#mla characters

[thearomanticcactus]

You guys ever think about how most of the heroes/hero-adjacent characters' quirks are hella underutilized (honestly whenever I talk about this I use the word "retconned" but I'm not really sure if that really applies lol) while most of the villain's quirks aren't? Because I think about that a lot.

[stillness-in-green]

Dabi also is my least favorite of the league, as a matter of fact. I dont like how he is written very much. But what makes him your least favorite?

(Sent in re: a post from earlier this year where I talked about Shouto's arc. Footnotes are at the end today; they're fairly long but there are only two of them and the post itself is pretty short, so readers shouldn't have to scroll too far to find them.)

I’d say it’s part Dabi’s characterization running afoul of a trope I strongly dislike, part mismatch between what draws me most to the League versus what I like most about Dabi, and part reaction to the way he’s long been treated in fanon/by certain of his more hyper-defensive fans.

To the first, I realized several years ago that I have got no taste and less time for relationship dynamics – particularly romantic ones, but not limited to them! – in which Party A is plain-spoken and genuine about their feelings and Party B is a jackass who makes fun of Party A for having those feelings.  Regardless of whether Party B has feelings for Party A that they’re denying and why, and regardless of whether Party A is actually bothered by it or not, it almost universally comes off to me as one-sided verbal abuse masquerading as funny, romantic or touching.

Now, I’m not saying that a dynamic like that Is Definitely Abusive, nor that it’s an insurmountable hurdle or an unforgivable offense, nor that people who do like the dynamic are problematic or wrong in some way.  But for me personally, I just find it deeply unpleasant and unappealing.  So, asking me to get invested in Dabi’s deep and genuine (sic) feelings about the League when I’ve spent most of the series watching him insult and dismiss them?  Sorry, fam, I’m just a lost cause there, and I was from the start.

To the second, there are things I like about Dabi, but the things I like about him (his role in the family drama, his dynamic with Endeavor, in particular his interplay with Skeptic) just don’t have much overlap with the things I like about the League.

Basically, I like the League for being scrappy underdogs with sympathetic backstories finding refuge in each other from a world that fiercely, unceasingly rejects them, who get radicalized even harder than they already were for their own sakes because of their growing care for one another.  Dabi just doesn’t play into that aspect of the narrative, at least not with any kind of consistency.  He's absent from a big chunk of important, emotional League scenes,[1] and even when he is there, he’s usually acting like an asshole to someone (see again the first point).

So if I’m fairly sanguine about Dabi as a League character, it’s only because I think Dabi in the canon is, too, that while I believe he has a sense of camaraderie and fellow-feeling towards the League,[2] I also believe those emotions are far overshadowed by the roaring furnace that is his derangement, hatred and obsession towards Endeavor, to the extent that, for the greater part of the series, I don’t know if Dabi himself is aware that those warm feelings for the League exist within his heart.  Since what I like the most about the League is the sense of camaraderie and fellow-feeling among them, and I actively dislike being told that I should be interested in relationships where one party is consistently derogatory towards a party that’s consistently sincere, then yeah, of course Dabi is the one of them I like least.

As to the fandom…  Well, that’s a whole-ass rant that would be much more negative towards specific, identifiable (albeit mostly blocked) parties than I really want to be in this space.  Let me simply say that, back when I was first getting into the BNHA fandom, I realized pretty early on that I profoundly disliked Fanon Dabi and the spillover effects he tended to have on fanwork/meta containing him; I therefore found his wild overrepresentation in the villain side of the fandom deeply wearying.

Also too, while Fanon Dabi himself was annoying, I care even less for the people who were so staunchly married to their belief in Dabi’s absolute incapacity to harm a single character who might not deserve it that they were willing to not only trot out repackaged discriminatory rhetoric and bog-standard victim blaming to redirect criticism onto otherwise blameless characters, but also to send hate mail and harassment to real life people who were less than deferent in the face of defenses of Dabi’s obvious snow-driven innocence.  The behavior of his fans is, of course, not Canon Dabi’s fault, but it’s not like I even liked the in-series version of the guy much to begin with!

With all those factors working together, I trust it’s not hard to see how Dabi wound up at the bottom of my personal LOV Faves List.  For what it’s worth, though, that’s only true for the core MVA-era League!  If only for reasons of greater exploration and exposure, he (probably) wouldn’t be at the bottom of a more expansive list that included e.g. everyone from the training camp attack + AFO and his cabal.

In any case, on the occasions when my own fanwork/meta touches on him, I try to be as fair and balanced towards him and his clear importance to the story as can reasonably be expected, but I don’t feel an obligation to go beyond that.  Lord knows there’s no shortage of Plus Ultra Dabi fans out there to take up all of my share of attention and more.

Thanks for the ask!

1: In fairness to Dabi, I suspect many of his absences are due to the fact Horikoshi just never got a good handle on incorporating his quirk into the story.  Dabi’s nominally really dangerous, so his presence creates complications in a battle if he isn’t distracted or taken out of commission early on; see e.g. his absence from the scuffle with the CRC, how he spends the entire Kamino fight unconscious, how the version of him that actually confronts Aizawa at the training camp is a clone, and how, when Horikoshi finally stops being able to sequester him away from open combat, those ludicrously Not Safe For Life flames of his suddenly become about as meaningfully dangerous as an accident with the kitchen range.  That said, as with the "asshole who belittles others for caring about things" issue, the reasoning behind the reality doesn’t change the reality itself, in this case that Dabi's participation/effectiveness in fight scenes is frequently disjointed and arbitrary compared to the rest of the League having much more clearly defined, consistent capabilities in combat, and that has an unavoidable impact on my view of him as a member of the League.

2: My citations for Dabi actually caring about the League as anything other than a stepping stone towards his goals would consist of the following: his manic reaction to Twice’s death, my belief in Toga as a reasonably reliable judge of character when she calls Dabi “kind” for burning down her family home, and Dabi’s inclusion of other Villains/the League specifically in his rhetoric about the limitations of super-powered society when he fights Shouto in Hosu.  Note how the latter incidents come only after he’s revealed the truth about Todoroki Enji’s abuse and Todoroki Touya’s survival.

[buttercupshands]

Chapter 419 Analysis or "How to make allies not pawns" a helpful guide from League of Villains (part 2)

This is now a second part of Tomura character analysis.

With chapter 419 being probably our last time seeing Tomura for a while, since we need to learn what happened with Aizawa now is time to remember that not only bad things exist it Tomura's life.

Warning of spoilers to the whole manga to the point of chapter 419! All of the warnings from My Villain Academy side of manga are applicable

So like... mentions of death, killing other people, manipulation, emotional abuse and many more!

This is Part 2 - See here for Part 1 of this depressing mess

With AFO being so sure that he knows better and actually controlled every single part of Tenko's life creating a Symbol of Fear without any redeeming qualities or even hope for saving after he destroys him. There's one thing that AFO still doesn't understand about Tomura and never did - and that's his allies, or the League of Villains that he created.

Even Kurogiri, being a Nomu who's views do not stray from what AFO thought was important didn't exactly understand what did Tomura think about his allies quick to assume that he thought of them as pawns all the was back in the Training Camp arc. With Tomura making game examples to explain the situation, he still didn't think of LoV as just pawns on a desk, like AFO does.

At the time of USJ arc there weren't many people Tomura called this, which could make you wonder how much it was just AFO's plan rather than Tomura's with him never worrying about those other villains yet getting so worked up over losing Nomu not only because he was strong enough to defend him from All-Might, but treating his defeat as something that must be avenged.

And that was long before Stain even entered the picture, the first of three people who greatly affected Tomura's view of his own motives alongside AFO's manipulation of literally everything else.

Tomura was terrified of fighting All-Might seconds before this and yet as this goes on it's becoming more noticeable - Tomura doesn't care for his own fear or worries as long as he's fighting for someone else's good. Not so different from how Izuku is ready to disregard himself for the sake of others, resulting in many injuries and being so close to dying so many times.

It never was a secret that Tomura is highly dependent on others to keep himself from losing confidence, or even will to fight, getting either too anxious to continue without anyone's reassurance.

And while AFO's "help" was mostly given only with some kind of lesson as we saw in "Tomura Shigaraki: Origin", with AFO literally sitting there, saying how Tenko is weak for not killing but showing some restrain instead suffering himself, never actually helping or comforting him. Only offering what he deemed nessesary for his own plan of making Tenko kill those thugs not caring that he's feeling sick from those hands.

But in USJ it's not AFO who's there with Tomura, it's Kurogiri, who was shown to still have some care that Shirakumo had that even Aizawa and Mic couldn't argue that it's similar to how Shirakumo couldn't just leave a kitten in the rain. No matter the responsibility that it would bring with taking a little one in.

A helpless little kitten that didn't get the help it needs from anyone else. Sounds way too familiar.

This never was a direct order from AFO other than he needs to "tend and protect" for Tomura, which can mean anything from just looking out when Tomura's sick, or protect him from any tread like someone trying to kill him.

Not helping him getting over his anxiety to fight or helping him and guiding him to do better as a leader of the League calming him if it got out of control. Which is somewhat opposite to the way AFO deals with Decay and Tomura's temper - letting him destroy anything even the hands that he gave him, just offering new ones when he succeedes and never really caring for his pawns, he can always get new ones.

And surely not asking if Tomura's well the first thing while talking to Heroes.

Which then leads us back to how Tomura never viewed anyone that he chose as pawns calling them his allies, with the word '仲間' which can even be translated as friends in needed context, but usually used as comrade or ally when Tomura says it. And the same thing is usually translated as "friend" when used by Twice.

In any case Tomura never once doubted his allies since he saw them as reliable, even if his first meeting with Toga and Dabi went so wrong that Kurogiri had to stop them from killing each other.

Up to the point of Training Camp AFO describes as him teaching Tomura to be independent which was at that point too far from the truth than he thought. If Tomura begging for AFO to leave with them is any indicator he actually was even less independent after All-Might almost caught them, making him doubt his own worth as a leader. Even if AFO's defeat finally let him think and wonder about himself and his past.

AFO believed that Tomura just knowing how to recruit people would suddenly make him great at using those new "pawns" which was proven wrong by Overhaul no so long after that. Showing how Tomura believed the same thing AFO did as well, fully trusting his judgement of anything including himself, all the while parroting what AFO says without fully understanding what it means.

Only after losing both Magne and Mr. Compress arm does Tomura slowly start making progress in becoming someone more than AFO tells him to do. Even if as we see in part 1 it used Decay as the ground to make it stable since he believed it was his quirk. And yet.

Even if Tomura didn't simply instruct his allies how to choose who to recruit, he never blamed them for it. On the opposite, when Twice was hard on himself after bringing Overhaul to them Tomura just looked at them for the first time without a hand on his face, or even on himself at all, showing how he trusts them as much as he would trust himself and believes that they can do it.

Taking off hands of his family would mean not relying on the conflicting feelings that they bring into the picture, something AFO would very much dissaprove, since he was now like an equal to everyone in LoV instead of being above them. He

And with this instead of making them blindly trust his decisions and following him from fear or adoration like people had been following AFO or Overhaul, he instead was an equal to them both in failure and victory that wasn't even all that guaranteed yet.

Each one of them had their own somewhat selfish goal that just seemed like they were just using each other without any worry being each other's pawns. Or maybe that's just how AFO would see them.

Yet it doesn't explain why did Toga care for Twice's trauma response of not having his mask on, since he already did his part and all that they both needed to do was done. But LoV was never about following orders or giving them, expecting for the pawns to follow without question. It was about a leader of the group that would stand up for his allies while allowing them full freedom, except when they needed to also accept that something is needed to be done for their own sake.

Like following Overhaul for a while all for cutting off his hands leaving him with nothing. Did that sound like something reasonable to do? No! They literally lost their chance at having sushi instead of just living at some abadoned building all the while occasionally searching for money or food, stealing and killing just to survive all while Tomura was just... waiting.

Nothing was really stable at the start of what we call My Villain Academia and yet no one from the LoV left while their state was... bad at the very least. No matter how AFO was teaching Tomura he was still left mostly waiting for something to happen rather than doing something to change the situation himself.

Sure, Tomura now was a famous leader of League of Villains that suddenly needed to be stopped rather that underestimated like before. But that was in the future, now LoV was laying low on funds and slowly Tomura showing his face became the norm, with him usually never wearing hands around LoV.

And with Tomura becoming more and more comfortable around LoV, the LoV itself was becoming more like a place that had one core value that accepted anything else added without anyone wondering about the past of others, like Compress said. Just some selfish people, who still followed their own needs first.

And yet somehow Toga, who joined just because she loved Stain and disliked how life was too hard found her place in the LoV alongside Twice who just needed to be trusted and trust in return. If Tomura only followed what AFO deemed to be the best way to lead no one would actually feel like they're accepted in the LoV as much as they were.

Goal or no goal Tomura succeeded even without having the whole world at the palm of his hands by just never pressing anyone to actually follow him - if they wanted to they could've just left here and there, but since they chose to follow he did what he thought was the obvious best - let his allies do what they wanted.

Which was okay for someone like Toga or Dabi who were either already comfortable by just being allowed to be themselves or being free to plan their own things for their own goals.

But not exactly that for Spinner. Who was instead literally searching for someone to show him what to do, not so different from Tomura, who still only followed whatever 'his Sensei' deemed worthy for him to look into, like letting Kurogiri go find unknown "power" that AFO left along with contact with Doctor.

And while Spinner was not fine with still being hollow even while following Tomura pretending that it's the same thing as following Stain... all it took for him to look differently at how exactly was Tomura thinking was the last real "barrier" that there was - Tomura basically spilling his whole backstory and motivations mostly for LoV to listen to, since Doctor was just testing Tomura's will all according to AFO's plan.

And after that it didn't took too long for Spinner to now follow Tomura, even if it was still not the time to really see the 'warped horizon that was waiting for them'. And yet in times where Tomura still showed some doubt over his decisions - that one old trait of his showing up like it was always at the back of his head not so different from USJ, only thing changing that Tomura got better and better at not letting his emotions control him so easily.

Since the price of that would literally be lifes of his allies.

And neither that or using their emotions to his own benefit was ever in his plans, contrast to AFO manipulating Tomura to do just that. Letting his emotions consume him completely just for his own goal and for his own sake. But as a person who was so familiar with this Tomura still was adamant at NOT allowing something like this to happen to his friends allies.

Effectively creating a bond between all six of them, including Toya that in the end kept them together until the very final arc, with Spinner keeping what Tomura would've thought and with him waking up and calling Machia to get LoV first and foremost Spinner did understand their's leader wishes, as well as Twice's who literally died for his friends.

With all that happening in the War arc the moment AFO returned with both being in control of Tomura's body and just abadoned anything that Tomura would care for like leaving Mr. Compress and Machia behind just to punish him for not getting OFA or not even caring to show any actual respect for Tomura's wishes. Instead showing how little he actually cared for anything but his own good.

But while AFO made so many pawns that he could change like gloves at any given moment, threating them and manipulating them with his power and quirks, Tomura only had 6 allies who stayed after AFO was caught and who were willing to die just to live the life they wanted.

And AFO couldn't give them that.

Even if Decay isn't Tenko's quirk and even if he has so much guilt for killing without it being a little bit justified by it...

LoV still followed him as a person who allowed them to live as they please and so what they want, not some all-powerfull overlord but an ally and a leader who had his flaws and fallings.

[leather-field]

three healers

[thotsforvillainrights]

Finally updated after several months! I've tried my hand at new products (phone charms and wax melts). A lot of work went into redesigning the shop too. Even if you don't buy a single thing, PLEASE do visit and give it a look. I'd really appreciate it, thank you!

https://pastelbattystore.bigcartel.com/

[lives-spent]

Hello.

I'm not one to write a journal normally, nevermind put one online.

I tried video journals though and they didn't work so here's my take two I suppose.

Anyway my name Is Michael and the asks should be open so send me stuff I guess.

[clawsextended]

stirring a comically enormous cauldron that contains only the gargantuan fucking headcanons i am slowly curating and formulating.

[thedrown]

BNHA OC- Xiezhi Update

Just a newer doodle of her since I haven't really anything My Hero in ages.

Hat Alts:

[jamiethebeeart]

Sketches

[kittenpower05]

Im back at work but my ttrpg ramblings have actively bit me in the ass. Time to BS a whole 800 word essay in 7 hours

[the-halfling-prince]

Started answering an ask, put it in my drafts, and it's gone now?

[generic-sonic-fan]

Apologies to Fernsnailz- here's the MLA citations for all my fics that are Omega Propaganda

Generic-Sonic-Fan. “My Soul to Keep.” Tumblr, 1 Mar. 2023, www.tumblr.com/generic-sonic-fan/710621049217286144/my-soul-to-keep?source=share.

Generic-Sonic-Fan. “5 Times Omega Denied That He Cared + the 1 time he admitted it.” Tumblr, 5 June 2023, www.tumblr.com/generic-sonic-fan/719260766483759104/5-times-omega-denied-that-he-cared-the-1-time-he?source=share.

Generic-Sonic-Fan. "Residual Orders." Tumblr, 3 July 2023, https://www.tumblr.com/generic-sonic-fan/721851263896174592/residual-orders?source=share

Generic-Sonic-Fan. "I Can't Accept All This." Tumblr, 9 April 2023, https://www.tumblr.com/generic-sonic-fan/714139779043835904/collapse?source=share

Generic-Sonic-Fan. "It Won't Scar." Tumblr, 25 May 2023, https://www.tumblr.com/generic-sonic-fan/718332215109582848/it-wont-scar?source=share

Generic-Sonic-Fan. "Debugging." Tumblr, 4 May 2023, https://www.tumblr.com/generic-sonic-fan/716428317176250368/debugging?source=share

Generic-Sonic-Fan. "Self-Indulgent Omega Interpretation." Tumblr, 2 March 2023, https://www.tumblr.com/generic-sonic-fan/710720974241316864/you-should-share-some-of-your-favorite-headcanons?source=share

@fernsnailz

[wholelottatransbians]

The Meta Liberation Army

In Generation Zero, the MLA aren't strictly evil here. They serve as a major antagonistic force, but aren't evil. While the Vigilantes (need to come up with a better name) want coexistence and peace, the MLA want revolution. They are willing to do some serious damage if it means furthering their goals.

Notable Members:

Destro, their leader

Curious

Sazanka

Dabi

Spinner

Magne

Ingenium

Tentacole

Tsukuyomi

Jack Mantis

Vantablack

Gevaudan

Mindjack

Grand

Turtle Neck

[meezer]

omg guys. we are making it out of this essay

[majorleagueamateur]

“The Breakfast Bunch - Detention Dance”

Here’s a piece I did based off that one scene from “The Breakfast Club”, but in classic MLA fashion, with my OCs.

I’ll get into true fanart someday. The OC tags on Tumblr are abandoned wastelands 🥲

[inkbomber]

all these characters suck a little bit. the generals? suck. walters? sucks. sonic? sucks. tom? sucks. robotnik sucks so fucking bad. stone sucks. maddie sucks. every agent sucks. gerald sucks. shadow kind of sucks. maria might be the only character that doesn’t suck frankly, and she’s still rollerblading in the hallways.

this of course comes from a very simplistic/pessimistic and overly critical pov, but like. every g.u.n. associated character is working for the us gov. tom and wade are cops. sonic is self-absorbed. maddie hits her husband. gerald is a misogynist [on top of everything else]. rockwell is anti-alien in a way that is, textually, shitty. g.u.n. as an organization still built the eclipse canon! fucking why? because they suck!

these facts dont keep me from enjoying the characters or story, but they are facts. the jokes are also canon, y’know? the framing of the story is what flavors them, makes them less than human. they are just characters. but if you think about what you’re shown for longer than a week, about the parallels, about them as people, stuff starts clicking into place. none of these characters are perfect, because a perfect person 1: doesn’t exist, and 2: is deeply uninteresting.

turns out the the default state of humanity is just sucking a bit.