#the only real thing that had nothing to do with him was the plf

[s0fter-sin]

one thing i kinda hate is how everything always comes back to all might. like, i know that’s the entire point but if you’re not really gonna go in and explore the unique ramifications of every hero being inspired by him and every villain being wronged by him then it’s just repetitive and gets boring

[salvagesmha]

MHA Villain Speculation - The Curious Case of Trumpet

Now for another reason why I made this seperate blog: to post my just weird, gut feeling-ish theories concerning the Villains and their roles in the MHA series! No real evidence, just me speculating based upon how they were handled in the series.

And for our first entry we have everyone's...well, someone's favorite politician Villain! Representing the Meta Liberation Army it's Koku Hanabata AKA Trumpet...

And what I think of his weird treatment and what the 'original plan' in my eyes was supposed to be.

So I'll put it out there right off the bat: I do not think that Trumpet was supposed to live past the MVA Arc.

Now, that is a pretty big thing to claim and don't blame people for being skeptical. After all Trumpet's faction, the Hearts and Minds Party, is a major aspect of the PLF if they were to win, being the driving force to steer education, and thus the future more towards what the organization wants after Shigaraki destroys everything. It's even brought up again after his arrest and how the party was dismantled...

Yet, with that in mind, I can't help but feel this is something akin to a band-aid meant to involve someone who wasn't supposed to last as long as he did.

So why do I feel this way. Well, from the get go, MVA ends with a bit of an awkward note when it came to the MLA executive side. No matter how you slice it, the fact that Hori planned only for Curious to die out of the named five is just very weird in hindsight. After all, if the plan was for the MLA to join the LOV, then why not have her stick around as well? Why just kill one? It's just an odd detail, I'm sure everyone else would think so as well.

Well, what if she wasn't supposed to be alone? Given how much of a forefront he played in the Revival Celebration, from spurning the MLA soldiers to attack and even welcoming the League when they come to Deika City with Curious, (especially in the image above), I feel as though he was supposed to die in the event as well. If I were to be specific, I think the initial plan was for Spinner to prove Trumpet's view of him and his 'weak Quirk' wrong by using the strengths of his Quirk to get close enough to kill Trumpet. In turn, Spinner is able to lighten Shigaraki's load since Trumpet's death removes the effects of his Quirk to the soldiers of the MLA and makes them fall even easier for Twice's Sad Man Parade to handle.

But something happened. I think, ultimately, the plotline had to be scrapped as Hori went into Shigaraki's ordeal with Re-Destro. Perhaps it was to preserve the pace or maybe its because there may have been pressure from editors or the like to hurry the arc up, whatever the reason was, the fight was scrapped and Trumpet was spared as a result.

If that's the case, then it goes a way to explain the oddity concerning his placement in the PLF. Namely, the fact that he doesn't get to be a Commander of a Regiment (which is bizarre when you consider that Twice was the sole Commander of the Black Regiment, even though Trumpet easily could have been a Co-commander of it). Re-Destro made sense since he was the leader of the MLA as a whole up until Shigaraki, so he's pretty much the Vice Commander of the entirety of the organization as a whole.

But Trumpet? He just gets nothing, and while you can argue It's because he's a working politician, keep in mind Skeptic was a Commander while also being an executive of Feels Good Inc. He could certainly have been both, and likely be a good fit for Brown or Black. It's odd, but if you consider he wasn't supposed to live past MVA, then it starts making sense. He was supposed to be dead, so Hori didn't really have a set Regiment to give him, and by the time the First War came around, he opted not to really bother with it.

And on the First War? If you consider he was supposed to be dead at this point, than his involvement makes his role in it star to click...or rather. Lack of it. He doesn't do anything. Geten, Re-Destro and, especially, Skeptic had major roles to play in the War and Trumpet easily could have had a part in leading the army about or boosting them with his Quirk. Turning 16K people into a very dangerous force to contend with the Heroes! Yet-

He's taking out off-screen without affecting a thing. But why? Well, another reason I think Trumpet was supposed to be bite it in MVA, beyond giving Spinner his moment, has to do with Incite.

It's one of those Quirks that would fall into 'One-Shot Villain' tier on the latter of how tricky it is to write around. Think of Mustard. His Gas, while it worked for the Training Camp arc, would have been a nightmare to use in later arcs if he were to stick around given how effective it is as neutralizing enemies, require someone to be there with gas masks, and he can't really work with his allies since he could knock them out too - as much as I love Mustard, its very understandable why he couldn't stick around.

Trumpet also fits the bill since his Incite can very easily stack the favor in the Villains without much effort. With one speech, those thousands of soldiers can be buffed to prove an even more dangerous threat to the Heroes by being so caught in a frenzy they refuse to go down, and if worked in conjunction with Gigantomachia, I could see them even pushing back the Heroes to have even more escape!! Add that to having powerhouses like Geten and RD around, the aforementioned Giganto, Advisors (in theory), and the League (especially Shigaraki) fighting and the cards become too stacked for the Heroes to win. But if Trumpet were dead? The canon story becomes a lot more smooth as the soldiers have no one really giving them that boost to be as dangerous as they would be in MLA, and makes most of their capture make a lot more sense.

But, since he was left alive? Well, Hori's answer to that awkward fact, seemed to be just 'pretend he's dead' and just stick him in a panel for later, and be done with him. Which...was an option XD

On the matter of the Hearts and Minds Party, I also argue that the PLF could still use it even without Trumpet being around. He can just be a martyr for them to promote Liberation even more, which makes sense since Trumpet did that with Curious himself. Heck, a cool thing I think could have worked out is for both Trumpet and Curious to have successors in the MLA since their spots are vacant. For example,

Chrome and Diva, for lack of names (Hori please give these guys names), could have been selected to take up the mantle left behind by their predecessors, having been part of their party/Shoowaysha, respectively. That being said, given the PLF reshuffling, at the current moment, they were stuck as just #1 Advisors to the Commanders until a proper time to name them could be met. Give a bit of depth to them.

But that, seemingly (they haven't shown up yet after all), isn't the case! What we are left with is just Trumpet being the most 'there' Villain in the PLF until he's beat which pretty much has him at the bottom of the heap of MLA effect on the story. Yes, even Curious beats him in my eyes since her vestige/ghost still haunts Toga even in the Second War. At best, Trumpet got a passing mention of his own party being dissolved...which is even worse since now since its just confirming it can't be used any more XD

Now, do I wish Trumpet was dead in story? Not really, I wished all five of the MLA executives not only lived, but got some sort of story to head into the Second War - instead of just Skeptic (even though he is the GOAT~). There's a lot you can do with politician villains in stories, so seeing him pretty much reduced to the side was disappointing. But that's life, maybe he can appear in the jail that's holding Compress and Geten? But that's just hope on my end!

Though anything is better for Trumpet than essentially being a Walking Dead determinant character~ 'Yeah, this guy lived....but aside from some minor dialogue doesn't do much and is fated to be gone anyway'. Poor guy!

[haleigh-sloth]

I've been seeing a lot of posts popping up about how redemption for the league means sacrificing their ideals... and I'm incredibly curious about what those ideals are?? They never mention exactly *what* they are alongside it but also I don't particularly want to ask and actually post on twitter.

The "ideals" fandom at large tends to think they have are ideals that involve changing and challenging society.

They are challenging society for sure, but the story does not portray them as the good guys for doing this, and somehow this fact has been completely lost on people and they haven't put 2 and 2 together as to why the story won't throw the villains a bone. The bone being them winning and being acknowledged as "right" lol.

I've noticed recently people still like....cite Dabi's broadcast as peak characterization for him and that's wild to me. It's like they haven't noticed that the story kinda doesn't acknowledge his broadcast at all, and that he doesn't actually like have any desire to see anything he spouted lip service about come to fruition.

I get it, to an extent. But Touya's true motives were not to take down hero society, it was to hurt his dad. If his true motive was to shake up society for the greater good he wouldn't be targeting his family or letting them carelessly get caught up in the violence, he wouldn't be bringing violence upon cities of people who had fuck nothing to do with his situation.

If he actually gave half of a shit about the stuff he preached, he wouldn't have told them to criticize heroes (which is fair!) BUT THEN ALSO put them in a situation where HEROES are the ONLY PEOPLE keeping uninvolved civilians alive!!

Also he wouldn't be telling Shouto he's an ungrateful little shit for not capitalizing on being Endeavor's son lmao. He displayed his raw jealousy in their fight and everyone just *POOF* FORGOT THAT I GUESS.

That's just with Touya, I could go on and on. The others too though. You have Spinner with an army of people who honestly HAVE a really great cause to rally together and stand up for, and Spinner put himself in a situation where he literally told them "I don't care" when they were voicing their grievances out in the open. Toga straight up doesn't care. Tomura doesn't care about changing jack shit because he just wants to kill it all. And his "want" to destroy it all actually stems from an extremely distorted perception of himself and his existence, so even that is a false belief of his. Everything he yells about comes from an extremely twisted perception of literally just himself. He sees hero society for the shit it is, but he wants to destroy it all because of how he feels about himself, which has led him to being the enemy to literally everyone and nobody giving a shit about the valid points he has. Same goes for Touya. It's hard for them to look at his broadcast shitting on heroes and take it seriously as he is parading on Machia through multiple cities leaving civilians to rely on literally nobody else besides HEROES.

The only LOV members who have a non-distorted cause they actually want something done about is Spinner and Compress, but because they're in a little terrorist club they don't do shit about those things.

There are no real ideals that the lov like, legitimately care to do literally anything about.

The end of the PLF war did put the heroes in a negative light, which, mission accomplished, but only kind of. Just mostly the ones who were giving up and quitting the hero profession, not just the title and meaning held behind being a Hero Professional. In the end, the heroes were still the ones protecting civilians anyway and within the story the heroes are still THE positive force in their universe. Within the context of the story, that DID NOT change. The heroes are still good, full of hope. So um, really and truly the villains didn't accomplish much on that front.

It annoys me when people say there is no change to society. We're seeing it now in this final arc. Gentle and Nagant. That is change. Positive change. And surprise surprise, it wasn't because of the villains' terrorism, it was because of heroic influence from Izuku. That's the point. There is change happening, and it's happening because of positive forces.

There is a reason the story repeatedly puts the villains in situations where they are not the good guys. There's a reason the story makes them victims that need SAVING rather than victims that need a podium to stand on. People want them to have the podium, but they're not gonna get it. At the very least, they won't get it until they are saved by heroes.

[stillness-in-green]

Advisorama Asks

Two from @shockersalvage that have been waiting for an inexcusably long time to one I just got from @plf-advisor-stan that is relevant to the theme. Included: Spinner's advisors, Bindi the Younger and The Question, and Scarecrow maybe has an actual name?!?

She is not alone in thinking that it’s some real BS, let me tell you.  Like, if nothing else, I don’t think the back edges of that mob should have even been able to hear all the dialogue going on at the front.  Anyway, while I definitely don’t think Kurogiri should have left Spinner on the floor when he even bothered to bring Mic along, if he did, maybe Nimble will live up to her fan name I gave her her position as Spinner’s No. 1 and evade capture long enough to get Spinner out of there.

—

Hmmmm.  I assume you meant these two?

I guess they could be.  They’ve got similar silhouettes and broad similarities—short hair that divides in the middle; a white mask with a dark pattern—but there’s just enough different going on that I would probably not assume so without further appearances.

In direct comparison, Big Sis Bindi lacks those over-the-eyes bangs, her hair is a darker shade, and she of course has the big sweater neck thing.  The left figure’s hair lacking the screentone shading could just be because they’re so far in the background, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue for various other tiny background faces, so I don’t see why it would be an issue for this one.  Likewise, the horizontal dash just below the nose could be the outline of the sweater neck, but it looks more like a mouthline to me.

The other figure has the white mask down, but the enormous Kamen Rider-esque eye pattern is quite different from the question mark that should be there.  More subtly, the white mask seems to continue all the way down the neck, cowl-style, while The Question has that high black collar.

But!  That said, I appreciate that I’m not the only one obsessively looking for Advisor Appearances, so I thank you for calling my attention to it.  If anything, I expect we’ll see at least Big Sis Bindi again, probably with Brand, since we haven’t seen where he wound up yet, or possibly Hose Face, though we’ve already seen him once and not, as I recall, with any other pre-established PLF faces.

I do wonder where Spinner’s Number 3 has gotten off to, though…

—

HMMMMM. I wonder if that is his name, or if it's just Horikoshi shorthanding what Scarecrow's whole deal was going to be?

I ran it by friendchat and @codenamesazanka found that the Japanese on the original version of that page is a little unclear; a fan translator took their best guess about it, back when the volume it was in came out, and offered ヴィスガスタス”, visugasutasu, which no one could make any sense of.

However, Nal also noted that if the smudgy first character was di instead of vi, you got disugasutasu—Disgustas, which sounds an awful lot like Disgust, and disgust was a major theme in his speech to the hospital mob, like so:

So is this a reclamation thing? He had the "you're creepy and gross" sentiment thrown at him so much that he decided to take it up as a weapon? Or is it, again, just a shorthand for his general shtick? How does it compare to other examples of Horikoshi's design-phase sketches and notes? And if Horikoshi had the name picked out, why not include it anywhere? Just another example of Horikoshi's ongoing refusal to give plot-significant heteromorphs actual names?[1]

I also initially thought that Disgustas doesn't fit the typical MLA name scheme, but there are enough caveats there that I wouldn't consider it wholly disqualifying. Skeptic, Trumpet, Curious and Sanctum are all well and good English words, but Destro is not the same as Destroy, Re-Destro even less so, and Geten a complete outlier. So "word that resembles a relevant English word but is itself not quite that word" is not completely unprecedented.

It still makes me frowny, though, that the MLA gets shafted, the heteromorph plotline gets shafted, the single most eloquent speaker on the matter of heteromorph oppression gets EXTRA shafted, and also maybe that speaker's name is a reference to how gross the people who oppressed him and scarred him for life thought he was.

Like, for real, I have enough problems with Shouji preaching the moral superiority of passive endurance in the face of discrimination. By contrast, the MLA's whole deal is the violent overthrow of the harmful status quo; they won't even use a term their own founder's martyred mother coined because that term has been too bastardized by society at large. Spinner's #2 specifically decries various aspects of the status quo as phony, a sham, a false and shallow facade that's incapable of providing the "light" that heteromorphs need. He's the last person who should be willing to wear a label foisted off on him by the non-heteromorphic majority.

It all just feels like more of the entirely unnecessary two-faced bent #2 showed at the hospital, and, I suppose, in that regard, it's not entirely unfitting. I even kind of like the way, if his name is Disgustas, he answers his own question with both a verbal answer and a visual one via his dramatic face reveal.

"Take a look beyond the cities! What do they still say there?" In pulling off his hood, he implies the answer is him, his name: disgust. Disgust is what the people beyond the cities say. "'You give me the creeps.'"

It's a powerful moment. Indeed, language reclamation is always powerful. Still, though, that kind of internal calculation runs counter to the true believer zealotry he'd been written with prior to the hospital scene, and I admit I'm still pretty sore about that discrepancy.

But! In any case, thanks very much for bringing it to my attention! Anything about the advisors is a thing I will always want to hear about. For the time being, I'm going to keep on calling #2 Scarecrow, but if he ever turns up being called Disgustas (or Disgastas or Disgustus or however it gets romanized) in a volume extra or databook or something to that effect, I'll make the best of it at that time.[2]

Thanks for the asks, both of you!

------ 1: GIVE HER A NAME, HORIKOSHI. 2: Or I'll keep quibbling about it like I did Dabi's quirk being named Blueflame in the Hawks Villain Report. Like hell it is! ------

[quirkwizard]

If Toga had been captured before she could kidnap and impersonate Camie, how do you think this would have affected the Overhaul Arc and beyond?

This just gives me the mental image of Camie taking her out. Like she goes in for the stab only for it to be an illusion as Camie appears behind her.

Obviously, none of the shenanigans during the License Exam happen. While these would have minor changes, like whether or not Camie passes, nothing that would drastically alter the story. I also don't think that anything with the League would change right away. Even at this point, I doubt that Toga would betray them. The first big change occurred during the Overhaul Arc. Since Toga played such a huge role in it, that would warrant a lot of changes. I've already talked about what that would entail, like her not taunting Mimic and not being around to redirect the fight with Rikiya. However, what's interesting is who would replace her. Since Tomura refused to give up Kurogiri, he would send Twice and either Mr. Compress, Dabi, or Spinner. Most likely Spinner as he's one of the least valuable assets. No matter which one is picked, I could see some notable changes in the story, both during and after the arc. These three members  played a big part in attacking the convoy holding Overhaul. So, through the positioning of certain players, the League might never be able to properly attack Overhaul, nor take the Quirk Destroying Bullets.

Then there comes the MLA Arc. Without Toga around, there wouldn't be anyone to fight Curious, meaning that she's still alive and no one for Jin to look after. This is really bad because, without Toga's near-death experience prompting Double's mental breakthrough, he can't use the Sadman's Parade, a major component in the LOV's victory. You could argue that he might be able to have a breakthrough thanks to Skeptic's interference, but I think Toga had a much bigger part in that. So without that, it's pretty likely that the League may just lose outright, overwhelmed by the sheer number of fighters. There wouldn't be a lot changed during the PLF War. It's just now that Toga doesn't kill all those random heroes, have that confrontation with Uraraka, or get a sample of Twice's blood. Now, she could potentially be one of the people freed during the grand prison escape, but I think it's more likely that she'd be sent to a psych ward given her age and condition. Finally, she wouldn't be around to pull Izuku off track during the confrontation with All For One, meaning that he'd still be around to fight Tomura. Now, since this part of the story is still on-going, we don't know how this will play out in canon, so I'm just going to end it here.

As for anything character-focused, it's hard to say. While her character is tied into Izuku and Uraraka's stories, the full ramifications of their interactions are yet to be seen. Maybe what she does will work as a wake-up call for some other parts of society, but that is yet to be seen. I do know that the League would be in pretty dire straits. Their last big move of collecting hero blood was a complete flop, resulting in one of them being captured, and Magne's murder not too long after. I could see the rest of the gang questioning his leadership or even threatening to leave because of how poorly he's been handling things. Twice especially is going to be in a really bad spot. Losing Magne was already a huge blow to him. I can only imagine how bad it would be for Twice if he lost Toga on top of it. I also feel like it would be really hard for him to develop. Toga did a lot to anchor him and help push him along. So without that, I could see him spiraling even worse then he was before. As for Toga, it's hard to say. While she could get the help she needs if she was captured, it all depends on how the law handles a case like here. Even if real help was offered, I don't see it sticking that well given Toga's stalwart beliefs about herself, her obsessions, and the world around her.

[problemswithbooks]

Yea I think hori is going in that direction too but it should have had a better set up back in the plf war. Plus with all the nonsense in between the 2 wars, we currently have a mess on our hands.

The whole Villain arc really confused me honestly, because I very much expected Hori to use it to distance the LoV from AfO. To give the League, and Shigaraki in particular a set of goals that were better then AfO's.

And to an extent Shigaraki does, sort of have better goals then AfO--because he wants his pals to be happy, but it's in a very 'shrugs shoulders' do what you want, sort of way. The only real drive we've seen Shigaraki have is for destruction, the one thing AfO groomed him for his entire life.

It also kind of makes Shigaraki look dumb. I was kind of shocked that he had his flashback, and in said flashback he hears AfO say he could have manipulated his memories, and remember AfO being incredibly cruel to him, and not start to question his 'master' more.

Realistically, I guess it makes sense, but from a story perspective I don't think it works well. Mostly because by the time Shigaraki gets taken over I don't really see much of a difference between him and AfO. Shigaraki and AfO want almost exactly the same thing--end Heroes and destroy everything. Their only differences are that Shigaraki's goals are those things +friends, while AfOs are that +personal world domination.

When Shigaraki got possessed nothing really changed, Shigaraki would have tried to kill everyone regardless--was already targeting Izuku. It doesn't matter who the Heroes lose to because the outcome is nearly the same and it becomes a battle of pick your poison. Especially when you consider that Shigaraki's original plan was to let the PLF take over once he destroyed everything, so it really would have been Dictator (megalomaniac flavor) Vs. Dictator (eugenics flavor).

I also just feel like the Hero/kids stories and the Villain stories are to disconnected. Hori could have introduced more stuff in the MVA arc and it still wouldn’t have helped if nothing touched on during those chapters was backed up by stuff in the Hero chapters. 

Take the whole Mutant Quirk discrimination. Before the Villain arc, it was there, but only through some one off insults that were treated no differently then how those same insults (lizard, dog, monkey) would be seen today. They were rude, sure, but didn’t seem to be that terrible. 

But the MVA arc had a cult that dressed like KKK members, who wanted to kill all mutants. I’m not sure how much Hori knows about the history of the KKK and how much using that aesthetic would change the tone of the story for western (specifically American readers), but it very much does. Now those rude, but ultimately harmless insults become slurs, and due to the KKK references, implied to be on par with the N-word. Suddenly Shinsou, Dabi and Shoto have become retroactively people who use slurs--which I don’t think was Hori’s intent.

But this is even more of an issue because when we go to the kids/Heroes, this doesn’t even seem to be a problem. 

Some people try to say that it’s because the kids are sheltered and blinded by Hero worship, but that doesn’t make sense narratively or from a RL perspective. Sure Izuku and the non-mutant characters could be blind to this discrimination, but the mutant kids would not, and it doesn't make much sense that they wouldn’t bring it up on occasion. Like say, Ojiro being pissed that Shinsou called him a slur, and Shinsou needing to apologize to him for it. Or one of the Mutant kids being annoyed, but unsurprised that Gang Orca was picked by the HPSC to play the villain during their test. 

And if Hori really does want to present it as the kids being ignorant/blinded by Hero Society, then the narrative has to play into that, by showing that they are ignoring obvious issues, and later giving them a revelation about it. 

None of it has been framed that way even when it was eventually brought in the Hero/kids story. When Izuku saved the Mutant woman he didn’t realize anything about the oppression of Mutants--he acted the same way he would when saving anyone. He doesn’t even think or comment on that fact Mutants are being thrown out of shelters based solely on appearance. It just feels really shallow and off. 

And this is a similar issue in all of the villains backstories/reasons for being villains. Those problems just aren’t shown as problems--even in the background, when we focus on the main characters. In fact a lot of what we see on the Hero side contradicts what the LoV say. So the LoV’s issues have become very tell don’t show, or worse, tell and show contradicting material. It’s just a mess and it makes me sad because it’s such a waste of potential.    

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 259, Replies Part 1

1) “Oh its the the Todoroki`s new home? Or is it Natsuo`s house? If its the latter, well, I do wonder who that girl in the back is… My boy, that doesn`t look like a maid, are you dating or something?”-I think it was sorta brought up around the time the wonder trio were joining in on the Todoroki family dinner, but I Think Fuyumi mentioned that he has been dating somebody who was a potential girlfriend – it’s just that Natsuo’s reluctant to bring her or the topic of her anywhere near the same vicinity as his dad and the situation afterwards made it a forgotten topic, what with Natsuo’s near-death and Endeavour deciding to further extradite himself from his family’s life.

2) “Oh- Wait a- What- Wait, did we knew that the doctor was quirkless? I don`t remember that detail- what the fuck- alright, the fact he`s so focused on developing new and powerful quirks seems… even more worrisome now. Also he served All for One and he didn`t even requested a single quirk for himself?”- Huh, you somehow have a copy of the translation that includes the doctor’s original name. Honestly, I’m quite disappointed that it had to be changed, because it not only really suited him, it was educational and informative, but since the topic it broached was one a lot of people in power aren’t happy about, they had to compromise and Horikoshi was forced to change it afterwards. "Shiga" was meant to indicate his admiration for and desire to be closer to All For One, whose real surname is Shigaraki, hence him taking part of his masters name for himself; "Maruta" supposedly refers to his appearance, with "maru" meaning "round" and "ta" meaning "fat." In addition, it's a phonetic reversal of his fake name, "Daruma". The ‘Maruta’ thing also more importantly referencees Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. Unit 731 routinely conducted tests on human beings who were dehumanized and internally referred to as "logs"- In Japanese, ‘Maruta’- to disguise what the reports about the facilities’ production were actually referring to. Though Horokoshi claims he really just meant the whole ‘he’s fat’ deal, it’s kinda obvious he was really aiming for a bit of historical accuracy here and drawing a parallel between the dehumanisation of what was done to those people in the experiments and what Shiga himself is doing to so many people- including literal orphaned children-  all for the sake of a monstrous master and to satisfy his own sick love of his ‘science’. But since that touched a sore spot the Japanese administration would rather forget about, Horikoshi had to cave and change the name down the line. Like, there are current Japanese generations who are completely ignorant this was ever a part of their nation’s history, because it’s been that thoroughly whitewashed and suppressed as a massive black mark in Japan

3) “What a fucking saint the good doctor here is, amiright? Don`t even look like he is creating a biological super soldier that will destroy humanity, right? And that`s not even getting started with the nomus.”- The deepest shadows exist under the candle. Nobody would suspect a modern-day mother Teresa like him of secretly being a pseudo-satanic worshiper behind closed door, but there’s nothing other than the word ‘hellish’ to describe what his work is doing, and his job allows him all the access and resources he needs to move undetected. On the other hand, because he’s such a well-known figure, he by necessity has to remain hidden and secretive even when dealing with Tomura and through him the PLF, despite all the aid he’s giving them, and his direct involvement with Tomura is a sign that AFO doesn’t have any other backup plans in place or surprise allies he can spring on the heroes like Gigantomachia. Take him down and AFO’s scheme get stopped cold, because Maruta was the one he trusted to run the game in his absence, and getting directly involved as he has means that he’s as risk now of being exposed, outmanoeuvred, and caught- not to mention, getting a very strong pummelling from two pissed-off friends of one of his many, many past victims.

4) “Oh- Oh no. Oh no… that isn`t good… Ohhhh noooooooo- oh god that`s terrifying as fuck dude. I remember that I thought he stole Midoriya`s quirk for AfO, one of the old school theories I had, but now- Well, now I know that wasn`t just a theory, I just got wrong who he stole quirks from.

…

): “-  All the access. All the resources, and no pesky family or friends to come looking for them afterwards. All it takes is a few doctored records here and there and the orphanages ‘officially’ introduce a lot of kids to new families and happier lives. No-one notices if a few hundred of them vanish every year or so- there are just so many poor lost children, orphaned by rampaging villain attacks, and happy to believe whatever they’re told if they’re promised he’ll make everything better… I recall that the winged friend of Deku’s apparently referred to the doctor as his actual grandpa, and now I’m wondering if there really was any blood relation between them, or if he was just a kid Maruta adopted amongst many and asked them to refer to him as ‘Grandpa’ as a term of affection. Not that it would have made a blind bit of difference in the end- biological family or not, the kid was nothing but a resource to Maruta in the end.

5) “I mean, who wouldn`t trust ol` Doc Eggman here? look at his smile and little song, he`s almost a disney princess. “- He’s the complete opposite of AFO- somebody who looks harmless as opposed to AFO’s ominous appearance, but it makes a kind of karmic balance that both of them are equally depraved sickos underneath the polite masks they put on for others. They even seem to have a twisted sort of friendship from what we saw of them in Tomura’s flashback, which further informs AFO’s trust in Maruta with overseeing this crucial stage of his plans unsupervised by him. Of all the subordinates we’ve seen AFO have, he’s the only one of them that seems to have truly equal billing with AFO himself, and that right there tells you all you need to know about what kind of man he is at his core.

6) “Oh- Alright, so that wasn`t just narration, it was Phelps giving the debriefing of the target, and now he`s getting into how they are sure its him: they got into his office and found a secret closet with a picture of him on a fishing trip with All for One.”- In a twisted fashion, that’s not entirely an inaccurate description, because from what we’ve seen, both men seem to genuinely enjoy Maruta’s experimentation and research into pushing the boundaries of quirks and their applications, AFO looking at it from a more pragmatic perspective towards benefiting him as well, but they both actually treat the Nomu research as a fascinating hobby of sorts, delighted at seeing their puppets in action and hearing how they performed, trying to figure out how to improve on the next batch and what worked well this time. The fact that this research is human experimentation doesn’t even factor in to both men, they’re only interested in the results and the ‘fun’ that comes from successfully creating monsters that can be used in AFO’s plans like the OG Nomu and the High-Ends. 7) “Oh sure, a locked down room in the morgue where only a single person goes in and out of is deeeeeefinitely not suspicions at all-“- Makes it super-easy to get the bodies straight to the lab. If there’s ever a useful quirk that the doctor gets alerted to during a medical check-up or surgery, then maybe there’s a ‘accident’ and the patient mysteriously passes away due to complications. Terrible shame, but people die every day, and doctors aren’t miracle workers you know, can’t save everybody. And if they walk out the hospital fine and dandy, then AFO and his minions know about them and where they live and can arrange an ‘accident’ when nobody suspects a thing. Being in the medical profession really does give AFO and the doctor free reign to peruse an entire category of quirk lists through everybody’s national medical records and select the ones they like or have an interest in. And if they’re DOA when brought in apparently that’s not an issue either, since they were somehow able to preserve and mutate Shirakumo’s base quirk into its current warp gate status despite him having been dead for a while before they could sneak the body away. I don’t know if even AFO knows how it works, but apparently quirks exists in some kind of metaphysical state and can still be used and extracted even if the wielder themselves has passed on and all that’s left is a cadaver. 8) “IT WAS THAT FUCKING THING

WHY WOULD YOU LET IT SO CLOSE TO THE DOOR, EVEN MORE CONSIDERING THERE`S A BIG FUCKING SEE-THROUGH GLASS ON THE DOOR LEADING INTO IT?!”-  Maruta might be super-cautious about exposing his identity, but he’s in his special room in the middle of his own hospital where he’s free to work and experiment as much as he likes-his own personal ‘happy place’- and that level of security and comfort will cause even the most justifiably paranoid man to relax their guard a little no matter how cautious they are, especially once he’s through the door. He was probably a lot more cautious beforehand as well, but it’s implied that his pre-occupation with completing his ‘masterpiece’ in Tomura has also provided an additional distraction that’s made him a bit sloppier with double-checking everything around him as Tomura’s upgrades demands all his focus to ensure everything goes perfectly. Plus, I think he just left Johnny waiting for him at the door for him to return back ‘home’ like a cat or a puppy excitedly awaiting their master returning through the front door after a long day’s work, so it probably wasn’t entirely within his control that Johnny was sitting by the entranceway for him to enter.

9) “Well, to be honest I think it will be, considering he`s at an hospital where he supposedly has a secret lab where he`s working with nomus, you can bet your ass that he has more of them around. Dammit Phelps, did Makoto taught you nothing?!”- In this case, Maruta’s protection as a respected public figure in the medical community backfired upon him, as no matter how much of a diabolical mad scientist he is behind closed doors, and wants to continue doing mad science all the time, the fact that he has to make a regular public appearance as the respected doctor means he has to voluntarily leave the security of his lab with all its stored Nomu in their holding tanks and walk around exposed in the open. All it requires for the heroes to arrest him is to quietly walk up behind him, tap him on the shoulder and go, ‘what’s up motherfucker, you ready to have a bad time!?”, before he can react or try to reach the emergency exits.

@thelreads

[thyandrawrites]

People often discuss how Dabi's personal agenda brings him apart from the lov, bringing it up as the perfect example of how little they actually cooperate, but like. I feel like one argument they always fail to make when mentioning that is that Dabi has always had Shigaraki's okay to do so.

When people say that Dabi "doesn't care about the League", they often take it to mean that he acts against orders and ghosts them to avoid duty. But that's completely fanon...? Please don't forget that this panel exists.

Dabi literally checked with Tomura before he went off to do his own thing and Tomura let him.

That is trust.

Do you really think that Shigaraki would've let Dabi be the Vanguard Leader if he had so little faith that Dabi could act as a good second in command to vouch for Shigaraki's will when Shigaraki himself wasn't on the frontlines?

Or have we forgotten that Dabi has literally never been shown to act against Shigaraki's orders, either?

Let's do a recap. Training camp arc: Dabi successfully kidnaps Bakugou with minor losses on their side, and - ironically - he only loses the members who weren't sticking to the plan and went off on murdering sprees of their own. Shigaraki's first mission as a leader, the Usj attack, ended with a lot more losses on the League's ranks, not to mention the loss of the noumu he was entrusted with, also unlike Dabi. Just saying.

Chisaki's arc. Dabi was absent for most of it, true. But when he came back, he was literally on the frontlines again. He did his part in Snatches murder, even when we were later told he had some amounts of regrets over orphaning families.

Machia's arc. Dabi was, once again, there on the frontlines. His flames were useless against the giant, so it makes perfect sense when he told Shigaraki he wanted quits. Remember, Dabi's prolonged use of his quirk burns him. This wasn't Dabi not caring about helping. This was Dabi realizing that he was more useful elsewhere. Like recruiting Hawks, who he thought was an helpful asset for the league at the time. And again. Shigaraki let him.

Plf arc. Dabi gets dragged back. He shows reluctance about being pitted against an army, and I mean, who the fuck wouldn't? Let's be real. They were only six vs thousands. And Dabi is painfully aware of his own limits, so much so that he avoids fights whenever possible. But he sticks around all the same, and fights seriously too. Dabi. Who is all like "I don't care about your personal feelings". "Why do I have to fight them". "I don't care about the League". That Dabi. He stayed, and he fought.

Dabi, who still gets to be a leader even after Shigaraki's ranks expand, because he still has Shigaraki's trust.

Current war arc. Dabi, who is still painfully aware of his limits, goes back for Twice. Let's not forget here that Hawks has been taught to fight with his eyes closed since he was a child. Meanwhile Dabi has no hand-to-hand combat skills and can only rely on a quirk that burns him when he uses it for too long. That Dabi still went up against a Hawks at full power. Hawks who had all his feathers, and could still arrest him in his sleep. For Twice. When Dabi's prior precedent for trying to fight Hawks and Endeavor was waiting for them to have a foot in the grave. When Dabi literally had no reason to even march back to where Jin was, because there was a war outside that he was meant to fight. I mean, sure, some might argue that he was there to settle some kind of score with Hawks and nothing else. But then why going out of his way to reassure Twice? Why the high five, why the reminder that Toga and Compress were counting on him? Those are not typical things Dabi does. He's not buddy-buddy. Those were done for Jin's benefit, because Dabi saw how distressed he was.

So. Newsflash, Dabi does actually care about the League. And he IS cooperative, even if he bitches and moans about it. That doesn't mean that he's not also a lone wolf, or a rude asshole, or that he doesn't have an agenda of his own. It just means that Shigaraki is aware of it, and that is fine with him.

And before anyone argues with that, too. Let me remind you of another important panel:

Shigaraki is absolutely the kind of leader who lets his underlings pursue their own goals.

When Spinner showed doubts about his leadership, Tomura didn't force him to stay in the League. Rather, he showed him better leadership, and gave him a reason to stay.

Hell, he never even forced Bakugou to join their ranks. Sure, he kidnapped him. But then he also untied him and gave him a chance to speak up for himself, and when everyone else protested, Shigaraki reminded them that they should've treated Bakugou as an equal, if they wanted him to be one of them. Basically, he gave Bakugou the choice of expressing his wants (when the heroes chained him up to a podium and forced him to take a medal he didn't want).

So. All of this to say... People want to think that Dabi is a lot more independent and self-reliant than he actually is, but I feel like in doing so they not only mischaracterize him, but Shigaraki as well.

[the-final-sif]

My head produced a scene, basically what happens after the ending to my blue core Katsuki vs Overhaul post where Dabi captures Katsuki after Katsuki defeated Overhaul. The whole fight/fights were broadcast out, and the heroes get free too late to stop Dabi from taking the heavily weakened Katsuki.

So, the LOV/PLF now have Katsuki. He’s still heavily weakened and injured, but they patch him up as best they can and he’s put on painkillers, which have the added benefit of keeping him hazy so escaping his harder for him. 

Aizawa is losing his fucking mind, as are a lot of class 1-A, but unlike before they have no leads on where Katsuki is, given that the league now has way more resources to keep him hidden.

Or at least, they think they have no leads.

Hawks, a double agent, is working on fixing that. Sort of. It doesn’t take him long to find out where Katsuki is. The league is wary about letting him have any information on the matter, but Hawks is a charmer and convinces them he just likes the kid and wants to be sure he’s okay.

Finally, Hawks gets down to where Katsuki is being kept. He’s meant to stay quiet so Katsuki doesn’t notice him. That was his plan anyways.

His plan did not involve a wide eyed Dabi being in the cell already.

Katsuki is high on painkillers, gaze bleary as he recounts his mother’s anger and blame after the last time he got kidnapped. His words are slurred and voice quiet, sad, weak. Towards the end of his story, he refocuses, red eyes seeming to see Dabi again, for just long enough for him to get out a single sentence.

“Guess you'd understand what that's like, huh Touya?”

And then he’s passed out. Leaving Hawks and Dabi both equally stunned and confused.

Dabi recovers first, pushing his way out of the cell almost in a frenzy, brushing past everyone else to get up to the roof. Desperate for fresh air and to be alone. He is not alone. Hawks is stunned for several seconds longer, but once he regains himself, once all the puzzle pieces fall into place, he’s surging after Dabi, frantic to not lose him. Not again.

When Hawks gets to the roof, Dabi is on the far side of it, sitting on the edge with his legs dangling off the side. The door was silent, Hawks was silent, Dabi is not looking at him. That doesn’t stop Dabi from speaking the moment Hawks pauses in indecision.

"I know you're there."

Throwing on a smile Hawks tries to play it off, stepping forward as if nothing is wrong. As if this doesn’t change everything.

"Hey, uh, sorry, didn't mean to intrude, I just saw you and you looked kinda upset-"

"Don't lie to me, spy. I know who you are. I know you heard him."

Hawks blood freezes, but Dabi's made no move to attack him, so he steps a little closer against his better judgment. He’s not afraid. How could he be?

"... So I'm guessing the kid got it right?"

"... Go away."

"That's a yes then."

Hawks is still a few steps back, and he's got so many mixed emotions but in the end, he's a hero. He does what he does best. Besides, there’s no way he could walk away from this. Not again.

"Listen, I don't know what hap-"

"Fuck off. I'm not doing this. I'm not someone you can save, Hawks. Don't waste your time. Just take the kid and go. I figured out you're a spy, your cover was blown, blah blah, so you didn't have any other choice but to cut your losses and save who you could."

Hawks' eyes soften, hesitation slipping away as he steps forward, hopping up onto the roof's edge to sit next to Dabi. They’re sitting too close together, but Dabi doesn’t try to move away despite his words. Both their gazes look out over the horizon as Hawks tone shifts to something regretful.

"I can't save him."

That gets Dabi to look at him, blue eyes angry and accusing.

"The fuck are you talking about? You could cut those damn chains and be gone before the damn alarm even sounds."

His words, an odd hostile vote of confidence, only serve to make Hawks' expression fall further into soft apologetic sadness.

"You’re right, I could do that, but I can't save him.” He pauses for a moment. “I figured out his location two days ago. I've been lying to the Commission about it since I found out. I’m going to keep lying to them about it."

Now Dabi just looks confused, eyes narrowed and face scrunched up as he tries to figure out Hawks’ game.

"Why the hell would you do that? What's stopping you from just taking his ass back to his shitty high school?"

Hawks' voice turned cold, eyes hallow. He looks more defeated than Dabi had ever seen him, which isn’t saying much. But he also looks more defeated than Touya had ever seen him, and that says a lot more.

"Because if I bring him back, if any hero brings him back, he won't be returning to UA. At all."

Then after a beat, almost as an afterthought, Hawks continued. There’s too casual a tone to his words, as if he’s on the news giving an update on a bad situation while trying not to let his mask break.

"The Commission saw the broadcast. Everyone did. Everyone saw a 16 year old unleash the equivalent of a small nuclear weapon in under 10 seconds. According to one of his classmates, the kid can do it with no real prep and a 12 to 24 hour recovery. No long lasting damage if the attacks are spaced out enough. After the Commission saw that, they gave me new orders."

It takes a moment for Dabi to process that. He's almost gaping at Hawks in horror and revulsion. Hawks doesn’t need to say what his orders are. Both of them already know what the Commission does.

"They can't- I mean I know they'd fucking try it, but UA wouldn't give up one of their best students. Fuck, that homeroom teacher of his wouldn't put up with that shit."

"His parents already signed the forms. Hardly took anything to convince them. UA has no legal ground to stop anything.”

Dabi tries a different approach, still unwilling to believe it.

"It wouldn't work. He's too old, you know how stubborn that damn kid is. I can tell you for a fact we aren’t gonna be able to break him, and they sure as hell won’t either."

"They can. They’ll make it work. One way or another.”

That’s all Hawks has to say, both of them know how true it is.

“The public wouldn’t-”

Hawks barks out a laugh, and it is an ugly, angry sound of resentment.

"They've got it all planned out, No matter what state he's in when he's recovered, the story is he got brainwashed by you lot and required a specialized recovery program along with extensive therapy. That excuses the personality change and sudden cooperation. UA can't do shit about it, even with their PR influence, they let the kid get kidnapped twice and the public is already upset with how they’ve handled him."

Hawks' gaze turns bitter and his voice is near venomous.

"The Commissions’ already got a new name picked out for him and everything. ‘Firecracker’ because they thought it'd ‘create positive associations’ and ‘make him more marketable to children’."

Both of them need a moment after that. Dabi looks away, furious now. Hawks takes a deep breath and gives him a watery grin of helplessness.

"Like I said, I could get the kid out of here, but I can't save him."

Dabi takes a deep breath too. Then another. His anger focuses, turning from unfiltered rage to a targeted fury. He knows what Hawks was saying now. Knows just how this story goes. How it’s already gone. But things are not the same as they were back then, and Dabi is sick of this fucking story.

"Alright. So, the kid can't go back until those fucks are out of the way. We're sitting on the roof of a fucking villain organization that's already trying to bring down the government. I'm one of it's fucking commanders. That’s not a problem. Or at least it won’t be for very long."

For the first time since he got the orders, hope sparks in Hawks' chest, and it's his turn to be wide eyed. If it was anyone else- anyone in the fucking world, there’d be no way. But this isn’t just anyone. This is Dabi. This is Touya. But doubt still taints his voice.

"I- It's not just one person. It's dozens and dozens, and they're all heavily protected.”

"So? We aren't one person either. There's a whole damn army here waiting to go."

Hawks bites his lip, but the hope only grows stronger. He used to have dreams of getting free. Of ending the people who trapped him here. It’d been a long time since he had those dreams. They’d been foolish, he had no where else to go but his pretty gilded cage. Nobody to turn to. No help, no savior. But that wasn’t true, maybe it never really had been. He’d gotten a feeling that someone had been bailing him out when he’d almost slipped up a few times as a double agent. Maybe someone had been.

"Will the kid be safe here in the meantime? This won't happen quickly. Even with all the resources in the world."

Dabi considers it, well and truly, before he nods firmly.

"Yeah, it'll be a pain to actually keep him here. Word going around is that he's a little escape artist. But Tomura's not gonna hurt him, he’s given a standing no harm order and nobody around here’s stupid enough to go against that. I'll keep my eye on him too. Just in case."

Then he pauses, plans taking shape in his head, growing and spinning, forming more completely.

"All we'll need from you is names and faces. We need to know who needs to go."

It's terrifying, it’s the wrong choice, it’s a stupid idea, but Hawks nods in agreement after a few seconds of internal debate. He wouldn't under any other circumstances- but fuck. He can't let them do what they did to him to someone else. He just can't. Hawks wants out of his cage, and he sure as fuck isn’t letting them drag another kid into it.

“I- I can do that. Give me a day to get everything together, I don’t know all the names, but I can get code names if nothing else.”

Dabi nods once more to affirm the plan, and the two of them sit in silence for a few more heartbeats, unsaid word lingering between them. It's Dabi who breaks the silence, an uncharacteristic softness to his voice.

"God, I can't believe you finally find out my name, and what, fucking five minutes later we're already back on our bullshit."

Hawks laughs, but this time it's light and childish like it used to be. Like it should be. He kicks his legs out, stretching out his wings behind him.

"What can I say? There was a reason the Commission hated it when I hung out with you, isn't that right Touya?"

It brings back memories Dabi had been suppressing for months now, pretending that they meant nothing to him, even as he let Hawks into the league, covered for him, erased camera footage and lied to protect him. He can't help but laugh too. His laugh is raspy from years of smoke and burned lungs. Hawks can’t help but take joy in hearing it again.

"I supposed so. You really haven't changed at all Keigo."

It's the first time in nearly 10 years Hawks heard that name, and it makes him grin ear to ear, silly and open and feeling comfortable like he hasn't since the last time he was called that. The last time he was Keigo.

Dabi takes another deep breath in and then twists to hop back onto the main part of the roof, pausing to meet Hawks' eyes with a long lost mischievous grin on his face.

"Come on slowpoke, we've got shit to do."

It’s not the first time he’s been called that. It’s the first time in a long time, but it’s just like every time before.

Just like every time before, Hawks' wings flutter in indignation (Touya was the only one who ever called him that, because he thought it was ever so funny how affronted Keigo got, so much so that no matter how fast he got, Touya refused to let it drop).

“You are the worst.”

Hawks grumbled, rolling his eyes as he hopped to his feet, snagging Dabi's hand to tug him back towards the door. Dabi is laughing at him again, but Hawks can't find it in himself to be actually annoyed.

How could he be? For the first time in too many years, he had his Touya back with him. He was allowed to be Keigo again, even if it was only for a short period. And for once, he had a feeling that things might be okay after all.

[itsnothingofinterest]

Have you heard? Apparently, Horikoshi said Hero Academia might be headed to a conclusion soon. This was surprising to say the least; not just because fans don’t want it to end but because it doesn’t really feel like it’s anywhere close to it’s end (plenty think it’s closer to halfway, with a select few like me thinking it’s closer to the 1/3 point). This has led some to speculate, partially in denial, if the conclusion Horikoshi is talking about is not actually the series’ “conclusion” concussion, but instead a Naruto Shippuden style “new name for the next part” type of deal. (Or if he’s just having the word “soon” put in some serious work.)

So I want to discuss that; go over as many reason I can think of for why the series could end within the next year or 2, or for why it could see another 5+ years to it’s life. It mean it sounds fun, right?

(Going into this though, I would like to state my bias. I don’t want the series to end soon; and if it kept at it’s current pace to conclude Deku’s academic life in chapters 800~1000, I would be a very happy camper. I’ll try not to let this affect my judgement, but I’ve got no oversight but myself here so...)

Anyway, here we go.

Reasons for the series to end soon.

I think a good point to start is that Horikoshi once stated he planned to end the series at around 30 volumes, roughly what’s already been covered, before finding he needed to expand the series further than that. That’s understandable, it’s easy to see how this arc could’ve been the end of the series had things played out differently enough in the last few chapters; but if he’s already said he’s expanded beyond that, what does that have to do with this discussion? Well for this side of the argument, it means 2 things: 1) all that’s left can be considered the ‘expansion’ on Horikoshi’s original idea, so how likely is it that there’s a lot of that, & 2) that Horikoshi likely didn’t intend for the series to last for Deku’s full school life, a major belief for those expecting the series to last a significant time.

And when we look at the actual content of the series, yeah there’s certainly things that could point to the series ending soon; namely all the arcs and plot threads that kinda just got resolved rapid fire. Dabi’s reveal, Mirio getting his quirk back, Hawks launching the attack he’s been orchestrating since his first appearance, Compress’s face, Bakugou letting go of his resentment for Deku; just to name a few. True, this is nowhere near all of the arcs & plot threads; but it’s a sizable enough portion if we’re assuming the rest have the next year or 2 to resolve themselves. A few more arcs like this last one and yeah, the series won’t have anything really tying it down from ending.

There’s also Deku’s rate of vestige quirk acquisition to consider. I mean in the 3 arcs featuring him since we learned about his extra quirks, he has acquired 3 quirks. At that rate, he’d have them all in 3 more student arcs and basically be at all but full power by then. Not that him keeping up this rate of quirk acquisition is guaranteed, but it sure seems like a sign of the series not lasting too long.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are ways for the series to end soon, easy paths to the finish line available to Horikoshi. It wouldn’t be that hard, for example, to get to confronting Dabi & Toga and resolving their arcs in some timely fashion. And AFO’s presence as a bigger bad over Tomura could allow for him to pull a Kaguya to his Madara, allowing for the plot to resolve with his defeat without really needing to address a lot of Tomura’s issues. And heck, that might’ve even become more likely after this latest chapter, wherein AFO acquired his very own army. That would likely involve finding too-easy solutions a lot of the more complicated issues, or worse, brushing them under the rug; but it can’t be denied that this is an option for how Horikoshi could resolve the series in just a few years.

Last piece of evidence worth mentioning is the simple nature of shorter series being the “path of least resistance.” You can argue all you like how the series lasting longer makes more sense or might result in a better story (and I’m basically about to); but in the end it can’t be denied that the less the series has left, the less work it is for Horikoshi. And that’s just gonna make it inherently more likely; a largely equivalent result for less effort is never not gonna be attractive for people.

Reasons for the series to last a long time.

Okay, I’ve done my best to be fair and included as many points as I could think of in favor of a shorter lifespan; but I won’t lie, this 2nd half is gonna be the fun part of this post for me.

Let’s start at the opposite end of the other side’s first point; Horikoshi planned to originally end the series at around 30 volumes. This past arc, ending in Volume 30, took place in the space between Deku’s 1st and 2nd school year, or you could say it took place during the end of his 1st year. This implies that while the original plan was not to go through Deku’s whole school life, he did intend it to end at a point of significance; the end of a school year. And what that implies is that he won’t end the series smack in the middle of the 2nd year, which would be where the series would end if it only lasted less than 3 more years. It implies he’d likely aim to end the series at the end of year 2 at the earliest, a significant ways away. (And before you ponder about a time skip; remember that year 1 had a time skip and still lasted ~30 volumes & ~6 years.)

Another reason to think the series is gonna last a while; it’s quite slow, in an overall sense at least. It’s hard to describe but; It doesn’t always feel that way because the moment-to-moment pacing is very good & it always feels like something is happening and stuff is getting tackled. But this is because it tends to tackle plots one at a time; so while plots make good development while in the focus, they can stay out of focus for a significant duration. For example; the ‘Shinsou becoming a hero’ plot was introduced in the Sports Festival, only saw real development during Joint Training, and has still yet to resolve with year 2 not starting yet. Or for another example, we learned over 150 chapters ago that All Might had his future predicted where he’ll die at the hands of a villain, setting up a plot where he’ll try to twist his future and survive this unknown threat to his life. His life has not once been in danger since. Not even in a broad sense like someone’s targeting him; no, this man has not has one risk to his life since the plot thread was introduced. There’s tons for plot threads like that, I’m barely scratching the surface here. And that’s actually fine...if the series has a long future ahead of it. This system of pacing actually works wonders for BNHA; because while people can occasionally miss their faves and their plots, crying out “where’s Shinsou” and all that, they generally like what’s being focused on when it’s handled and paced well (which it usually is). As long as the series itself has time to get to all of these plots and develop them to their resolution, this pacing system works like a well oiled machine.

Deku especially is a useful measuring tool for how slow this series can be. He’s not like the other plot points see, because he’s almost always around so he’s made to develop at a more even pace until the end. This is in contrast to characters like Shinou, Aoyama, Kirishima, Toga, or Shigaraki; who get bursts of development because they don’t spend consistent time in the spotlight and Horikoshi can’t be entirely sure when he’ll get the next chance to make use of them. So with that said, how slow is his development & how far along is it? Well, not very actually. Aside from in terms of powers, his development has been a bit lacking. Not to say he hasn’t had character moments, but they have been a bit scarce & minimal; and a lot of his major flaws (such as his self-destructive tendencies, his self-esteem issues, and his toxic hero worship) have barely been addressed, let alone resolved. In general, his character feels like it’s barely changed since he got into UA; in stark contrast to characters like Shigaraki, Todoroki, Shinsou, & even Bakugou. And that kind of implies a long road a head of him.

To bounce off another point from the “short future section” I mentioned how a lot of overarching plots just ended. The thing about that is, I actually made a post talking about that and how a lot of how they ended seems to set up more overarching plots then they seem to end. To not repeat myself too much, because this post is already really long; it’s like the series resolved the greater part of 6 years of content only to set-up up to 6 more years of content, and all in one arc. (Goodness that was a busy arc.)

And that’s just the advancement of already existing plot points. There’s a lot it can feel like he hasn’t even touched on yet. Mostly characters. There are just. So. Many. Characters in this series. That are in positions of seeming importance, but have done nothing. For example, Horikoshi’s been known to suddenly focus on class 1A students to make them feel important, and has gotten through maybe over half; but hasn’t really touched on Sero, Sato, Koda, Ojiro, Hagakure, & especially Shoji (who really, really feels like he has something planned, but nothing’s happened yet). And that’s just the guys below Mineta’s development level, which itself is pretty low. To say nothing of Class 1B, or Ms. Joke’s students, or most of the 30 faces known in the PLF, the main antagonistic group of the series! And yeah, this could all just be because Horikoshi likes introducing characters in larger groups than he’s actually equipped to handle; I’m not denying that. I’m just saying it’s also possible that he could be doing this because he feels like he has the time to explore them whenever he wants. (Heck, it could very well be both.)

Conclusion:

...I don’t know dude. I mean a longer series looks more likely to me; but I am very well aware that I’m not unbiased enough to make any real conclusive statement. Maybe I should consider that to mean it’s more even than that.

Perhaps we’re just too far away from the ending to really be able to tell either way. I mean low estimates still give the series at least a year. But even so, I do think this was all worth considering; because if nothing else, I did get a feel for all that’s likely to happen between now and the inevitable end. And I guess it turns out to be kind of a lot. So that’s neat.

[thevoidable]

Why did Dabi let Hawks into the League? (major manga spoilers ahead)

This is a question that’s been plaguing my head ever since Dabi proudly announced to Hawks that he’d known all along that he was lying.

If that was the case, what was the point of bringing him in? Surely Dabi must have seen this coming by enabling Hawks to continue his infiltration? What exactly was Dabi’s end-goal here???

It’s unclear whether or not if this will get explained eventually, but after giving it a lot of thought, I think I have a pretty good answer to the question regardless. Essay under the cut.

What is Dabi fighting for?

First, we have to address Dabi’s motivations. They run deeper than just making Stain’s will a reality - he’s taking steps that Stain never even considered to make, because even he was blinded by something that Dabi despises more than anything: hero idolization. Stain saw All Might as a true hero, someone worthy of the title, but in Dabi’s eyes, All Might is one of the biggest contributing factors to why there is such a huge problem with the hero system, and aside from All Might allowing other heroes to become complacent, it’s all because of Endeavour.

Hawks and Dabi are two sides of the same coin when it comes to the new no. 1; Hawks grew up seeing Endeavour’s ambition to surpass All Might as impressive and heroic, mostly due to the fact that Hawks himself lacks the drive to become so great, because all he wants is to live life comfortably. But for Dabi, Endeavour’s need to surpass All Might was nothing but a blinded greed for power, the need to be the best of the best for his own selfish desires rather than to actually save people. It was a path that led him to horrifically abuse his own family in order to achieve it, because he saw Quirk breeding as the only way to fix his own flaws. As such, Dabi, AKA Toya, suffered greatly at the hands of it. He knows firsthand just how much the hero system is unjust, allowing for people with unhealthy mindsets like Endeavour to gain positions of power. He knows that people admire Endeavour for his heroism, but are unaware of the monster that lurks behind closed doors, even when his temper comes out during public patrols. This is a man who is the very definition of a false hero, a man who let his eldest son die and traumatized his entire family.

Dabi goes on to claim in chapter 267 that there are no true heroes - this, however, does not mean that true heroes cannot exist. All he means is that there are simply no heroes currently present and he plans to change that, because in the system that society has right now, it’s near-impossible. Hero idolization forces heroes to become perfect images that people can admire, and it also enforces the mindset that only the greatest heroes can come from schools like UA and Shiketsu. This results in a flood of people longing to become heroes for reasons other than saving people. Uraraka, for example, while she is gentle and kind-hearted, is still only becoming a hero so she can support her family. It’s a well-paying job, and that kind of promise will most certainly lure anyone in who is desperate enough. Yes, she has good intentions in mind, and she does want to save people, but saving people is not her ultimate goal. So, by Dabi’s definition, she is not a true hero.

Becoming a hero should also not be as easy as it is, and becoming a hero certainly should not start at such a young age. UA and the other hero schools are putting teenagers between the ages of 15 - 19 at severe risk, and we’ve seen worst-case scenario results of this twice over the course of the series, and it’s terrifying to think that there are most likely more that we haven’t heard of.

First you have Shirakumo who died before he had even graduated, an incident that led him to becoming a nomu working for the League, who would then go on to cause the second result.

By placing children in such a dangerous training course, it automatically places targets on their backs for villains before they even get their licenses. The League proved just how incapable the staff are at protecting their students by not only successfully attacking a location within the school, but also kidnapping one of said students later on, even after UA’s attempt at keeping the location of the training camp hidden and Dabi himself had revealed their basic plan to Aizawa.

This is all fuel for Dabi’s fire in his journey to rip hero society apart at the seams, and while he is absolutely planning to kill every false hero he comes across, he also has a secondary plan in mind, and that is for the students.

In One’s Justice 2, Dabi has this particular voice line to Hawks: “We’re working for the glorious future where those UA kids are hollowed, and brought down to earth. We’ll have to see what you’re working for.”

Dabi knows that while they are all still young, there is still time to prevent them from falling into every hero’s brainwashed mindset: villains bad, heroes good, no matter what either of them do. 

Something extremely important that the MVA and the current war arcs do is flip the black and white narratives on their heads, showing us just how human and empathetic the villains can be, while the heroes are doing nothing but making unheroic choices and opting for making the violent move first. We’ve seen all of the heroes do nothing but dehumanize Shigaraki, calling him “it” and “thing” like he’s just some monster that they have to kill. We’ve had to watch Hawks murder Twice in the name of “justice” simply because Twice refused to come quietly and be forced back into a life he felt miserable in. Even X-less chose to focus on the machinery next to him rather than getting a near-dead Shigaraki medical attention, and we all know how karma decided to treat that.

And this is where I would like to bring your attention to Tokoyami.

We’ve seen multiple times before how Dabi seems to have no interest in actually harming the students - initially, anyway. He leaves Aoyama alone even though he saw him; he taunts Shoto but doesn’t attack him to get him away; and lastly, Tokoyami first showing up to rescue Hawks actually calms Dabi down. Dabi shows no intent of hurting them because they’re still just kids, not heroes.

Calling back to how the heroes are currently being depicted as the ones making all the disturbing decisions, Dabi doesn’t hesitate to be the first to call out their decision to bring the students into what is essentially a covert-ops assassination mission that has turned into an all-out war. He first recognises that the boy in front of him is just that: a boy, and instead of attacking, Dabi gives Tokoyami a chance.

But what chance, exactly? To escape? Absolutely not.

The first thing Dabi does is make Tokoyami aware of the crime his so-called mentor just committed, and carefully wording it so that the stakes were made clear.

Twice was trying to run away to protect his friends.

But Hawks still killed him.

Dabi is giving Tokoyami a chance to recognise that the hero system he admires hides many skeletons in its closet, and is something that is severely corrupt. He’s giving Tokoyami a chance to rethink his working relationship with Hawks and everything Hawks has taught him.

But Tokoyami doesn’t take it.

As soon as Hawks speaks up again, Tokoyami returns to being obedient, ignoring everything Dabi just said and focusing only on the task at hand regardless of the moral dilemma presented before him, and that’s when Dabi’s intention for Tokoyami changes, because as Dabi put it, “You’ve stopped thinking for yourself.”

And indeed, Tokoyami has. Tokoyami is now cemented in the brainwashed mindset, blindly putting his faith in that Hawks’s decision to kill Twice was right, simply because Twice is the villain and Hawks is the hero, and Dabi realises this.

Tokoyami is now a false hero, and thus on Dabi’s kill list.

So, we have established that Dabi fully intends to wipe-out existing false heroes, while simultaneously trying to save those who have the chance to recover/escape from the brainwashing before it’s too late.

“Keigo Takami!!”

It’s no secret that Dabi clearly knows exactly what kind of situation Hawks is in. The fact that he knows Hawks’s real name alone tells Hawks that Dabi knows far more than he is comfortable with. So, seeing as Dabi was able to see through Hawks’s lies so easily, let’s assume that Dabi knows most, if not all, of what we the readers know about Hawks and how the HPSC groomed him.

Considering that Dabi came from the no. 1 hero’s household, there’s a high chance that he knows quite a bit about the HPSC and just how shady they actually are, especially if the theories are true that they had a hand in covering up his own death. Dabi is well-aware then that the HPSC is responsible for the hero system being so broken, and the reason they do nothing to fix it is so they can stay in power. They are not afraid to make questionable decisions which they know is only making the villain situation worse, because villains are what’s keeping them in business. And what’s sad about this is that even when the decisions they present are clearly morally wrong, the heroes are in no position to argue, because the HPSC is in complete control of their jobs. The HPSC governs the hero system, so whatever they do must be just, right?

Well, Dabi definitely knows the answer to that.

The HPSC deliberately manipulated the heroes to believe that the UA students were needed on the front lines for this mission, and so far, we’ve seen that they really weren’t, actually. The evac team remains the best place for the students to be, because while the pros with all the combat experience can focus on the villains, the heroes-in-training can focus on the smaller task of getting people to safety. Sure, Kaminari, Tokoyami, and the other front-liners helped, but the pros absolutely overwhelmed the PLF on their own. All the front-liners did was just kind of...pave the way, make things easier, and then they were sent back to rejoin their classmates. And the heroes didn’t question the decision at all.

What’s even more disturbing is that the students weren’t even aware of what they were getting into, and most of the pros weren’t aware that the students weren’t aware.

But, as mentioned before, Dabi doesn’t hesitate to call this out.

It’s highly likely that he’s able to connect that the HPSC were the ones who organised this attack and sent the kids out onto the battlefield, which also means that he’s unfortunately no stranger to the HPSC reducing talented children to nothing but weapons, a concept he is also personally familiar with.

Toya was bred with the intent of creating a Quirk superior to Endeavour’s, and then put under extremely harmful training that abused both his mind and his body. We already know that Dabi is heavily against valuing a person’s Quirk over their individual worth, thanks to his fight with Geten.

And in the world of heroics, this unhealthy mindset is unfortunately in abundance, especially in Hawks’s case.

What makes Hawks an especially tragic character is that he started out with the same longing to be a great hero that every child has. He wanted to be a comforting sight to those in need, and his innocent mind thought that the HPSC would help him make that reality.

Instead, the HPSC presented him with a life-changing decision that a child his age has absolutely zero mental capacity to consent to, and it’s heartbreaking that Hawks’s grooming began right from the second they met. The HPSC forced a child into intensive training at an age even younger than students training at proper hero schools, and they ever-so-gradually began chipping away at Keigo’s hopeful dream, starting with the erasure of his own name, the first step in disconnecting him from who he once was.

Over the years of the hero Hawks growing up under the HPSC’s wing, he had been stripped of his childhood and moulded into the perfect image of a hero, one that is loveable to the public, obedient to his handlers, talented in his work, and completely self-sacrificing to his missions.

The HPSC has successfully groomed Hawks so that his selflessness is now their trump card that they hold over him - instead of using his selflessness to save others no matter who they are, he’s been manipulated to believe that he has to give up everything in his life to be a great hero, that he’s not suited for being a “shining light”, thus bringing about his new goal of creating a world where heroes have free time, a goal that he is unfortunately pursuing in the wrong way. He’s been brainwashed to not think about villains too much, to not sympathize with them and dig into where they came from and why they became villains, which is why he’s targeting the wrong problem when it comes to making his dream a reality. He believes that he has to solve every case as fast as possible, and eventually there will be virtually no more villains left to hunt down, but the League has already shown us that the roots of villainy stretch much further down than that.

We catch a glimpse of how Hawks even acknowledges that he’s being held down by hero society, caged, and yet he does nothing to change it.

The result of his grooming has left him stuck in a thoughtless state, where it’s easier to believe that everything he is doing is right, and the villains are wrong.

And this is unfortunately something that he has spread to Tokoyami, as evidenced earlier.

Hawks is a hero who was groomed and manipulated from a young age, being thrown into training just so he could become a tool for those in power to use.

Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

Dabi can read Hawks like a book

It’s wonderfully ironic how Hawks prides himself in being capable of fooling anyone and everyone, making himself the hardest person in the room to read while simultaneously being able to read everyone else, and yet the one person that he couldn’t predict ends up being the only one who knows him better than anyone else.

Throughout all of their interactions, Dabi has always been two steps ahead of Hawks, able to catch him off-guard and ruffle his feathers. Keeping in mind that Dabi had known all along that Hawks was faking his desire to join the League, it’s interesting just how long Dabi kept stringing him along. Was he simply doing it for his own enjoyment?

Maybe a small part of him was, but in the long run, Dabi was absolutely still testing Hawks’s worthiness. What makes this great, however, is that Hawks was unaware that Dabi wasn’t testing him for what he originally thought.

Loyalty was absolutely out of the question for Dabi, since he knew from the start Hawks wasn’t planning on being as such. So, what exactly was Dabi looking for?

Looking through the tests that we know Dabi put Hawks through (the battle with Hood, and taking out a hero of Hawks’s choice), we can analyse what Dabi was impressed with, and what he wasn’t.

First off, there’s not a lot that Dabi didn’t like about what Hawks did. The most he complained about was Hawks simply bringing along Endeavour to the Hood fight instead of someone else.

It appears that he also complains about Hawks not letting anyone die, but Dabi is always quick to point out when heroes are prioritising lives, and this will become important later.

Then, we have Dabi asking Hawks to take someone out who isn’t the no. 1. When Hawks brought him Jeanist’s body, Dabi was genuinely surprised, but pleasantly-so. 

Now, Jeanist’s death here serves multiple narrative purposes:

It shows us that Hawks won’t hesitate to kill for a mission (RIP Twice),

It shows Dabi that Hawks is capable of killing anyone, not just villains,

And lastly, it serves as blackmail for Dabi in his pursuit of bringing down false heroes.

(There’s also Bakugo’s whole thing with his hero name, but this isn’t about him.)

That last point is what granted Hawks access into the League, contrary to Hawks believing that the only reason he got in is because the merging of the League and the MLA suddenly made it easy to do so. 

Dabi wasn’t going to let Hawks in without making sure he had a backup in mind in case Hawks tripped up.

But, blackmail wasn’t the only thing that Dabi was looking for. If anything, it was just a bonus.

What the Hood battle and Jeanist’s death showed to Dabi were the two sides that Hawks possessed: a bird of prey that isn’t afraid to kill for a cause, and the innocent child who just wanted to help people. Dabi was searching for both of those qualities within Hawks, because they’re both qualities that Dabi himself has.

Dabi relates to Hawks

As previously mentioned, there’s no doubt that Dabi is aware of how Hawks was trained and forced into a life he didn’t want. He’s very aware of how much Hawks longs for freedom but still wants to help those in need, but what separates them from each other is that Dabi has achieved the freedom that Hawks wants and is pursuing his dream in a way that works.

Dabi kills for his cause, but that cause is ultimately to prevent the future suffering of innocent lives at the hands of false heroes. In his own twisted way, he too wants to save lives. He wants to stop the possibility of another him from being created. He is choosing to be the unfriendly reminder that something is very wrong with the current system, and it needs fixing ASAP.

And that is exactly why Dabi can see through Hawks’s lies, because he recognises that Hawks too is a victim of the same system.

Dabi’s plan for Hawks

With Hawks presenting himself in front of Dabi, it offered up a multitude of opportunities for him. Dabi not only had a new connection to Endeavour through Hawks, but here was a hero who was prepared to get his hands extremely dirty just for a way to bring down the League. 

Dabi’s prior knowledge of Hawks and his past allowed him to constantly have the upper hand, but not in case Hawks attacked.

Through testing Hawks to see what qualities he possessed, Dabi was able to see if Hawks was worthy not for joining the League, but for undoing the brainwashing he’d been subjected to.

Dabi let Hawks into the League because he was giving him a chance, the same chance he gave to Tokoyami, to see hero society for what it really was and decide to do something about it. Dabi saw the potential in Hawks to be a true hero, to return to the boy he once was and save people for the sake of saving them. He saw Hawks’s potential to kill false heroes and that he wasn’t afraid to do it, and the idea of someone thinking the same way as Dabi, of understanding him and his goals wholly, would have absolutely been enticing to him.

Dabi claims to not care about the League, but even if that were true, Dabi recognises that the other League members are important to each other, especially when it comes to Twice and how eager he is to make friends. Dabi introducing Hawks to the League was his chance to show Hawks that they’re all human, and gain sympathy for them and what they stand for. It would have been the ultimate power move on Dabi’s part for Hawks to turn on the heroes and go villain, undoing what hero society did to him, providing him the freedom he always wanted and ultimately proving Dabi and his ideals right.

But, unfortunately, that wasn’t how things went.

How Dabi’s plan backfired

When Hawks first joined the PLF, it was obvious that Dabi was sticking close to him, both to keep an eye on him and to be genuinely friendly and accepting.

It’s rare to see a smile like this on Dabi when he’s around heroes, and he never smiles around the League, but for Hawks specifically, Dabi is always smiling. I think it’s safe to say that Dabi did genuinely enjoy Hawks’s company and that he was the only one Dabi actually liked, which is probably what led to him being comfortable with leaving Hawks to his own devices for the next few months, especially when he started a budding friendship with Twice.

Dabi must have been confident that Twice would be the one to break through the last of Hawks’s walls, because if we were seeing genuine smiles from Hawks, then Dabi must have seen them too.

However, it’s clear that Dabi severely underestimated Hawks’s capability to kill anyone. 

Hawks leaked the information to the heroes, an attack was launched, and Dabi immediately knew why.

And he was, understandably, incredibly pissed.

Upon confronting Hawks and hearing how he was about to kill Twice, Dabi used what he’d learned about Hawks during the Hood fight to his advantage and triggered Hawks’s rescue response, prompting him to subconsciously save Twice from Dabi’s flames, because Dabi knows deep down that a hero is who Hawks really is. What he was most likely hoping was for Hawks to maintain that response, but he instead made a mistake and directly caused Hawks to go back into mission-mode.

And it’s just a downward spiral from there, with all of Dabi’s last-ditch efforts falling flat. In one last desperate attempt to reach through to Hawks, he called out his name. His real name.

Dabi’s final chance to bring Hawks to his senses was to try and reconnect him with his past self of whom the HPSC had carefully erased, and it almost worked. Dabi let Hawks know that he knew everything about him, everything that he once was, but just like with Tokoyami, Dabi learnt the hard way that Hawks was beyond saving.

With Twice’s death, Dabi completely lost it, scolded Hawks for not focusing on him, and dropped one last bomb on Hawks before ending yet another false hero.

Until, yet again, that too backfired due to Dabi’s hope that he could save an innocent mind from the hero system’s brainwashing, and Hawks escaped with his life.

We get a glimpse of Dabi’s defeated expression, the knowledge that he can’t cry, and that he just lost two friends within the span of just a few minutes.

What next?

Honestly, if there’s one thing that is going to break Hawks, it’s knowing the truth about Endeavour. My hope is that Dabi is going to have a chance to make his reveal public to the entire nation, and exposing Enji Todoroki for the abuser he is will really shake things up.

At the moment, it’s still not clear exactly what Dabi told Hawks in his redacted bubble, but it was obviously something relating to his identity. Only time will tell what Hawks knows once he regains consciousness.

[transhawks]

Hawks and the Trolley Problem

I. What is the Trolley Problem?

The Trolley Problem is an ethical thought experiment, mostly testing outcomes and methods of achieving them. It goes like this:

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. 

You have two options:

A. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. B. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

What is the right thing to do?

There are schools of thought that attempt to explain this problem. A common response is to divert the trolley, actively making the choice to kill one person to save five. In this scenario, you are making an active choice to kill someone for the ‘greater’ outcome, which assumes that the best outcome is to save as many as possible. We will call this choice the Utilitarian option.

The second option is to do nothing and let the five people die. Why? Because then it’s a matter of letting the trolley do what it intends to and not actually pulling a lever and condemning a person to death. By choosing inaction in order to not murder anyone, you could stay true to a moral of never killing anyone. This is the Kantian option.

Of course, the Trolley Problem is customizable - people add all sort of features, like instead pushing someone in front of the trolley to stop it, or including knowing someone in the line up of potential dead. It doesn’t even have to be a trolley - all it asks is what is the right thing to do? And, of course, what is the value of a human life.

II. What is Hawks’s Dilemma? 

Hawks has infiltrated the Paranormal Liberation Front and managed to manipulate Twice into befriending him and providing him with information leading to a preemptive strike by the Heroes against the PLF. However, he feels that Twice is a greater harm than just an information source and thus has used his friendship to kidnap Twice, keeping him and his quirk away from a battlefield where he would easily be able to overwhelm the hero forces. Without Twice, the villains are far more easily beatable. 

BNHA 263 ends with Hawks threatening Twice with his feather-knives and asking himself the question, internally: What is the right thing to do?

Let’s break the options down:

A. Hawks kills Twice to effectively ensure he cannot escape and help. The villains are not able to use his clones in the battle, leaving them vulnerable. Hawks ensures heroes survive the battle (assuming no unexpected things happen), and that the status quo the PLF want to topple is maintained. Low amounts of civilian casualties, hero casualties. The problems that caused this issue in the first place continue.

B. Hawks lets Twice go. Twice uses his clones to defend the PLF, ensuring more casualties for both the heroes, and possibly the PLF. Eventual massive civilian casualties. Status Quo is broken, system is broken - the problems that created this are addressed, either by further perpetuation or reduction.

There are also other factors.

Hawks knows Twice. Heroes are not typically supposed to kill villains. Hawks has referred to Twice as ‘good-natured’, and reflected it made it easier to accomplish this, yet he also seems surprised by how much Twice genuinely likes and trusts him. He also knows, on both sides, many of the people likely to die from this.

Miruko in 262 mentions that heroes hold back fighting villains - killing is not usually an action heroes are allowed or suggested to take.

And, lastly, Hawks’s choice is not solely his - up to now he has performed his duty as a tool to the Hero Public Safety Commission.  

III. How the Hero System Would Tackle the Problem?

Let’s talk about what it means to be a hero.

From what we’ve seen in the manga and spin off Vigilantes, there’s an actual calculation, maybe even algorithm in how heroes get paid. It is a clearly a numerical one.

The question is how exactly should anyone looking at a catastrophe begin to count the worth of human life? We don’t have exact confirmation, but it’s likely the ‘Specialty Organization’ is none other than the HPSC, or the Hero Commission as fandom likes to call them. 

From previous encounters, we know that they are utilitarian in outlook, hence the way they sent Hawks to infiltrate the League. To the HPSC, the consequences of an action matter far more than the morality of the action itself. As a organization that, then, depersonalizes choices in terms of numbers and metrics, a simple calculation that five people over one intended casualty is acceptable.

Remember, the HPSC also comes out with ranks. Heroism is numbers to their system and they got the calculation.

In Japan, Professional Heroes are officially ranked by taking in account several factors such as the number of cases solved, general popularity, and level of social contribution. (bnha wiki)

In their view, Hawks would choose A. There’s no option for him otherwise. The HPSC continues to exist as long as everyone accepts their metrics and calculations. Lives, to them, have an internal quantifiable logic. So do hero actions.

Villains do, too, but only in ‘resolving’ them. As incidences. 

IV. What are Lives Worth, Anyway?

The more factors we include in this problem, the more complications. A kantian viewpoint might come from someone in the Liberation Front - Twice’s quirk is amazing and far more valuable that most quirks. If we put Twice in the Trolley Problem, it’s unlikely that the five other people would have comparable quirks. Thus, simply on that basis, Twice’s ‘worth’ would be more than the others and no lever would be pulled.

For Hawks, it would be the action itself. Heroes do not kill, and while he has been conditioned into taking the HPSC’s metrics into the forefront of his decision-making all his life, the active choice to kill Twice would have consequences.

Hawks has already shown to struggle with guilt - besides the words he said after the Jeanist incident, manipulating Endeavor into coming with him just to use him as a shield against whatever the League had did disturb Hawks, just from facial expressions. He does even question that he has to perform immoral actions in order to do as the HPSC wishes. At the same time he has generally gone along with the idea that the ends justify the means.

It’s very obvious what would happen if any of us ever encountered a “trolley problem” in real life. We would panic, do something rashly, and then watch in horror as one or more persons died a gruesome death before our eyes. We would probably end up with PTSD. Whatever we had ended up doing in the moment, we would probably feel guilty about for the rest of our lives: even if we had somehow miraculously managed to comply with a consistent set of consequentialist ethics, this would bring us little comfort.  ( Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs. 2017)

As I wrote this, someone mentioned The Good Place, a show that showed explored the Trolley Problem in depth. One of the conclusions it came to is that nevertheless of the circumstances it is horrifying. No matter the ethics, faced with such a problem, most people would not come away of it well. Hawks included because he is not a machine and is capable of feeling guilt either way.

If he kills Twice, he kills and betrays a friend, and saves the lives of hundreds of thousands or millions, and betraying people he has gotten to know over the course of months. But that’s a weight he’ll have to bear for the rest of his life, if he manages to survive. He’ll have to know he did what Heroes are avoidant to do; kill. 

If he doesn’t kill Twice, Twice will help lead a revolution that, while addressing many of the issues Hawks sees with society, will kill Hawks’s thousands of colleagues and many innocents in the crossfire.

V. A Different Question?

The issue then is not what Hawks does, but why he has to ask this question of himself in the first place. The thing is that there are rarely only two options in any given situation.

The thing is situations are created. And so are choices. They do not come out of thin air. They are not in a self-contained vacuum. Twice was created, and so was Hawks, and so was the Commission. The choices Hawks faces right now are not removed from hundreds of years of other decisions, and powers that enact them.

If I am forced against my will into a situation where people will die and I have no ability to stop it, how is my choice a “moral” choice between meaningfully different options, as opposed to a horror show I’ve just been thrust into, in which I have no meaningful agency at all? Let’s think a bit more about who put me here and how to keep them from having diabolical power over others.  ( Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs. 2017)  

The thing about ascribing morality, too, to individual actions is it misses the powers of institutional forces upon our lives. What does that look like in BNHA?

It means we see Ujiko and not an Empire AFO has been building for at least a century to make sure there are systems in place creating noumus, and people like Shigaraki who exist in this world. 

It means we see Endeavor and his heroism and brilliant record and not a system ignoring that a man who bought a woman to force her to have children in a genetic experiment is now the symbol of Peace and Stability for that system. 

It means we see Twice as a regrettable casualty of society whose only option for acceptance was among murderers fulfilling a murder-empire and not a consequence of both AFO’s system and the Hero System to make sure people like him have no safe place in the world.

It means we see Hawks poised to kill Twice and not the organization that bought him as a child and raised him into a soldier who has to decide whether to kill one or many.

And once you realize that none of these questions, none of these options are fair or right in these terms - not the one for many, not the sparing to absolve personal guilt, you can ask the question what is right thing to do.

What I mean is maybe there shouldn’t be heroes or villains. None of that conflict should exist. There’s no rights in either view. Yes the hero system should be eradicated. But the lack of future Shigaraki envisions, and the dystopian plans AFO and Ujiko actually have, and the Liberation Army plan for, are also wrong. 

Neither of the systems proposed have the right answer or the right to posit one. 

The real answers are not in the right or wrongs. They’re in every other sentence. They’re in Jirou’s encouragement of Kaminari, in Shigaraki telling the League he wants them to be happy with what they love, in Keigo’s unsure smile as Jin looks at him and tells him he’s a good person for caring for his friends. The answers are in the love that ordinary people have for each other, that no manufactured conflict and institution can quantify or destroy. And that hopefully, someone will voice this.

VI. What will Hawks Answer?

The thing about this is that we aren’t sure if Keigo will fully make a decision right now. There’s a likelihood he will be interrupted. Or he will put off his decision-making and spare Twice for the moment, delaying his choice. And that’s just ignoring the fact that there isn’t one choice to make here; no, lots of them. 

However, Keigo has made one personal life-changing decision in before; the HPSC has taken that choice and removed free will from it. 

Self-sacrifice, after all, is both the will of the HPSC and Hawks’s true nature. If quirks are to show us the nature of the person, why not Hawks’s feathers, deceptively soft but deadly, maneuverable and revealing, and yet, ultimately consist of him breaking his only ability to fly free until he no longer can? What’s more self-sacrificial than breaking off pieces of yourself to save others?  

The Good Place has an answer to the problem that accepts that no matter the options, and the questions, someone will lose something. Die maybe. The solution is that if someone must die, why not yourself?

The one comfort is that for all the lack of choices Hawks has been given in this situation - this is the one solution he can come up with on his own.

[iheartbookbran]

Hey sorry to ask cause I am not caught up on the manga what did hawks do? I know what endevour did but no clue about what hawks has done to be "canceled" in universe? Thank you for your time!

Hey there! So I will try to explain this thing as comprehensively as possible, which may not be much, and of course nothing is set in stone, but right now Dabi is doing as much as he can to discredit Hawks.

Warning for heavy spoilers below the cut.

So basically Hawks killed Twice, not by accident or even in self defense, but it was closer to a murder than anything else. Of course, he had reasons, very valid reasons imo which I will address later, but that doesn’t negate the fact that Twice was scared, pleading, didn’t want to fight Hawks, and Dabi apparently caught the majority of it on video.

Hawks actually wasn’t planning on killing Twice initially; he wanted to restrain him until the fighting between the Heroes and Paranormal Liberation Front was over.

But then Dabi intervened and things escalated from there: Twice almost escaped, Hawks killed him and then Dabi attacked him, burning his back to the point his Quirk was reddened useless (and it’s very possible he won’t be able to use it anymore), and also revealed Hawks’ real name, which had been kept a secret since he was a child (more on that later).

Now as for Hawks reasons for doing such a thing... well he needed to find a way to stop Twice no matter the cost. Twice’s Quirk, almost on its own, was literally able to overwhelm the entire PLF.

Who knows what he would have been able to do during this war; create two Gigantomachias, or two Shigarakis, or multiple maybe. Just one of them each are creating enough destruction on their own.

At least that’s what I believe. It is a morally gray situation all around that rises some very interesting questions, chief among them, I think, is if the end justifies the means. And of course, we know how Morally Upright™ heroes in this society are supposed to be. Dabi is manipulating a lot of facts to affect Hawks’ image as much as he can, but he does know that Heroes are not under any circumstances supposed to kill, that’s what separates them from villains like Dabi himself.

Of course I don’t think Dabi will be showing this part in his little expose video. He’s basically painting Hawks as a murder not only responsible for Twice’s death but Best Jeanist’s as well (who is in fact, not dead, that was a lie fabricated by Hawks so that he could infiltrate successfully into the PLF ranks, but people don’t know that yet).

Also when Dabi revealed Hawks’ real name, he outed him as the son of a former famous villain that we still don’t know much about, implying then that Hawks is just like his villainous father and that’s why he killed Twice. Which coming from Dabi out of all people is pretty rich but y’know, he’s in an unhinged roll right now, so I’ll let it go.

Hope this was useful and I didn’t confuse you even more lmao.

[stillness-in-green]

Thoughts on Chapter 314 (and surrounding events)

Being a loose summary of several things I thought about in relation to the leaks, what they say about the series as a whole, a bit of new operating headcanon on the Peerless Thief, and a dash of how fandom is responding to the revelations. Spoilers, obviously.

This chapter makes it quite clear that the HPSC absolutely would have gone in and eliminated the PLF quietly, lethally, and wholly unlawfully if Hawks hadn't reported back the numbers that he did. The only reason the raid involved non-Commission-affiliated heroes at all is because the PLF's manpower was simply too much for the Commission to deal with via their usual methods. I'm both appalled that the disregard for human rights in HeroAca Land is somehow even worse than I thought it was and smug that that tiny little piece I recently posted criticizing the PLF's treatment has turned out to be totally justified and supported by the canon.[1] (Note that this does not absolve Horikoshi of the responsibility to, himself, treat the PLF better than paper dolls tossed into the incinerator of Plot Irrelevance when they cease being convenient to his story.) The fact that the Commission was forced to involve heroes might mean Re-Destro, Mr. Compress and the others are somewhat safer than might otherwise be the case. Because of the involvement of the unsuspecting stooges law-abiding heroes, and because the botched raid became such a huge disaster, there’s far more public scrutiny on this than would otherwise be the case. Of course, "accidents" can still happen,[2] especially in a chaotic environment, but the factors above (combined with Clone!RD murdering the bejeezus out of the Lady Prez) do, I think, suggest that there probably isn't an organized push for quick solutions going on behind closed doors.

I don't think Nagant has been around for a terribly long time or that there was an uptick in vigilantism in recent years—I think the scene where she mentions vigilantes becoming accepted as heroes is just in reference to the early history of heroism. It's in keeping with what Tsukauchi Makoto described in Vigilantes, and forms the basis of the current system—the current system that Nagant was a single cog in a big machine grinding away to preserve.

Speaking of Nagant and the system, it's interesting to me that one of the groups Nagant apparently targeted at the HPSC's behest was corrupt heroes—those who colluded with villains or specifically goaded/incited civilians into using their quirks illegally, thus turning civilians into capital-V Villains in the eyes of the law. One might easily say that targeting corrupt heroes (albeit using a much broader definition of "corrupt") was Stain's whole shtick, but it actually puts me more in mind of the Peerless Thief, Harima Oji. Harima punished greedy or corrupt heroes with theft, and presumably with a measure of declaration and exposure,[3] then distributed their money back to the streets. Someone who ridicules those who abuse their power, and gets away with it for long enough to build a reputation: that right there is a recipe for a folk hero. The HPSC, in whatever form they existed at the time, obviously couldn't let that go on—such repeated humiliations would weaken peoples’ faith in (and obedience to) the system the HPSC was trying to build. At the same time, though, it would also weaken faith in the system to openly acknowledge that system's flaws, to acknowledge that some pretty awful people had found their way into the heroics business specifically for the power and ability to abuse it that the title of Hero afforded them. Public trials would make it a matter of record that some heroes—and, accordingly, heroes at large—did not deserve the public's unquestioning faith. Obviously in a system that was built from the ground up on faith, that was unacceptable. And so Harima was branded a supervillain for exposing the system's flaws, while the corrupt heroes who embodied those flaws to begin with were—and continue to be—quietly disposed of at the HPSC’s discretion.

There's a lot of talk around about how Lady Nagant is stupid, or hypocritical, or delusional, or whatever other dismissive adjective people want to use, because she expresses a preference for AFO's rule over the HPSC's. Firstly, I think it's dubious Lit Crit to fault a character for not being a Paragon of Rationality, especially when they're under the cascading stressors Nagant has been under since she was, what, 13? 14? Forced to live this dichotomy of smiling gallant hero and ruthless covert assassin, had her life threatened by the man who'd taken her in,[4] probably dumped in Tartarus until such time as her trial could be held,[5] and kept in those ghastly, dehumanizing conditions for who knows how long? How shocking, that her objectivity might be somewhat compromised! Secondly, it's not like she's saying that AFO's rule would be a sunny walk in the park. The kanji she uses doesn't even mean "better"; while it can mean serene or tranquil, her more likely meaning is clear/transparent. Her phrasing indicates that she's aware it would be pretty bad; she's simply of the opinion that at least his rule wouldn't be a sham, a pretty lie. It would be bad, but everyone would know it. No one would have these comforting illusions they could lose at any time; if you stepped out of line and got shot in the head by an assassin, well, at least you would probably know you that being defiant was running that risk, rather than never seeing it coming because you'd been told all your life that Heroes Didn't Do That To People. Again, this is a woman whose life was shattered no less than three times by the duplicity of the highest acting authority in this comic.[6] She doesn't have to be Objectively Correct By The Standards Of Ethical Utilitarianism—nor do you have to agree with her choice that because she doesn’t want to live in the Matrix, no one else should get to either—for her opinion to make sense from her own perspective! Thirdly, while I think it's fair to say that the HPSC and AFO actually use fairly similar methods to recruit followers and punish dissenters, we have no idea how much Nagant herself knows about AFO's recruitment tactics other than her own brief experience of it. And while AFO is a controlling and manipulative bastard, at least in his case it's coming from a man who openly styles himself as a Demon King, not an organization positioning itself as lawful regulators of the protectors of society at large while secretly training child soldiers to flagrantly violate every law protecting the human rights and due process of that society's people.

Overhaul's presence is delightful, and yes, he is a victim of Hero Society, if only because Hero Society could have put him in some kind of prison-based rehab facility after Shigaraki was through with him, but chose to dispose of him in Tartarus instead, for absolutely no justifiable cause. I suspect it's only due to Horikoshi not being very interested in the harsh realities of the trauma caused by enforced isolation[7] that Overhaul is the only Tartarus escapee that talks to himself and has dissociated from reality almost completely. Overhaul's maiming was not the fault of Hero Society, nor did Hero Society force him to torture Eri and repeatedly commit cold-blooded murder. But his madness? Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable laying that one at Hero Society's feet, actually. I can’t wait for Deku to have to face the victim that Chisaki Kai has become due to levels of systemic cruelty and negligence that really ought to be criminal—and which, if this were real life, would be.

--------Lately, footnotes are really popular with us!--------

[1] Lady Nagant: *talks about how the Hero Society everyone believes in is illusory, a thin fake over a brutal reality, and that returning to the false simplicity of that status quo will only cause history to repeat itself* Me, two weeks ago: Hero Society will never stop creating its own villains so long as, every time it fails people, it does nothing but shrug and write off the victims as unavoidable, inevitable sacrifices for the greater good.

[2] Yes, I'm still highly suspicious of the "Destro committed suicide in prison" claim.

[3] Compress tells us Harima “preached reformation,” but regardless, you don’t dress up in a modified kabuki costume and waltz midair through nighttime cityscapes raining cash out of the sky if you’re trying to keep your activities a secret.

[4] And her family situation couldn't have been much better than Hawks', if she was targeted by the HPSC to begin with. I would guess she was an orphan in the childcare system, easy to move from whatever alternative care arrangement she was in, be it an orphanage, a group home, or simply mature enough despite her relative youth that she lived alone on government support payments—that kind of thing isn't as unbelievable in Japan as it is in the U.S.—to the HPSC's care.

[5] And given what we learned between this chapter and 297, I doubt she was even allowed to be present for it. Japanese law states that everyone by default is supposed to be present for their own trial, but as in the U.S, that right can be waived if the defendant proves themselves to be a threat to the safety of the judge, court staff and other attendees. And of course, what a threat the HPSC could have painted her as being!

[6] At least until Hori deigns to show us a damn Diet session.

[7] To say nothing of the physical consequences of spending six months stuck in a tiny room with no natural light while frequently being strapped into a straitjacket, of which there should also be several.

[smol-and-trashy]

Botched Rescue (BnHA vore) 2/5

A/N: So this is also a thing. Warning for unwilling prey, fearplay, all that jazz. 

__________________________________

Never in his 16 years would Izuku imagine the number two hero enter through those doors. I-is he here to save us? Or what if… could it be Toga wearing Hawks’ face? His terror spiked, just imagining the blood-lusting girl sent shivers down his spine. Looking up, he noticed that the winged hero’s face was strangely passive, chatting with a long-nosed villain as if nothing was out of the ordinary. As Hawks stepped closer to the jar, following long-nose’s lead, his golden eyes widened ever so slightly once catching a glimpse of the U.A. students.

“H-Hawks!” Izuku cried out, pounding on the glass to get the hero’s attention. Hawks stared back at him, blinking blankly. He raised a feathery brow and turned to long-nose, “What’re Endeavor’s interns doing here…?” he trailed off, sharp eyes honing in on the students, “And why are they so small?” Long-nose’s perpetual grin never left his face, “Why Hawks, they are for you. We thought this size would make them easier.” Izuku slowly quieted down while Todoroki stiffened, Easier for what? Izuku thought while the hero before them voiced the same concern. “For consumption,” Long-nose answered simply as if there was no need to provide a further explanation. The blood drained from both students’ faces. Izuku faltered backward, his brain going on overdrive. Consumed by what? By who? But the answer was glaringly obvious. Long-nose had brought Hawks in the hideout to perform their death. Judging by the winged man’s affability towards the villain, he wasn’t there to break them out. Izuku’s heart plummeted; getting eaten would be tantamount to death. It couldn’t be their fate, this man had to be lying. Todoroki punched the glass, a scorching storm of raw emotion taking over his form. “Enough with your tricks, let us out!” he demanded. Still, his words fell upon deaf ears as the hero’s achingly indifferent eyes lingered over them before returning to face the villain—as if they were some kind of insignificant buzzing.   — Hawks balked, did he hear that right? No, keep your cool. Just remember your mission, I can’t afford to sabotage this. “Heh, you want me to eat them? Never thought the PLF would be into cannibalism,” he answered nonchalantly, putting his arms behind his head. Re-Destro shrugged, “I know, it is a rather unconventional method to dispose of hostages, but think of the advantages. No evidence of the corpses and imagine the humiliation the heroes would experience if they found out one of their own did the deed," he raised his hands in the air, words flying out of his mouth in eager anticipation. “It is too great of an opportunity to pass up!” The blond hero stepped back, his thoughts twisted while his gut knotted up. This shouldn’t be possible, he shouldn’t be able to do this, he can’t. “I get why you’d want me to do it, but wouldn’t it be more impactful if a big shot villain did it? What difference would it really make if I,” he took a deep breath and swallowed, regretting his next choice of words, “ate them?” The formerly stressed boss narrowed his eyes, stepping closer to the shorter man, “I thought you would be grateful, after all, this would provide an opportunity to continue to prove your allegiance to us. My successor still has his doubts.” Hawks’ eyes darted back at the students, the finger smashing kid was yelling something incomprehensible to him. No doubt thinking he was going to murder them, his guilt swelled. You’re killing me here. How do I save them without any casualties, without revealing myself? “But you get my hesitation, right? This is just a lot… more than just fighting for the liberation of quirks. I’d discreetly kill them for our cause, but actually consuming those kids is another story. It’s a huge taboo, cannibalism, y’know?” “I understand, but it’s a question of whether you will or will not do what is asked of you. We value your contributions, but we need allies who are loyal.” Shit. “Nope! Not a problem at all. I was just making sure I heard you right," he pressed a thumb to his forehead in an 'L' shape, eyes dead serious. "Everything I do is for the Liberation.” Re-Destro smiled wider, shaking the hero’s hand, 
“Good good, that’s what I like to hear!” There was a pregnant pause, and Hawks stepped closer to the jar, taking off his visor and resting his chin in his arms, now eye level with the aspiring heroes; he winced inwardly as the two jumped back. He really didn’t want to do this. Would it be too late to back out now? If they kill me, would the kids still get to live? If he was being honest with himself, probably not. “What’s wrong? You look nervous.” It was a test. Re-Destro’s eyes were closed in slits, but his tight-lipped smile was telling. If he didn’t do as he was told, Hawks would be branded as a traitor and most likely subjected to the Liberation Front’s torture. Everything he worked towards would be for nothing. He cringed, and no doubt would Dabi burn him to crisp. “Ok, ok.” he grabbed the jar and tried to avoid looking at the terrified gazes of the students. Hawks plucked a thrashing Todoroki Shouto from the jar and popped him in his mouth without a second thought. “You…YOU TRAITOR!” Shouto shouted before the mouth snapped shut, pushing past his guilt, Hawks internally gagged at the boy’s flavor. Todoroki’s body was salty and quivering with hateful tears. The kid was fired up, though and he winced as a fist made contact with his molar. Shit, I'm actually going to have to swallow him. I’m going to hell. This is so sick, even for me. He repressed the urge to vomit and tilted his head back, distinctly feeling the squirming figure traveling down his throat. Hawks brought a hand to his mouth, the tiny student was going down so slowly, so painfully, it was only a gross reminder of his deed. Urk, I’m gonna throw up, his wings shifted uncomfortably and he shot a glance at Re-Destro, who was staring expectingly. Can’t look reluctant. They’re gonna suspect me. Just ignore the fact you’re eating Endeavor’s son—- ugh. Hawks tossed the former leader of the Liberation Army a wry smile, internally recoiling at the fact that Shouto hadn’t even passed his esophagus. “Can I have some water? Jeez, he’s so dry,” he complained as he rubbed his throat. The villain called up an underling and quickly, he was given a bottle of water, “Thanks!” the winged hero gasped out as he greedily gulped down the water. The younger Todoroki had finally gotten unstuck from his gullet, and he could feel him descend to his stomach. Sorry Shouto, I need to do this as quickly as possible. Please don’t drown. —— Izuku watched in abject horror as he watched the bulge of his friend slide down the former hero’s neck, quickly disappearing past his collar bone.   “T-T-T-Todoroki?” Izuku stuttered out, overcome with pure shock as he watched the death of his friend. Out of the many possible deaths Izuku thought he would encounter, being shrunk and eaten by a top hero didn’t quite make the list. As he watched a gigantic hand make its way back to the jar, Izuku held a shred of hope in his heart. He didn’t just watch Hawks, the number 2 hero, just knock back Todoroki like a mere snack. No, it was too outlandish to be real, he must still be unconscious, and these were nightmarish projections of his subconscious. It explained their predicament and why Hawks was even chummy with a villain in the first place. Despite himself, he mustered up his fear and looked up at the shadow looming over them: massive passive golds reaching tear-welled greens. While the winged man peered down at them, Izuku’s large eyes gazed up with desperate hope, but the former’s face was completely devoid of emotion: Izuku felt his insides liquefy. No. They were about to die in one of the most gruesome ways possible in the hands of a trusted hero. He collapsed on his knees. Despite the instability of the jar, the sense of hopelessness overwhelmed him. This was real. He was actually going to die. As the gloved hand neared the jar, Izuku found himself running in front of the unconscious blond. Keeping a protective stance, right when the hand was about to snatch Bakugou, Izuku leapt in front of it. The hand jolted, causing the man to drop Bakugou and grab Izuku instead. Time stood still as Izuku was lifted to the awaiting maw. As he drew nearer, he could see every pore of the man’s face, every hair of his stubble, and more importantly, large and daunting his mouth was from this perspective. Izuku was a shaking, dizzying mess as he was nearly thrown into the mouth, barely able to get himself reoriented before he was slammed to the ridged palette. Sandwiched between his tongue and palette, Izuku’s only light source was cut off, and all he knew was the damp humidity coupled by Hawks’ easy breaths. He waited in blind terror for what felt like a good minute and finally let out a sigh of relief, “Oh good, he’s not going to—” A resounding swallow echoed, and with a flick of the tongue, Izuku was dragged down.

[hotforhandman]

How would you end the series if you had the power to choose the ending?

Oh boy. This is gonna get pretty long, so imma put it under a cut. If I had the power, here’s what I’d do from here on out:

Machia and the rest of the League reach Shigaraki, and in the face of the overwhelming odds against them and the losses they’ve already sustained, the heroes are forced to fall back. In the wake of the battle, plus the destruction to surrounding cities, the general public starts to question the effectiveness and reliability of heroes- especially since they all left the cities that Machia was travelling through, meaning no heroes came to help when they were destroyed. Shigaraki learns about Twice’s death, and between that and everything else built up in his head he goes on a bit of a rampage. After a little while though, maybe some interference from the League members, he begins to realise that this stuff isn’t making him feel any better. He still feels like shit, he still hates everything, destroying this stuff is only a short-term catharsis. So maybe that’s when the League sit down and actually start to talk about what would make a real difference: flushing the corruption out of the system.

In the meantime, the heroes are facing the worst crisis they’ve ever seen. Protests up and down the country, parents pulling their kids out of hero programmes (maybe even show a few of the UA kids getting in rows with their parents about it, perhaps even show Shiketsu or Ketsubutsu getting shut down), funding pulled from hero agencies. Hero merch and even buildings are vandalised as people take their fear and uncertainty from the rising villain attacks and turn it against the people who are supposed to be saving them but failing to do so. Izuku sits down with All Might and All Might tells him everything about Nana, Kotaro and Tenko, and what Gran Torino had said to him. He laments that even as the number one he could never save anyone, and that a part of him knows that his role as the Symbol of Peace had a nasty double edge to it, that it convinced normal people that they don’t have to try- prompting flashbacks to the mall conversation. He tells Izuku that that’s why he chose him as his successor, because most people would just turn the other cheek and wait for a hero to show up, but Izuku didn’t do that.

At some point after continuing to train with OfA, Izuku makes contact with Nana, who tells him how much it hurt her to let go of her son, and how much she regrets it knowing what she knows now. She begs Izuku not to give up, to help her put right what she made wrong. Izuku tells her it wasn’t her fault, it was AfO’s, but agrees to help her anyway.

Meanwhile, Shigaraki and the PLF focus on liberating villains in captivity, including those in Tartarus. We see the return of several old faces. There are three major exceptions, though: first, we get Spinner. Spinner confronts Stain, and we get a bit more of his backstory. We get to see some of the abuse he suffered, how hard it was growing up looking like he does in a town that was openly hostile to heteromorphic quirks, and a story about how he went to his local hero office asking for help, only to be roughly rebuffed. Maybe he got briefly arrested after lashing out in anger. We learn that it was after this incident that he became a complete shut-in, until he saw Stain’s messages. To his dismay, Stain dismisses him too, saying that the League are no better, that Shigaraki is a false leader just looking for infamy the same way the heroes look for fame. Spinner is visibly hurt, and as he frees Stain for a moment it looks like he might leave with him, but in a fit of rage he turns and declares his loyalty to the only person he’s ever felt seen by, and kills Stain. After, it is shown that Dabi was watching.

Mr Compress and Toga find Overhaul, and Overhaul asks Toga where Twice is, being as dismissive and offensive towards him as always. Toga starts to scream at him, threatening him and breaking down, but Compress stops her. He soothes her for a few moments, then tells his own story about how he used to be in organised crime, and used to have a family, only to have it all taken away by his boss. That he’s found more kinship with Shigaraki and the League than he ever did in the Yakuza. Then he hands Toga back her knife - using his prosthetic hand - and lets her do what she wants to him.

Shigaraki goes straight to AfO. AfO praises him for what he’s become, tells him how proud he is, and Shigaraki sits down to talk. We find out that AfO had been planning to allow Ujiko to experiment on him from the start, that he’d been running smaller tests and experiments on him since he was a child without his knowledge, that his slightly enhanced physical attributes were due to this, but that he had to be sure Shigaraki’s body could handle it before activating the dormant form of AfO’s quirk he held. We find out more about how AfO groomed him and what his life was like in between AfO taking him in and the beginning of the series. At the end of their conversation - seemingly reminiscing about happy memories - AfO suggests that they leave together, that he continue to coach him in how to use his newfound powers despite his waning health. Shigaraki opens his arms as though to accept him, but as they embrace he activates Decay and says once again that he has no need for him anymore, that he thanks him but that he is so much more than AfO ever groomed him to be.

The end of the academic year rolls around simultaneously and we get to see a hollow and sparse student body watch the third years graduate and become pros, though many have either dropped out or been pulled out. Bakugou and Kirishima and several others argue about whether or not it’s worth continuing. Some even start talking about vigilantism, which has been on the rise lately. Aizawa, Izuku, and Eri visit Mirio, and Eri sincerely apologises that she couldn’t fix him before he graduated, which meant he couldn’t graduate into full hero status. Mirio smiles and assures her that at the end of the day, pro-heroes mean nothing if there aren’t normal people surrounding them helping out too, that he can be a hero in a different way. Eri hugs him.

I guess we could put a timeskip in here, some more stuff with the kids, idk. At some point in a massive publicity stunt, a large number of documents are sent to several media outlets including the medical records of one Todoroki Touya, as well as the details of the rearing and training of the now-retired hero Hawks, outing both the number one and the Commission itself for their dirty deeds. The Todorokis all come under fire from the press, being bullied for details, and Natsuo is the one who snaps and tells them everything. Enji, who’s been living apart from his family for a few months, makes a public apology and is pressured into retiring his agency and title. With the top agency in the country down, hero society all but collapses.

However, encouraged by Aizawa, Mic, and a few other teachers, the kids continue to train and work somewhere in the limbo between hero status and vigilantes. Maybe they even meet up with and work with some vigilantes to stop smaller crimes or side villains in the area. These sort-of-heroes rise in notoriety and publicity and people start coming to them for help.

Honestly idk what exactly to put in here, it’d need a bit more thought, but basically the PLF continues to pick off heroes and erode society, banding more and more villainous organisations together, until Izuku’s merry band of hero/vigilante hybrids consider themselves prepared to take them on, including Izuku being able to fully wield OfA.

Insert a large number of super epic battles in here, a handful of tragic deaths, and a few bridges and sympathies being formed (such as Aizawa and Mic with Kurogiri, maybe Shoji and Spinner, idk). Some of the villains point blank can’t be swayed, like Dabi, who admits to having sent the documents and tells Shoto that he regrets it, that he wishes Enji hadn’t retired so that he could burn him alive and laugh as he did so. Maybe Shoto beats him in a fight or maybe he completely burns himself out, either way he is defeated. Then we get to the final confrontation. Izuku vs Shigaraki. It’s a massive battle, all of their skills get to be used and seen, we’ve all seen Naruto, and when it looks like Izuku’s going to lose, that’s when he steps back and for a moment, lets Nana take over. That’s when Shigaraki hears the one thing he wanted to hear from any of his family, any of the people who claimed to care: I will try to do better. All of the vestiges band together to give Izuku a second chance, and Shigaraki redoubles his efforts in one last attempt to cut all ties to his past. At this point most of the other villains have either been subdued or have laid down their arms and are watching their battle. And Shigaraki pushes himself too far. Maybe he starts to struggle with his own mind like the Nomu, losing coherency. His emotions and his physical power too much for him to handle. Knowing that he’s not going to last much longer, at least not as himself, he forces Izuku down and makes him promise to do better, maybe somehow using quirk bullshit he shows him everything he’s been through, everything that we the readers know but that Izuku does not, and with tears in his eyes Izuku agrees. The hero-vigilantes and the remainder of the League work together to finally put him out of his misery.

Afterwards, whilst society begins to rebuild and recover and we see the hero system completely scrapped. Izuku himself heads the development of the new system, using all the masses of information he’s collected over the years plus everything he learned from Shigaraki and the League. Shigaraki gets a proper funeral, and though it’s a relatively quiet affair, Izuku and Toshinori are there, as are the remaining four core League members (though Dabi is in chains). Toshinori reflects on how, even though Shigaraki’s story started as something loveless and lonely, it ended with real friendship and a true family, and that he hopes somewhere Nana is greeting her grandson with the warmth and love he sorely lacked growing up. And the series closes on Izuku grown up, helping Eri with her high school application, flashing through some of the efforts being made by his surviving classmates to create a truly inclusive society where everyone, regardless of background, quirk, or circumstance is offered a hand. He contemplates how if only someone had reached out a hand to Shigaraki, he could have been like Eri, he could have been saved. But then he realises that despite all the pain and damage Shigaraki caused, if it weren’t for him then nothing would have changed, and even though hero society was ‘destroyed’, a much better thing is being put in its place. Izuku had become a number one hero he could be proud of himself for being. And so he helps Eri seal her envelope, and mutters a quick thank you out of the window, before heading out to help her post it.

-+-

Hooboy that took a long time to write. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff I missed and plotlines that need polishing that I didn’t include, but that’s roughly what I would do if I was put in charge. Hope that’s a satisfying answer!