#which are canon events and which is solely for my own emotional turmoil???

[kettlefire]

Writing emotional chapters are so hard...

Like do I drag this out and make my small group of readers suffer...

Or do I smooth it over slightly so it's not as bad as my brain wants me to make it...

Do I take it the sad route...

Or the angry route...

Decisions are hard

[cryopathiic-a]

headcanon. douma's blood art origin.

Hello uwu In the past I've made some headcanons on the way Douma's blood art works and his ice sculpting abilities. So, today I'd like to talk a bit about my take on the way Douma's blood art manifested. My personal take is a 50/50 on canon compliance, meaning I have built it around canonical information and added but not altered anything. Douma's backstory offers a lot of room for creativity, after all!

Before I go on my little rant, here's some stuff about demonic blood art that I base these headcanons around:

Each demon is capable of developing a unique 'blood art', the techniques of which can be utilized solely by them ( but can be known and identified by Muzan Kibutsuji )

The way each demon will develop their individual blood art seems to rely on both their psyche ( who they were before they were turned ) and their own physical and mental capabilities or skills! For example, Akaza got to keep his Soryu Style and develop it with his blood art.

Blood art seems to be a reflection of the demon's emotional world and attachments from their human life as well. For example, some demons' techniques were shaped by their artistic talents, such as Gyokko's pots, Kyogai's tsuzumi, Nakime's biwa etc

The strength of one's blood art depends on several factors, such as their anciency, the number of humans they have consumed but also ... just practice! As shown in Akaza's case, where he prefers to physically hone his martial art rather than eat to grow stronger, as well as Kokushibo's case, who, despite being a picky eater as well is still leagues above any other demon created after him.

The use of blood art requires the user to actively focus in order to perform the attacks. The better the focus, the more accurate the results. If a demon loses their focus, their blood art will lose its potency as well — as shown when Douma's ice clones begin to crack and shatter because he is melting alive from Shinobu's poison.

Other information this headcanon is based on:

The practice of cold exposure in Shinto; 'cold water purification'

The concept of the 'float tank', invented in 1954 by John C. Lilly

Misogi ( ablution ) aka washing oneself in cold water for cleansing purposes

Buddhist cold exposure practices meant to cultivate mental fortitude

tw; mentions of child abuse, traumatic events

When Douma was born, his parents believed that he had otherworldly powers because of his striking features. Specifically, he was seen as a messenger from the Gods. That implies an expectation for a message to be delivered. So, from the moment he had learned to talk, every noise that came out of the prodigal child's mouth was taken, analyzed, assigned several possible meanings and then used to spew confusion and chaos among the faithful — so they would flock to their Lord Founder even more in an attempt to alleviate their existential anxieties. But Douma was just a child back then. And that sometimes became apparent; he could not always conjure a story that would convince the adults, after all. He didn't have the answers. So, in frustration of being given this impossible task, he often cried in the hearings.

Concerned, his parents believed it to be a result of spiritual turmoil, because he was a being that belonged to the Heavens but had been sent as a herald on Earth. There was a discrepancy between body and soul. So, they sought to help him isolate mentally from his physical body in order to become more in tune with his dualistic nature. Douma was taught how to meditate from a young age, but because it often involved long fasts and sleep deprivation, he couldn't always follow through. They looked for a way to 'force' a state of deep meditation on him, a sort of 'numbing slumber' that would detach his immortal soul from his physical shell.

On of the more questionable techniques they tried were the ice baths. The child would be slowly submerged in a tub filled with dry ice and river water and held there until his skin reached the condition where pressing on it left a mark. Then, he would be brought back out and towel dried. It was thought that, while in this state, Douma would communicate with the Other World and carry the truths he learned back into the physical one. Initially the room was supposed to be dark and empty to allow him to concentrate better, but eventually it became sort of a cult ritual. To be held down in ice water until your skin grows numb is one thing, but being pulled out of the torture into a room full of people commenting on it was so traumatic it caused a violent dissociation in Douma.

And that's where he gets his blood art 'focus' from, primarily. That's Douma's equivalent to, say, Akaza's mental fortitude or Kokushibo's relentlessness. When utilizing cryokinesis Douma's mental state mimics that dissociation — it is his lack of emotion that makes the attacks accurate and calculated.

Of course that's not all there is to it; many metaphors could be assigned to why ice in specific is Douma's true element. Water, fresh and living, is an element that has flow and the ability to move; whereas ice is rigid and stiff, just like Douma was incapable of moving past his traumatic beginnings in life. Ice is also uninviting and makes for hostile environments where life cannot flourish and grow; just like Douma himself is a toxic individual that leeches off of people's lives and, eventually, adds them to his own. Unlike heat, ice has a passive/deathly element to it as it is essentially when particles become sluggish. Just as fire is often paralleled to desire, ice symbolizes hatred and indifference.

tl/dr; If we go by the theory that a demon can choose their blood art subconsciously, then Douma's was created as a blend of the things that shaped his human life, aka the cult's practices, but also his personal traits that tie into the element's intrinsic themes.

[dabistits]

im super conflicted abt hawks atm but i was thinking abt his parallels with shigaraki and i was wondering kinda why there's a difference between wanting 'redemption' (i dont think this is the right word but i cant think of a better one 'want better' maybe?) for shigaraki but not for hawks? is it bc he made a permanent decision to kill twice as essentially an agent of the state?

Just to preface, I don’t think I’m objectively right for just wanting Hawks to eat shit immediately in the next chapter. I’m just complaining because a lot of people who “love both Hawks and Twice” and “think Hawks was wrong, but…” are hard to get away from without going in the other direction toward a group of people who have shitty fandom behavior, whose opinions about the Hawks/Twice situation are (unfortunately) much closer to my own. I don’t think there’s necessarily a “correct” way to feel about Hawks, but I feel differently than a lot of people I see around (who, ironically, are the ones insisting that there’s a “correct” way to feel about Hawks), and that’s frustrating. I want to be done with Hawks. I don’t want him to get any more focus in canon, I don’t want to see more posts about how Hawks committing murder is an indication of inner turmoil instead of him choosing a side, I don’t want to keep running into posts that tack on “but Hawks is also sad/a victim” in discussing what’s pretty clearly a tragedy for Jin and the LOV that Hawks was completely and 100% solely responsible for.

But, yeah, sure. I’ll also explain what I think is the difference between Tomura and Hawks:

1. Part of it is emotional and not logical for sure. I love Jin a lot. He embodies the person who has faced incredible adversity, and still comes out on the other side ready to love and open his heart to others, moreover to protect others. I’m not like that at all, but I think it’s very admirable. So in that sense, it hurts on a personal level to lose him over anyone else, and I can’t not associate that with Hawks, since he’s the killer.

2. Jin is a significant death. The nameless minions that Tomura has killed (many of whom were active “Quirk supremacists”) don’t mean anything to me compared to Jin, and?? Through the lens of narrative, I think that makes Tomura more forgivable, because I genuinely have no interest in there being any plot “resolution” with, like, the dead anti-mutant cultists, because I just do not care about them.

3. Tomura, especially early Tomura, has threatened to go places that are unforgivable, like leaving All Might’s students dead and forcibly bringing Bakugou over to their side (whatever terrible procedure that may have entailed). The difference is that the narrative never actually allowed him to cross that line by actually killing the kids, who we do care about as characters, so while the intent in itself is pretty awful, he was never allowed to complete the action that would take him over to the point of no return. Hawks, however, did cross the line by killing someone who we care about and who is narratively established as a “good person,” who even Hawks concedes is a good person.

3. a. I don’t like the MLA ideologically and I don’t like the decision to have the LOV team up with them. But, again, their takeover plan has been stopped in its tracks, which I’m actually fine with to prevent the LOV from crossing the moral event horizon, but that’s, like… completely irrelevant to me thinking Hawks shouldn’t have killed Jin.

3. b. Though there’s still a chance for Tomura to cross the moral event horizon, and I’m not going to convince myself that it won’t happen. If it’s going to happen, I think it’s highly possible that it might happen in this arc, because now Jin is dead and we know how Tomura and the LOV have historically responded to their friends getting hurt. I, and many others, have called Jin the “heart” of the LOV (his name is also literally written with the kanji for “benevolence”), and now without him, there is no remaining heart nor goodwill.

4. Although both Tomura and Hawks are, on one level, fighting on behalf of the ideals that they were “raised into,” their fights happen in very different ways. The MLA arc in particular made clear that the villains are, in part, fighting for their very survival in ways heroes just aren’t. The threat that the LOV were living under was constant—when it wasn’t heroes or other villain groups, it was trying to find money and shelter and essential upkeep. Hawks may not be “free” from the HPSC or the occasional villain attack, but he’s free from those constant material struggles. He’s not an “underdog.” 

4. a. Tomura is also, in part, fighting to protect his marginalized friends. It’s for sure not on behalf of every marginalized person, but it’s certainly more than we’ve seen any pro hero fight for. The people Tomura is surrounded with are people who have never been protected nor cared for before, because they were not deemed “innocent” enough to deserve that care and protection, and Tomura continued to care for them even when it was troublesome for him to do so, when they disagreed with him, when they threatened him, and when they fucked up very, very badly. 

4. a. i. Eri is an example of a victim who the heroes fought for, but she’s an easy case to want to love and protect: Overhaul was inarguably an abuser who wanted to elevate the yakuza, she was being used in extended torture-experiment sessions, she killed her father on accident, she’s a child, she’s innocent, she’s selfless, she’s well-behaved. It’s basically not even a question whether or not she “deserves” help.

4. b. It’s people who are difficult who get overlooked. Hawks and hero society are completely unprepared to protect and care for people who don’t behave as they’re supposed to. Hawks did not care for the LOV who didn’t personally befriend him. For the one he did, when Jin didn’t cooperate the way Hawks wanted, he went for the kill. It’s either being easy and “manageable,” or die.

4. b. i. Tomura has specifically spared two people who tried to kill him or actually succeeded in killing his ally, people who he explicitly hated or did not care for. So make of that what you will, I guess.

5. From a leftist perspective, it’s just impossible not to account for the fact that Hawks helps maintain a social structure that creates so much suffering. The question isn’t really whether AFO’s teachings to Tomura are better (they’re not, and I want Tomura to break away from them), but it can’t really be ignored that Hawks is enforcing an ideal that’s wildly popular. Why this matters is that Tomura doing the wrong things will be roundly condemned, and he’ll probably be “punished” for them; but heroes are very unlikely to be punished or held accountable for committing murder, especially if it’s “justified.” 

5. a. This is problematic because it allows heroes, and the state, to define what a justified “emergency situation” is, and who can die in those emergencies. The people who are deemed killable “in an emergency” are usually those who are already marginalized; hence heroes can wait until those marginalized people get desperate enough to commit villainous acts, and then they can swoop in to arrest or kill them to widespread public acclaim.

5. b. Heroes (and law enforcement IRL) don’t address the roots of crime that lie in overarching oppressive structures like misogyny and capitalism. They don’t prevent theft by bringing people financial stability; they arrest people who were desperate enough to steal, and use those people to send a message to poor people everywhere. They make these conditions of desperation more permanent by punishing the most vulnerable people when they slip up, while doing absolutely nothing until the slip-up happens.

5. c. Heroes are punching down, and villains are punching up. That may not be the case with AFO, but I believe it with the LOV specifically, and I believe this matters because it’s exemplified between Hawks and Twice. Hawks targets someone who reached out to him, despite being hurt over and over again by types like him, who has dealt with poverty and fantasy mentally illness completely on his own, and kills him in defense of the very society that allowed all those things to happen to Jin. Hawks was given a choice: sympathize and relate to Jin, and acknowledge his well-founded grievances toward a dysfunctional society, or prioritize the safety and security of that dysfunctional society by permanently removing Jin from the equation. The choice he believes in is the choice he made.

5. d. In order for Tomura to make the same choice with the same implications, they’d have to be living in an alternate universe, in the Kingdom of AFO, where Tomura is a respected noble who infiltrates a rebel group who were going to “commit atrocities,” kills the one person who offered him a way out of AFO’s control, and possibly screws the rebels altogether, but everyone is happy that the rebels are gone. Even if you think Tomura is capable of that, it’s irrelevant because canon!BNHA has completely different power dynamics. Because Tomura’s violence will always be unpopular and persecuted, rather than justified and glorified by the state, he physically cannot replicate a choice like Hawks’. Tomura can approximate it, but even if he does, he’ll be hunted down by heroes for doing so. The circumstances and consequences for making such a choice are totally different.

So. That’s why I don’t think Tomura and Hawks can be equated. Suggesting that this is a level playing field is essentially believing that criminals and law enforcement exist on level playing fields, and they absolutely do not at all. Hawks is particularly abhorrent because he’s already followed through with his choice. He holds power by being part of the policing class, and regardless of how he came into it, he behaves exactly the same as everyone else who “freely” joined, and in his position of power he made the choice to eliminate someone who was socially powerless.