#honestly no other anon could be onto something if i may be insane to indulge the idea

[todayisafridaynight]

What the hell was that other anon on, I signed up to see masadai and minedai good shit, not that cursed timeline, it caused me PHYSICAL PAIN to read that last ask

Not even "oomf angst" pain but physical pain from trying to comprehend this at all smh REAL LIFE PSYCHIC DAMAGE

you hear that other anon we gotta stone you to death. sorry this is a democratic inbox :/

[makeste]

killing is not so easy as the innocent believe

or, some follow-up thoughts on Hawks, and chapter 265.

you guys this chapter has got people in some kind of way though. myself included lol.

it’s never a good thing when I get an ask like this on a Wednesday. and SURE ENOUGH, lmao. hang in there anon we’re in this together.

I love how all three of these asks seem to be implying that Hawks is basically toast. death certificate all but signed and notarized. which is reasonable to be fair!

regarding Machia though, after giving it some thought, the fact that he was mentioned when he didn’t have to be leads me to believe that Fatgum is correct, and he will not be making an appearance. it’s possible this is just the manga attempting to catch us off guard, but if Horikoshi wanted to do that, he could have just as easily bided his time and made no mention of him at all until he suddenly came barging out of his hidden basement room at an inopportune moment. going out of his way to say “hey remember Gigantomachia? yes well he is in sleep mode at the moment so not to worry” is kind of a waste of time unless it really is true. could be wrong on this though!

regarding the voice recorder/communication/mystery device thing, I now have a brand new ridiculous theory on that thanks to a chat with @blessedgirthma​, but more on that shortly. 

now then, let’s talk a bit more (or, to be honest, a lot more) about Hawks.

lol y’all I am being called out. but in seriousness, this is honestly one of my favorite things about doing the recaps though. the fact that my reactions are recorded for posterity for better or worse. the thing is, when I’m actually reading the chapter for the first time, it’s a complete rollercoaster lol. it’s just whiplash reactions to stuff (which is why 90% of it is dumb jokes because that is my honest instinctive reaction to 90% of everything) and speculating wildly on the spot. and a lot of times it is way off.

one of the things that particularly impressed me about this latest chapter is the fact that Horikoshi was genuinely able to manipulate my emotions so effectively and make me so anxious about the fates of both of these characters in the heat of the moment. not every writer can do that! in fact it’s pretty rare for a shounen manga in particular to actually get me to really start doubting and wondering whether a character is actually going to die. because let’s be real guys, it’s a rarity. especially with this particular series. and even when people do die, they come back as OFA ghosts, or they’re brought back to life as Kurogiri, or they never died to begin with and they’re currently trying to kill Hawks, etc. so on top of the shounen manga tropes, we also have comic book “no one is ever truly dead” tropes. so yeah.

so the point I’m leading up to here is that I don’t think Hawks is actually going to die. I know it’s ridiculous; I know he was just set on fire and isn’t looking too hot (ha) right now, but again. it’s a shounen manga. other characters have survived (1) breaking their arms a dozen times, (2) having holes of all shapes and sizes pierced through their lungs, (3) everything All Might and AFO did to each other at Kamino jesus christ, (4) having their entrails spilled out, (5) being crushed by a water tower, (6) pissing Todoroki off during the climax of Heroes Rising, (6) being blown up from the inside out by a quirk, and (7) having their eye sliced open and being blasted through a building and falling fifty feet from the sky onto the hood of a car while on fire. and this is far from an exhaustive list. this is an off-the-top-of-my-head list. yeah. so neither Hawks nor Twice is actually dying if this is anything to go by.

now then. I said I was going to talk about Hawks, so let’s talk. first off, I just want to make it clear that I’m not part of the pro-Hawks faction, or the pro-Villains faction, or whatever. I’m in neither of those factions, or both of them. or whatever you want to call it. basically I love Twice and I love Dabi and I love Hawks. and recent events have not changed this at all, except perhaps to make me love them even more. but anyway, just wanted to put that on the record. and yes, I told Dabi to set Hawks on fire, and I would say it again too, because Dabi setting Hawks on fire potentially saved both Hawks and Twice, so yeah. homicidal though it may have been, it was good timing all the same, Dabi.

so Hawks! let’s talk about what actually happened in this chapter. “um Hawks tried to kill Twice, is what happened.” well, not quite! what actually happened is that Hawks said he was going to kill Twice. and then... he didn’t.

lol, yeah. eyeroll-inducing technicality there, I know. wishful thinking, naive, willfully disregarding what we actually saw in favor of trying to support my own interpretation of the character. absolutely that’s what it is! but since we all acknowledge that, might as well continue down this line of thinking and see where it leads. so indulge me if you will.

so. three things:

(1) Hawks is a spy. he lies. he lies all the time. when Horikoshi wants us to know what he’s actually thinking, he shows us.

so naturally the reason I bring this up is just to point out the fact that throughout all of chapters 263, 264, and 265, we have not actually seen a single one of Hawks’s thoughts (assuming Caleb is correct in his translation of 264). he’s making speeches, he’s trying to plead his case to Jin, and we see a ton of Jin’s thoughts. but none of Hawks’s. not so much as an ‘I was afraid of this...’ or ‘his quirk is too dangerous, I can’t let a single one of the clones slip through’ or any of your typical run-of-the-mill fight narration we might normally expect to see for a scene like this. there’s nothing. and what this tells me is that Hawks’s words may not in fact line up with what he’s actually thinking.

(2) Hawks is hesitating. we know how fast he is. hell, even if we didn’t, this chapter would be all the evidence we need. but we do in fact have plenty of other evidence.

these things are deadly. each one is solid and we’ve seen he’s capable of using them like bladed weapons. if he wanted to, he could stab Twice through the heart in the blink of an eye. look at the precision he used to tear his mask open (to distinguish the real Twice from the clones) without actually harming him. he wouldn’t even have to move. but he is deliberately holding back and trying to stop Twice in other ways -- by pleading with him (“I don’t want to fight you”), hitting him with a disabling blow, and finally by pinning him down and trying to intimidate him.

but then he just sits there.

saying he has no choice. holding the feather knife above him. but he doesn’t actually do it. and okay, maybe it’s because he truly is fond of Twice, as we know, and so he’s giving him the chance to say his last words or something. but what was it he said just a few pages before this one, though? “we eliminate villains with haste”? I don’t know about you, but I for one sure wasn’t seeing any haste in those last few pages. the man who goes too fast, huh. I’m just saying.

but maybe he was just psyching himself up to do it. maybe he would have gone through with it on the very next page if Dabi hadn’t intervened. maybe. but you know what though? that hesitance -- the fact that he was so conflicted despite supposedly believing that he’s doing the right thing, and despite being groomed by the shadier elements of hero society since childhood to make this precisely kind of decision -- to me, that does indicate that Hawks is not a killer by nature. he’s battling with himself right now. he’s desperate. he doesn’t want to go through with it; he resists the act; and then crucially, right at the decisive moment, Horikoshi prevents us from seeing whether or not he actually would have done it.

(3) and what about that? it’s interesting that this question is one which has come up over and over ever since the disappearance of Best Jeanist, isn’t it? the question of just how far Hawks is actually willing to go. the question of whether or not, when push comes to shove, he will make the cutthroat decision. will Hawks kill for the greater good? Horikoshi poses this question again and again, and yet he still refuses to give us an actual answer.

(oh hey, that’s a nice flashback you’re having. sure would be a shame if it were to... cut off right there so that we never find out what actually happened past this point!!)

(“whether this is really him” -- really?? you actually go and show what is by all accounts and appearances Jeanist’s actual dead body stuffed in a bag, and yet you still cast doubt on it? why? at this point you’re just fucking with us. and also, actually, the fact that it’s a dead body is not, in fact, proof that he killed someone, because morgues exist. and appearance-altering quirks. and clones. and all sorts of other conspiracy-theory-fueling shit. so yeah.)

isn’t that strange? well no, actually, it’s not strange at all, because you only need to take one glance at the fandom (or my own indecisive recaps) to see that this refusal to confirm this one crucial fact about Hawks’s nature is having precisely its intended effect. when you write a story, you want the readers to care. you want them to be invested in what’s happening. you want to keep them in suspense. and so in Hawks’s case, the fact that we just don’t know for sure makes him an insanely compelling character to watch, because will he actually do it?? will he kill Twice?? is he a killer??

and still we don’t know. even now, Horikoshi refuses to lift the veil for certain. and all I have to say about that is this: maybe he is. but if he is, if the answer to this lingering and drawn-out mystery ultimately turns out to be a simple “yes”, then that would be a bit anticlimactic to say the least.

so those are my thoughts! oh, except that I did say I was going to talk about this thing though:

so we don’t know what this is, or why Hawks pulled it out at such a strange moment. I’ve read a few theories, but I have to give @blessedgirthma​ credit because this one is my new favorite omfg:

like. guys. guys. I know it’s absurd and it’s not going to happen lol. but can you just imagine, though. Dabi’s standing there with the crazy eyes, talking about how heroes are all scum, and how he never trusted Hawks, and the fact that Hawks was even willing to kill a fellow hero to gain their trust only to betray them is yet more proof of how hypocritical and disgusting these so-called heroes are. and then, just as he’s about to deal the final blow, HIS OWN CLOTHES TURN ON HIM and he’s all “?!” and IN BURSTS BEST FUCKING JEANIST oh snap, whaaat, HE LIVED, BITCH.

don’t look at me like that. let me have this. all I’m saying is it could happen.

so that’s it! those are all my current thoughts about Hawks and about this contentious chapter which is tearing fandoms and loved ones apart. in my perfect world Hawks lives and Twice lives and Best Jeanist lives and Dabi lives but gets captured maybe so as to have Endeavor angst along with some fucking flashbacks at goddamn last. as of today March 22nd 2020 all of these are still possible outcomes, so I’m gonna embrace it.

and lastly, getting back to the real mystery of this chapter,

WE CAN ONLY HOPE.