it physically hurt. So, your last bit of strength went into keeping silent with the buzzing in your ear.

Where the fuck were you?

Quiet, dull voices followed, muffled by the noise in your head but steadily growing louder. Hearing their talks was hard as you strained your ears, trying to distinguish the words over the terror and pain swelling in your body.

"His maniac brother will be looking for her," a man said quietly. "But we should be fine. Master ordered us to take her before his brother. Once he shows up, Vash-sama can't get us anymore."

A particular memory knocked you over the head, flashes of getting hit on the head and being dragged on the ground bit through your skin. Well, thank you very much! This explained why the fuck your back was on fire.

There was no joking. You'd been fucking kidnapped— no shit, Sherlock!

And it must have been some Mafia's doing since no one else would dare touch Gasback's daughter. Golly! Probably that's why your father warned you to give up your shitty sneaking out habit, and you had to be proven how dumb you were. It was your curse. You had to be the rebellious child just to show resentment toward him for leaving your mother on the deathbed to fuck around with chicks and whores. In your determination to go against his wishes, following his rules wasn't even a consideration. If you weren't this stubborn, not only could you have avoided all of this shit, but you also wouldn't have blood sticking all over your face.

Stupid girl!

Your eyes swelled shut as a sob rose to your throat. A tear slipped through your lashes, and your chest shook with exertion, trying not to break down. This was your own damn fault. You walked right into the trap despite the warnings.

"You actually think we'll be able to hide from him? He's a nutcase, man," another man responded, this one with a slightly strange accent.

"All we're doing is following Master's orders. Which one are you more afraid of? Knives or Vash?"

What the fuck? Who was this Master? What the fuck was going on? Why were they afraid of those Knives or Vash dudes?

You didn't know how you got into this fucked-up situation, but you needed your father to get you out of it. But only this time, though. Because you didn't belong here, you weren't meant to be enslaved.

"I'd prefer not to fucking choose," the second man muttered. As if reassuring someone, it sounded like a hand slapping a shoulder.

"Too bad you don't have a choice, Rei-Dei. Doesn't matter. This girl right here is worth millions. She's his daughter! You know how many enemies he has? People will be frothing at the mouth to make his girl their little toy. We'll get our cut from Knives, and we'll be living fucking lavishly." He let out a burst of hyenalike laughter. "Once the money goes through, I'll have a brothel full of juicy pussies!"

Anger flooded your veins at the man's callous words, assuming women as walking holes.

"You should walk out of this dungeon alive at first, Caine," the second man— Rei-Dei— responded.

His name sounded familiar, and you thought you faintly remembered someone yelling his name after they took you.

"Don't worry, man. We'll get a head start after delivering her to the Master. He'll protect us."

A derisive snort was the only response the first man got.

Bloody hell! You really were in deep shit. Your eyes brimmed with tears, and no amount of convincing could keep them from overflowing. A sob still clawed its way up your throat, threatening to spill, but somehow, you managed to wrangle it down.

It took you a few moments to gather your thoughts. With the blindfold on, you didn't know whether they could see you. A single wrong movement could alert them. You took deep, silent breaths to calm yourself, but suddenly someone touched your thigh, and you couldn't keep the yelp from slipping free.

"Greetings from the land of the living, sweetheart," one of the men crooned. It was the first guy who was after pussies.

Your body trembled uncontrollably in horror and hatred as you flinched away from the hand. Your heart was racing, but you refused to let your fear win and summoned all your courage. In a situation like this, you were powerless to see or fight back against this person. It was a terrifying predicament that could quickly turn out badly if you weren't careful. You had no option as letting yourself get paralyzed. This threat had to be faced head-on. "Where are we?" You asked, your voice raspy and hoarse. How long were you here?

It took a while for the answer to come as if the person was analyzing your newfound bravery. "In your new home," he replied, chuckling as if you were a dog adopted by a loving family. "You'll love it here."

With a constant sense of anxiety, cold, and this baneful presence of danger, you couldn't help but feel vulnerable and exposed. You heard your teeth chattering, and their laughter drowned out the sound.

Fucking assholes!

The way you were shivering, if there hadn't been any contortion or levitation, it would have looked like you were in the middle of an exorcism. Maybe you really were. Each tremble intensified the pain, and everything hurt so badly. God! There had never been a time in your fucking life when you felt more miserable.

"Don't worry, princess. Your owner will be almost here," Rei-Dei talked, his voice grinding against your already frayed nerves. "Vash-sama is going to love you." The ominous tone in his voice tensed your body further. Something about the way he said it made you feel like you had more to fear from this Vash than any man who came your way.

"W-who is he?"

The whole room was quiet for a moment, allowing the sound of water dripping on the hard ground to reach your ears, but then Caine spoke, "The one person you want to impress the most," he said, his voice grave. There was something he was afraid of about that man. If this fucker was scared of him, what was waiting for you? "Because he will determine just how miserable your life will be until the end."

The sound of his footsteps walking away from you made you squeeze your eyes shut in relief. God dammit! Even though you hadn't been here that much, you already felt defeated. Inhale deeply and exhale slowly and steadily.

Despite feeling uneasy with every question you asked, you had to gather whatever you could before facing this monster. "Wh-why he wants me?"

"It doesn't matter why. Now shut up! I need to take a leak. If you keep talking, I'll undo my pants and paint a picture on your pretty face."

It took the disgusting threat to snap you out of your trance. Anyhow, ending the conversation was best. Although you had never been good with your mouth, you didn't want to risk your life in a place where rabid men roamed. So, you kept silent even as he walked around you. "Keep quiet like this, or you'll be surprised at how many cocks will fit in your mouth."

Your eyes rounded under the blindfold, and your teeth snapped shut. From the audible click, the man chuckled. Swallowing nervously, your heart started thumping too loud in your ears, making everything fuzzy enough that you didn't hear when someone grabbed your arm, and before you could open your mouth to scream, you felt a prick in your arm, followed by a burning sensation spreading throughout your veins. You sucked in a sharp breath. And it happened to be the last breath you took before darkness descended.

"Master's already deposited the check, so we can do whatever the fuck we want."

You stirred; the familiar voice distorted beneath the ringing in your ears. The roughness of his tone felt like scratching nails on a chalkboard. You had awoken to that damn voice too many times now, and each time was a stark reminder that you had been sucked into a nightmare and hadn't yet found a way out.

Your body was wracked and battered with agony. It felt like you were drowning, trying to reach the surface, but not succeeding because you knew the pain would only worsen. Flames were licking your nerve endings, and the closer you got to consciousness, the brighter the flares became. You were still tied in a seated position, helpless like a hunt. Right now the coldness of the wall against your back was the least of your concerns. A small prick was felt in your arm, followed by faint voices from all sides.

"Fucking idiot," Rei-Dei muttered under his breath. Then louder, he reminded him, "No, you can't do whatever you want! Because even if you survive Vash-sama, you'll have a big fucking target on your head in the shape of Gasback."

Did you hear your father's name?

Caine started talking, unconcerned, "You worry too much, Rei. We'll hide until he gets his revenge, and then, we can do whatever we want."

What revenge?

You shrank and instinctively wanted to wrap your arms around yourself, but they were still tied behind your back. It looked like they noticed you again since the room filled with elicited grunts of amusement.

"Aw, don't be shy, baby girl. We have all this money because of —"

Whatever the man was going to say was cut off by the door opening, and the entire room instantly went still. Everything went quiet like the air in the deadly space had been suddenly sucked out. The silence around here wasn't one vacancy, but rather of them holding their breath, praying for the person entering the room to show mercy.

Despite your best effort, you could only hear heavy footsteps approaching. Though you didn't know who would show up or what they would do, you knew this wasn't someone to be trifled with.

"This the girl?" the new man called out. Under the surface of his voice, you could detect no remorse or kindness, only icy coldness and an overwhelming sense of malice.

Like a bitch wagging its tail, Caine answered amusingly, "Yes, Master."

So, this was the Master they were talking about. You were kidnapped by this lunatic before another one. What an honor! The devils were vying to get you first.

"Who did this to her?" he demanded, his tone ruthless. He was no human; you had already decided. He was just a soul-sucking being without grace or compassion, only interested in fulfilling his own desires. "Her face is all damaged." His voice faded before cutting back in, a harsh shriek that sent shivers up your spine. "I prefer to bruise the apple myself, DON'T YOU KNOW?"

There was no need to be an expert to realize that no one liked eating bruised apples. Naturally, he wanted a nice, shiny apple to sink his teeth into and rip apart himself. Piece by piece.

"She looks fine," another answered, his voice all concerned. Rei-Dei's companion, you thought. It was apparent they had screwed up. A pathetic pang filled your heart at the thought of these fuckers being punished for damaging you.

"Fine? You call this fine?" The sharp snap of a slap hitting someone startled you. It was a brutal blow, and you could feel the shock even from where you were kept.

"You think I can gift something like this to my lil brother?" When he'd met with silence, a muttered "Thought so" followed.

Then, as if your worst fear had decided to come true, his presence gradually grew nearer to you. "You're quite a sneaky little bug, aren't you?"

Realizing he stood before you, you tried to steel yourself against panic. Nausea tickled your consciousness, threatening to pull you back down. You let out a sharp breath as probing, lifeless fingers slid down your blindfold and pried your eyelids open. Flickering light tortured you to the point you tried to shut them off, but he wouldn't allow it.

"You won't close them until I allow you to; otherwise, I'll tear out one by your choice." He smiled. Seeing the twisted delight on his face, it was a sickening sight. Your chin was held up, his face crowding over yours. Although the image was still blurry, you could see his light blond hair, eyebrows, pale blue eyes, and a mole under the right one. You parted your lips, but your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth. He was lucky you didn't spit on him as you were tempted to, but that would be stupid, and you couldn't be stupid right now.

Jesus, what did they inject you with? Whatever it was, it was making you disoriented and dizzy.

"I know you're in a lot of pain, little bug, but I need you to tell me where it hurts."

Everything. Everything fucking hurt. "My… shoulder," you croaked out finally. "My head."

With your vision improved a little, you could see his white turtleneck and pants, which contrasted dramatically with the place's colors. Dingy and damp, the dungeon looked like an abandoned cave. A heavy, oppressive atmosphere hung heavy in the air like a burden of grief. The walls were covered in a thin layer of soot and grime. Only a few torches lined the walls, keeping the darkness at bay. The dim and eerie illumination made the whole place even more unsettling.

"Anywhere else? Your chest or stomach?"

Was he trying to fool you with this mask of civility?

"Back," you gasped, recalling how your back felt like a cheese grater had shredded it.

"That all?" he asked, keeping his tone neutral. As he stared at you, he brushed his hair back.

You nodded, exhausted by the incessant questions. It hurt in a million other places, too, but your energy had depleted, and you were tired.

"You're not lying to me, are you?" His breath flared on your face, and then a scream left your mouth as he pressed your shoulder with his hand. You noticed his sick grin as endless pain surfaced over your surroundings. This man was a wretched, vile creature who delighted in inflicting pain and suffering on others. "I don't like liars, little bug." He poked your nose as he pulled back his face. "Lucky you're not one."

What the fuck was wrong with these people? Who were they?

The two men standing behind him had bottomless eyes and wicked grins on their faces, just like their dickhead Master. The pair had been so quiet, staring at you as if you were a lab rat in an experiment.

A very fucking horrible experiment.

Your eyes clashed with a dark pair first. His eyes were almost black and lifeless from the lack of warmth. Tattoos covered his skin, and serpents curling around roses on either side of his throat drew your attention first. A leather jacket was zipped up over his shoulders. In addition to his long black hair, he had sharp angular features and thick arched brows, which completed his near-feral appearance.

Next to him was a grungy-looking man with scabs on his face from apparent drug use. The mop of greasy hair was covered by a backward ball cap, a dirty wife-beater, and oversize pants. His teeth were so black, it looked like worms had infested his mouth.

Lastly, you glanced at the third man. The sick bastard. He would be attractive if he didn't look like he'd rather see you bleed to death than do anything else. There was a dark aura surrounding him. You were sure the unsettling atmosphere up here derived directly from him. He cultivated an energy that made you feel as if you were stuck in a room breathing black smoke.

The blond man hummed, thrilled by your fearful reactions, then he talked again. "Do you know who I am?" It took you a few seconds to rein all the dirty names on the tip of your tongue, but you managed to swallow them down enough to shake your head.

His eyebrow popped up on his forehead. Undoubtedly, he was the star of his own nasty show. "I'm Knives," he said. "That's my name, but it's not how you'll address me."

Frowning, you knitted your brows, unsure of how to react. Taking your face closer, he placed his lips an inch away from your ear before you could even realize what he was doing. When he whispered, "I am the head of this family." You winced. "Master, you'll call me that, just like others. You won't speak, act or even think without my permission. Understood?"

Inhaling sharply, you couldn't speak a word as your eyes were shocked.

"Should I repeat myself?" He pushed your face away harshly, causing your shoulders to hit the wall. You screwed your eyes shut in pain as a puff of air escaped you from the impact.

"Yes," you whispered, though your words were garbled between your pinched lips. "I understood." He was angry with his men for damaging the apple, yet he couldn't keep his goddamn hands off you.

A cold tremor settled deep in the marrow of your bones, causing you to look away. While the dull, throbbing pain was growing more intense, it was still not as severe as when you first awoke. Whatever painkillers they pumped into your system were wearing off, and you wouldn't hesitate to ask for more. The pain in all of your muscles was so intense that you felt like a hard shell had formed around your body.

You were incredibly stiff, and every movement twinged.

This… this terror was unlike anything you had ever experienced before. It wasn't like the cheap thrill you get from scary movies, and you knew you were truly fucked when you felt this way.

"Don't worry, little bug. I'm not going to hurt you," he whispered. "No more than what you can tolerate anyway."

You swallowed, a lump forming in your throat, and then your gaze fixated on a dark red puddle on the table you hadn't noticed before. You couldn't even begin to imagine what that could possibly be from.

Tracking your line of sight, the blond man turned to see what you were staring at. He barked out a laugh when he saw it. "Want to place a bet on what it's from?"

Your face contorted in revulsion.

"My bet is that some bitch lost her tongue right there," Knives chimed, turning his attention to you and leaning his cheek against his palm as if he had just seen the sweetest scenery ever.

It was as if he had just walked out of hell's gate. You were frightened by his look, but his creepy smile sent your heart sinking to the pits of your stomach. "As long as you do as you're told, I'll let you keep yours," the psycho said, pulling your attention back to him.

You bristled, anger rising in your chest. You were two seconds away from telling him that he needed to be admitted to the nuthouse, but you didn't say that out loud, given that you were already in a fucking nuthouse. Yet, you couldn't keep that loose mouth of yours shut. "You're sick," you blurted out, your voice watery and full of hate.

"Shut up!" he screeched. The calm man completely lost his mind as if you had hit the jackpot. His chest heaved with anger. Heat radiated from him in waves, solar flares of fury lashing at you as he seethed. Then he grabbed your hair and slammed your head against the ground, sending fire racing across your scalp. You cried out; the sound quickly muffled when he yanked your head back, forcing you to stare at his disgusting face, nearly spitting with ire. He was on his knees, eyes wild as he hissed, "Be careful what you say, or you'll suffer way worse than this. To fucking God, I'll make you wish you were dead."

Tears flowed down your cheeks, slobber nearly pouring from your mouth as sobs racked your throat. His slap landed across your face, your ear ringing as he continued to hit you mindlessly until you were breathless from the pain. "You fucking useless bitch!" he shouted, but through the pain and rivers glistening in your eyes, you could no longer see him. Indiscernible pleas fell from your lips, but you didn't even know what you were saying.

"Get in here," he snapped to someone, but you couldn't see who. Eventually, he released you, nearly knocking your head off the floor again, only to feel some other weight pressing down on you.

You wiggled, attempting to roll out of his hold, but the attempts were all vain, and he forced you back down. "Stop!" you screamed, your vision blackening with panic and tears, but then you felt the cold metal of the gun nozzle against your head.

"Wait, wait, please, please," you begged, desperate to get away but unable to. You could see Knives' shiny shoes walking away from you, laughing at your misery until the squeaking of the wooden door filled the dungeon, and someone charged in.

"HOW DARE YOU?" a man, probably standing in the doorway, shouted as if the rage within him was boiling, building up like lava about to erupt.

How do volcano eruptions begin? Pressure. It was brewing inside this new arrival. As the fiery magma erupted, hatred thickened, and bloodlust grew denser. Eventually, he would fucking explode, and you hoped he would burn this whole goddamn place down.

In no time, you heard gunfire and saw a man fall to the ground, his blood splattering across your face. The weight on your back was gone as your cheek hit the floor's rough surface, a chill slowly seeping into your skin. The shock shuddered through you, but the scream of terror never left your lips. You were utterly terrified, your whole body shaking as your heart tried to tear open your chest.

All the pain beat like a pulse behind your eyes, making it impossible for you to turn your head. Your lashes dripped warm crimson blood when your gaze was fixed on Caine's lifeless limbs a few feet away. You had no idea if he was dead or alive and why nobody reached for help.

You could hear the new man's heavy, determined footsteps as he stomped past the scene, his boots slowly clattering against the stones. As he stepped on the red puddle, the soles of his shoes made a soft wet squishing sound against the stained floor.

He wore all black. His boots were made of leather, black as the night sky, now covered with the drops of blood moon. His pants were the same, a dark shade of black that hugged his legs tightly. With his black shirt and gloves, he looked like a shadow rising from the depths of hell.

The entire surface of his neck was covered with tattoos, dark and intricate designs. It looked like a maze or some mysterious symbol. While his sun-colored spiked hair stood out in the darkness, the loop in his left ear completed the sinister ensemble.

As he approached, your pain-soaked body trembled with fear, but he did not even glance in your direction.

Despite his lack of emotion, his movements were not as sterile as Knives. There was something tired about this one. As if he wasn't born this way, but had cared for so long, he was left with nothing but rage. Someone had taken away his heart. But he was no hero, and you had no admiration for him. He might have been a good man once upon a time, but now he was cold and emotionless like the rest. You didn't dare to move your eyes to look at his face. There were already so many Satans you had met today.

Pointing at the corpse, suddenly Re-Dei's shout echoed in the room, "What? Why, Vash-sama?"

Only then did the beast stop, his boots trampling blood pool without a second thought. You glanced at him from the aside. Rei-Dei was aimed at by the man in black who leveled his firearm. "Nobody gets away with touching what's mine. Got a problem?"

Despite being disgusted by how he named you his property, you couldn't ignore the clear message behind his actions — he wouldn't hesitate to use his weapon, and just like Rei, you had better think very carefully about what you would do. The consequences could be dire if anyone chose their words poorly with this man.

The sudden movement of Vash frightened Rei-Dei, and as he stared up at the man's cold, predatory gaze, his fear and terror grew. He struggled to speak, his voice stuttering as he tried to find the right words.

"N-no, bo-ss." He turned and watched his Master stand there, seemingly unfazed by the death of one of his own. He must already learn that his Master cared little about him.

The air was thick with tension, the man on the edge and ready for any sign of aggression, but Knives just seemed to be enjoying this little theater, watching people die with a cruel relish.

"I know you're grieving, but I thought we'd already established that you weren't supposed to kill my men," Knives finally spoke, but nonchalantly. For him, this was all a fun game.

Vash's face turned from Rei-Dei to his brother with a cold, contemptuous sneer. He wasn't afraid of Knives and refused to be intimidated by his words. "I thought you'd keep your dogs on leash," he said ruthlessly. "Because certainly, I enjoy putting them to sleep."

Rei looked at his Master's expressionless face, and you could sense the fury burning up like a furnace inside Knives, but somehow he managed to keep a calm exterior. He was the type of guy who wouldn't let anyone see him get rattled, but he wouldn't let the insult go unanswered. You were sure he would never give anyone, not even his little brother, the satisfaction of seeing his rage.

Perhaps that's why he gazed at you, a mistletoe smile spreading across his lips. The subject was going to be changed by baiting you. "Did you like my gift, Vash?" he spoke in a measured tone, his words dripping with cold malice and contempt. He pointed at you like a piece of filth that needed to be discarded after being used and abused.

It looked like Vash was insistent on ignoring your existence and the fucks happening around here. For him, this was just another day. He seemed so carefree, spinning his gun in his hand. He was quick and agile, easily handling the deadly weapon as if it was an extension of his arm. His gaze was locked on his big brother. "Returning what you've stolen isn't a gift, Kni." In a fluid motion, he returned the revolver to its holster.

Knives' smile turned into a snarl as the words struck him like a hammer blow.

Moments of silence, then they began talking again, their voices barely louder than whispers, yet filling you with disgust. There may be a common bond between these brothers, but they seemed to have little affection for one another.

The power these creatures wielded over your life was beyond comprehension. What would happen to you as a pawn in their twisted games when they stopped playing? Where the hell was your father and his men? Why were you still here? What did they want from you?

"Anyway, I've got to go, party pooper," Knives said. Letting out a sigh, he grabbed his coat. You caught him as he looked at you smugly, pleased with himself and his handiwork.

In a flash, he turned to leave, Rei following him, but Vash stood in the way. His grip tightened around Knives' arm and pulled him closer. "You didn't kill her," he whispered, probably staring at the bloodied footsteps he'd left behind. You couldn't see the upper half of his face because of the lack of light.

"She wasn't my toy to break," Knives retorted with arrogance and a sense of superiority; he was such a proud boy who wouldn't even apologize for playing with his little brother's stuff without his permission. There was no doubt in his mind he was untouchable.

"Do anything like this once more, and you'll have the displeasure of not seeing me again." His monotone voice carried a distinct threat. Knives remained silent, which meant the younger brother was serious about what he had just said, not giving away empty promises.

Vash released his arm and walked aside, opening the way for his cursed family's head. His hands moved swiftly as he searched through his pockets, his fingers quick and decisive, not wanting to waste any time. He tipped his head slightly to the side as he rummaged through his belongings. A blue pack of cigarettes was pulled from his pocket and slid between his lips smoothly.

"What that means?" Knives' tone was bitter as he stood and stared. He was obviously caught off guard, not expecting his brother to threaten him in such a manner. Now you could see it. Knives only concern was his twin. He only cared about him.

Holding the cig with his teeth, he smiled at his twin. "Fuck around and find out." Turning away his head, he flicked his lighter and brought the flame close to the cigarette. A faint light illuminated his face briefly, and then darkness enveloped him once more. Probably he didn't need to look at his brother's face to see how worried his pale blue eyes were. Maybe that was his intention. Maybe this was his perfect gamble. Vash might have known his weak spot and wasn't afraid of pushing it.

Knives stormed out of the dungeon with his dog 3 steps behind him, slamming the door shut. Your heart sank when you realized you were now alone with the other maniac, and somehow, you felt even more helpless, knowing no one would be here to stop him. You hate it here. You hate it here. You hate it here. You hate it here.

Walking toward the bloodied table, Vash stood before it as if he could see what most likely had happened there. He took a deep drag on his cigar, letting out the smoke in a slow and steady stream. The small white cloud swirled around him, giving him an ominous aura.

It wasn't pleasant to watch. He wasn't one of those smokers you used to see among your father's men. Instead of puffing away with pleasure, he was trying to keep as much smoke in as possible, ensuring that it would burn his lungs and nostrils – a cold and ruthless Harakiri.

He extinguished the flame of his cigarette by pressing it against the blood, and turned toward you.

Close your eyes and prepare for the worst.

Your body curled in on itself, the lump lodged painfully in your throat, but you didn't have it in you to swallow it down. A whimper escaped your lips, like the cries of a wounded animal.

You felt a mass descend on you. Your heart picked up speed, and fear pumped through your veins, settling low in your stomach, eating at your insides like acid. The smell of something sweet, rainwater, and smoke flew around you. Very odd in a place like this, but that wasn't important right now. You flailed uselessly, yet your fists were unable to escape the ropes.

"Shhh," he whispered. You fought harder when you remembered what those douchebags had said about this nutty twin. Screaming for him to leave, you braced yourself for a blow, but instead, you felt a gloved hand running throw your hair, his thumb caressing your bruised cheek. "Shhh, it's okay."

You opened your eyes. It was not very often that people surprised you. Since you expected the worst from everyone, yet when you looked into his eyes, you couldn't believe he was a cold-blooded killer.

Million shades of blue swimming in warm, sunlit waves. His eyes, they resembled sea glass, glacier water, wet stone walls, and broken light on rainy streets. Fire on the ocean, you thought, as if imagining such a thing was possible. Yet nothing was behind them. Empty. He had been robbed of his humanity.

Blowing out a sharp breath, you forced yourself to fight, gritting your teeth from the aches in your body. The little energy you had left dissipated, and all you could do was sob. Grasping your throat, he tilted your head up, his fingers squeezing your air pipe. You started coughing, just barely, making out his expression. His face broke into an evil smile, reeking of nothing but dark intentions. Biting his bottom lip, he petted your head almost reverently, staring at you as if you were a prized possession.

Then, just as your eyes began to focus, the press on your throat made your vision blur once again, and your eyelids grew heavy. You could no more resist the deep pull inside you, trying to close your eyes. There was no point in fighting it. No, not when it would take you away from this man, from the pain. Because you knew, there was more to it.

"Welcome home, love," he whispered.

p.s: My apologies, but I'm having a great time writing this.

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