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荼毘。

[andysmetahell]

On Fanfiction

I was cruising through the net, following the cold trail of one of the periodic “Is or is not Fanfic the Ultimate Literary Evil?” arguments that crop up regularly, and I’m now bursting to make a point that I never see made by fic defenders.

We’re all familiar with the normal defenses of fic: it’s done out of love, it’s training, it’s for fun. Those are all good and valid defenses!

But they miss something. They damn with faint praise. Because the thing is, when you commit this particular Ultimate Literary Evil you’ve now told a story. And stories are powerful. The fact that it wasn’t in an original world or with original characters doesn’t necessarily make it less powerful to any given reader.

I would never have made this argument a few years ago. A few years ago I hadn’t received messages from people who were deeply touched by something I wrote in fanfic. So what if it’s only two or three or four people, and I used someone else’s world and characters? For those two or three or four people, I wrote something fucking important. You cannot tell me that isn’t a valid use of my time and expect me to feel chastened. I don’t buy it. I won’t feel ashamed. I will laugh when you call something that touches other people ‘literary masturbation.’ Apparently you’re not too up on your sex terminology.

Someone could argue that if I’d managed the same thing with original characters in an original world, it could’ve touched more people. They might be right! On the other hand, it might never have been accepted for publication, or found a market if self published, and more importantly I would never have written it because I didn’t realize I could write. The story wouldn’t have happened. Instead, thanks to fanfic being a thing, it did. And for two or three or four people it mattered. When we talk about defending fanfic, can we occasionally talk about that?

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Contributor Emails Sent

Greetings ghost and ghouls! It is our pleasure to announce that all contributor emails have been sent. If for some reason you did not receive one please reach out to us. As a reminder our Beta Reader Apps are still open and located here.

The BNHA Monster Ball Mod Team would like to give a big thank you to all who applied. Your interest and support is greatly appreciated. As we get ready to enter our creation period we look forward to presenting you with one of a kind BNHA horror and Halloween content as well as introducing some of our VIP contributors.

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Me after chapter 282 of BNHA

Shigaraki, I love you to bits, but if not for the laws of this country, I’d strangle you

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Where did the second All for One come from? [MANGA SPOILERS!]

A random rambling session with a friend about the mechanics of AfO and OfA really got me thinking: if Izuku is indeed Sensei’s son (and that’s the hill I’ll die on, even if Horikoshi josses it straight into stratosphere), then, how big are the

chances that Izuku was born with a mutated - or heck, even identical - All for One? The logical follow-up to those thought was, if Izuku really was Quirkless, and AfO stole his AfO, was then the AfO Shigaraki got Izuku’s???

[andysmetahell]

Bakugou Katsuki - King of Nowhere

Birth/civilian name: Bakugou Katsuki

Underworld name: Demolition, Kacchan (only used by Izuku)

Public name: King, King of Nowhere, Hero Ground Zero, Lord Explodokills

Quirk: Explosion

Affiliation: Kingdom of Nowhere

Position: co-leader, main tactician, decoy

Strengths: tactical thinking, improvisation, intimidation

Weaknesses: need to dominate in the field (mix of superiority and inferiority complex), general inability to blend in

Bakugou Katsuki may be a bit full of himself (he's self-aware enough to admit that), but Midoriya Izuku has always been on his radar - first as a possible partner/sidekick, later as that idiot who did not seem to register what a damn boundary was, and how unsafe his dreams were. He almost instantly noticed the eyebags, the papers that had nothing to do with the school, and the glint of knowing Izuku seemed to always have. His eyes had stopped moving in wonder over Quirks and Heroes; now they moved much faster, sharper, and more precise, and the mutterings had turned from admiration and possible uses to counters and disabling.

Everything came to head the day Izuku fell asleep in the History class - his favorite. Pissed off, Katsuki cornered Izuku and demanded the explanation at the Quirk point, threatening to burn all of Izuku's strange papers. Izuku folded relatively quickly and introduced him to the dark underbelly of Musutafu - the first place where Katsuki was completely, hopelessly, outclassed and outnumbered, and coincidentally the first place where Quirkless Deku was more impressive than him. Unwilling to be left behind, Katsuki joined Izuku in the hunt for the corrupt members of society, eventually finding his own niche of being an intimidator-for-hire acting solely on Izuku's intel (in his words: 'you're a shitty Deku, but at least you won't stab in the back like half of those fuck-muches if they get a chance').

The name Demolition stems partly from his Quirk, and partly from how he made sure to utterly destroy his victim's confidence without ever hurting them - in fact, the only calling card he ever had was a small burn of a crown he made sure to imprint on the victim's skin. That habit of his once nearly got him caught once by Aizawa Shouta (Katsuki didn't gag the victim well enough), and also gave him the public name.

Up until then, he had only been called 'King', but when Aizawa addressed him as such, Katsuki simply laughed and answered: 'Yeah, sure, I'm King, King of Nowhere!' The name stuck, and the loose organization of informants and hitpeople that started to form around Izuku and Katsuki got the name 'Kingdom of Nowhere'.

Katsuki didn't abandon his dream of being number one... he just decided that before he could be true number one, he had to beat Deku at his home ground.

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Midoriya Izuku - Prince of Nightmares

Birth/civilian name: Midoriya Izuku

Underground name: Manipulator, Deku (only used by Bakugou Katsuki)

Public name: Prince of Nightmares, Hero Deku, Pillar of Hope

Quirk: None One for All, Analysis (cover)

Allegiance: Kingdom of Nowhere

Position: leader, main strategist

Strengths: Quirk analysis, strategic thinking, psychoanalysis

Weaknesses: impulsivity when confronted with threats to his friends, over-emotional on occasion

Midoriya Izuku had never been quite as innocent as his face would make you believe - living in his area of Musutafu exposed him to both Heroes and Villains alike, as well as the spectrum they inhabited. From Villains that actively didn't fight back to reduce the inevitable damage to Heroes who didn't care about collaterals, from Villains so heinous they were better off dead than imprisoned and Heroes who threw their all on the line to save a single person: Izuku has seen then all, and recorded them in a special notebook of his.

From there, he quietly started operating in Musutafu underground, feeding local Underground Heroes, vigilantes and cleaner villains with info on the scum of both Hero and Villain world.

His information was so good, he quickly turned into a Kingpin of sorts - the information master who never showed in person, always operating via secure and anonymous dropoffs, and always more than ready to bring down the assholes and help those in need that heroes either failed to see or simply ignored.

His work attracted the attention of many: the underworld started calling him Manipulator (a name he'll deny he has any rights to), and the aboveground Prince of Nightmares, for he manipulated things in his favors and brought nightmares from the closets to light. He'd gained quite a few followers, admirers and helpers (Stain being probably the most notorious), but also a score of enemies (All for One, Shie Hassaikai).

He never forgot his dream of being a Hero, however... he doesn't mind getting hands dirty if it means taking care of the nastiest examples of human species.

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✨At last we are here with the Guest Spotlights! Kicking it off with the amazing: @queerlytired! 🤩💕

✨We are so absolutely stoked to see what Bazi has in store for you guys, and are blessed to have them on board! 

✨Thank you for accepting your letter, Bazi! 💕💕💕

Schedule || Mods || FAQ/Specs || Twitter || Instagram

@bnha-community-board @uahigh-newsletter @bnhabulletin @fandomzines @zineapps @zinefeed @zine-scene @zinewatch @zinesubmissions @zinepolice @bokunozines

[andysmetahell]

This theory I had on my main, on how the high expectations people had of Mina in her middle-school years may have impacted her, is now pretty relevant to recent manga events.

1) Mina’s really stepping up for the first time in the manga because, for the first time since middle school, it seems like she needs to.

It seems like she needs to because morale is at an all-time-low among her peers and they need reassurance.

2) Her experience with Giganto in middle school clearly had a negative impact on her, to the extent that she probably has ptsd.  She fumbled with her canister right when she began having flashbacks as she recognized Machia’s voice.

All of the odd, mystified looks of confusion and curiosity Mina gave Kirishima as she observed his regret for his inaction during middle school incident, it all makes a lot of sense now.  It all but confirms what I previously suspected.

To Mina, the high expectations for her to take charge and be heroic were, and to and extent still is, a burden, it’s something that took a toll on her (even if it is a toll that she’s willingly accepting.)

Much like the trauma manifesting as aggression and an inferiority complex in Bakugo, the high expectations placed on “blessed” children in My Hero Academia puts them under an unreasonable amount of pressure from an exceptionally young age.

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I’ll post my tomura drawing here :3

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take your time, they said.

the words will come to you, they said.

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Are you interested in daring adventures and wistful proclamations of life beyond Earth? Or maybe you enjoy stargazing, and wearing tattered NASA paraphernalia? If these sound like you, then I’m sure you’d enjoy participating in the My Hero Galactic Big Bang! (Er, Wayfinder for short.)

I am excited to push this project out, as I believe all the entries involved will be wonderful! The interest check will be open until September 14!

Thank you so much for your patience and support!

May the force be with you. 

- Wayfinder Admin

@bnha-community-board​ @uahigh-newsletter​ @bnhabulletin​ @bnhafandomcalendar​

[andysmetahell]

One for All and All for One: The study in complimentary and infinite (wasted) potentials

One for All and All for One: two Quirks whose history we can, in the universe of Boku no Hero Academia, treat almost as the history of society. Their users had left enormous impact on everyone in the series, and through hints we can see their influence stretching long, long back to the first appearance of the Quirks.

Neither Quirk can be considered ‘normal’, though: the ability to take away Quirks at whim and an ability to share Quirks with others (which would inevitably leave you Quirkless) are both complete anathemas to the society that by and large is half-in love with the idea of simply having a Quirk (which deserves a whole breakdown in on itself, but that’s not what I’ll be writing about here!). And yet, One For All users are all heroes, and All for One users are all villains as far as we know (written after the release of manga chapter 280).

How is that even possible? With how objectively similar they are, why aren’t they both heroes, or both villains?

Well, before we take a crack at how Horikoshi coded the Hero society that made this happen, let’s first take a look at just why I’m so surprised the two Quirks aren’t on the same ‘side’. Also, obligatory ‘spoilers ahead’ warning for everyone who’re anime-only watchers, or haven’t gotten past Meta Liberation Army arc in manga.

Purely from the activation/mechanics point of view, All for One and One for All are warped mirror images of each other. All for One functions on the assumption that a) the user knows the other person has a Quirk and b) the Quirk doesn’t have an inherent clause that disallows itself to be taken by force when it comes to taking it. One for All is the only Quirk so far that has shown the resistance to the b), as it is encoded in the very nature of the ‘share-along’ Quirk that forms the true base of One for All that it can only be given away willingly.

Why is this so important? Because All for One doesn’t only take Quirks, it’s also capable of releasing them and giving them to others, whether the recipient is willing or unwilling. In this regard, One for All is startlingly identical: it can be forced upon someone else, as long as the DNA is exchanged and the previous user is willing to give it away. This little fact is often overlooked (likely deliberately) by the existing canon in favor of emphasizing the ‘cannot be taken forcefully away’ which makes sense plot-wise, but not ethics and logic-wise.

But who knows, maybe Horikoshi is holding back on us, and One for All ends up being the ultimate villain of the story.

… yeah, not likely. But the idea is interesting, isn’t it?

Moving onto the way they interact with their users and other Quirks, One for All and All for One are again very, very different, but with a shared approximate visualization of usage behind it. The closest approximation of how they interact with other Quirks would be, in my opinion, be gravity – but two very different applications of gravity.

There are two relevant things you need to know about gravity: it is defined by the masses of an object interacting with another object, and every single object in the universe has its own gravity field. (thank you, Physics nationals I went to once, for forcing me to learn more about gravity!)

All for One is more akin to a star within a stable planetary system: it holds planets, satellites and comets (other Quirks) locked in its orbit, but any change can make all those objects lose their orbits and go wander in the deep space. Its hold is strong, but the fact still remains it can be nullified in order to give away Quirks. It’s also stable – its attraction/hold power doesn’t change with the number of Quirks taken, it simply gives it a bigger array of powers to work with.

One for All on the other hand would be closer to black hole: its gravity is so enormous even light, the fastest object in the universe, cannot escape it, and its mass (and therefore its gravity) grows stronger with every object it swallows. Once it grabs a hold of anything (its user’s other Quirk) it merges it with itself and keeps it for forever, with very little chance of it ever surfacing again as individual Quirk (unless your name is Midoriya Izuku). However, it heavily relies on the energy (other Quirks it merges with) to provide power-ups; hence the ridiculous difference between Izuku’s and Toshinori’s One for All. (also protagonst shenanigans, but we’re not going that far into metatextuality here – that needs its own essay)

So, concept-wise, One for All and All for One are again identical in the idea behind it, but drastically different in application – both still fucking scary, but what can we do here, our main protagonist and antagonist need to have OP armor around themselves.

This leads us to the probably the biggest spoiler I’ll discuss in this essay:

this panel.

In chapter 270 of manga, Shigaraki Tomura is revealed to have been passed All for One, which is a whole mindfuck in on itself that Horikoshi needs to explain stat because I’m going crazy over here with theories (!!!), but moving on. The short and extremely brief summary of what happens afterwards is: Heroes discover where Tomura is while he’s still being transferred All for One, they wreck the Nomus and facility, Shigaraki gets partial All for One and his original Quirk Decay goes absolutely nuts again, Izuku runs off to face him, and at one point point, while using Ragdoll’s Search, Shigakari utters a very strange sentence while seemingly under the influence of All for One (the Quirk):

“You will be mine… little brother.”

Moments later, Shigaraki snaps out of it and comments about Sensei (All for One) no longer being his puppeteer, that he’s making his own choices and not Sensei’s.

Here we get a stunning punch in the plexus about what we already have been hinted at during Izuku’s fight with Shinsou Hitoshi, during Kamino Ward and Joint Training Arcs:

One for All and All for One both retain the echoes of their past owners.

Now, here comes a million dollar question: is this something both the baseline ‘share’ part of One for All and All for One possess (which would further link the two Quirks, and also explain a lot of characterizations in the series so far), or is it an imprint of All for One on ‘stockpile’ part of One for All that ‘share’ part absorbed and made its own? Both possibilities are extremely intriguing and make any future possibility of unification (which was apparently Sensei’s original goal before, judging by that one panel) extremely volatile, and very intriguing if Horikoshi pursues that idea to its end.

Speaking of the man himself, now we arrive at the question that really started the whole essay here: how come it was All for One chosen to be the ultimate evil, and One for All to be ultimate good? As we’ve seen so far, both Quirks are startlingly similar; theoretically, could All for One be a ‘heroic’ Quirk and One for One for All ‘villainous’?

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, because theoretically, switching the two would still make the story work; it’d change the motivations of characters drastically, sure, and turn the story of generations of good trying defeat one evil into one good fending off generations of evil, but it’d work – and no, because that’d fundamentally change the society in which Boku no Hero Academia’s current time frame is, and society is the key underlying factor in this entire story.

Let me explain through the examples of three characters and a faction.

Midoriya Izuku is Quirkless person in a society who is, like I said at the beginning, half-in love with the idea of having Quirks – the fact that you have them makes you seem useful, someone with potential, no matter how objectively useless some Quirks inevitably can be in certain lines of work. By their standards, he’s without potential, and therefore is largely useless out of gate. Had All for One been in public eye and celebrated as Hero, he’d be the pinnacle of useful: there’d be no danger of bad reactions to donated Quirks in his DNA, and he, someone who wishes desperately for a Quirk, could easily be given a Quirk of someone who finds their life unbearable due to it.

Bakugou Katsuki, someone with extremely property-damaging Quirk, would constantly be told that if he doesn’t behave himself, he’d be sent off to All for One to have his Quirk taken away – in essence, he’d be no one special, just another kid with a Quirk. Since All for One is so visible, it’d be all too easy for parents and teachers to threaten their kids into compliance whenever they throw an over-powered tantrum with the removal of a Quirk; it’d also be a good deterrent for any Pro Heroes that existed there to not get too comfy with their jobs, because they could easily be taken out of it if they manage to anger All for One enough, which would deter some people from being Pro Heroes.

Shigaraki Tomura (Shimura Tenko), someone whose Quirk came in during an extremely traumatic event and left him so scarred mentally he was never quite the same again, could easily simply give away his Quirk and have something far less volatile and triggering if he wished so, and also have a chance of potentially one day seeing his Quirk in the hands of someone like Izuku or Melissa, who could use it to its full potential without being constantly triggered by it or being re-traumatized again and again by the society who would rail on him for having such a potentially devastating Quirk.

Meta Liberation Army (which is a poorly disguised Brotherhood of Mutants on Genosha in X-men cartoons, let’s be realistic – the whole thing about the superiority of fight-compatible Quirks was not subtle at all) would be a much smaller and a lot less influential group. The publicity of a Quirk being able to take away other Quirks would make the existence of Deika City clones very, very difficult; it’d take but one hint, one whisper of a fringe group amassing in remote location that wants to eliminate so-called ‘useless Quirks’ for All for One to act – as much of an asshole as he is, he was shown [cite] to like all kinds of Quirks, despite only keeping the ones he felt were the most useful to him.

OK, but what about them being on the same side? You might ask yourself. If they’re so similar, why not make them both on the same side?

One, drama is always more delicious if there are high personal stakes involved, and nothing gets more personal than family drama – that’s just a fact. (Kardashians, anyone?)

Two, this is shonen – openly bad guys being the protagonists isn’t often done (in mainstream at least).

Three: we need some material to make all those ‘Izuku’s related to All for One or One for All first user’ for our satisfaction before Horikoshi josses the whole thing, okay??

(no, this is certainly not a call for you to make more ‘Izuku is related to original two brothers’… but it’s heavily suggested lol)

Thank you for sticking around until the end of this essay! Have a cookie, and enjoy the hell my mind led me to during the binge-read of the last 5 released chapters of manga: