#when bkg suibaited him he was more concerned with bkg getting in trouble than like. the idea of actually offing himself.

[delku]

there is a line, i think. i complain a lot (or if i don't, well, pretend i do? because it feels like i do) about quirkless hero/vigilante deku and the meta surrounding it, but you can't make him... like... worship ofa* either. that's weird. you're using him as a soapbox if you write like that. it's especially weird to make him attribute everything in heroics to quirks and quirks only when all might is quirkless and is currently beating afo's ass, making your take (through deku's tongue) demonstrably false. deku has nothing but respect for all might, even in his current state, and making him too focused on ofa as the only solution to him accessing heroics is. weird. not to bring movie 3 into a discussion again but there's some relevant dialogue from the flect fight:

"[The Quirk doomsday theory is] not true! Whether someone has a Quirk or is Quirkless doesn't mean they're sick or anything! We're all alive! We're all human!"

he's not exactly caught up on the idea that being quirkless is inherently worse than having a quirk. we know he suffered for it, and we can speculate he's not comfortable talking about his experience with it (kouta at camp (72), referring to himself in the third person. primarily, he was keeping the secret, but he looks surprised at himself for even bringing it up). but he doesn't hate it. that would be giving up a part of himself, and he holds those cards carefully close. his upbringing informs his beliefs. if anything, it should be quite precious to him, especially knowing the other quirkless characters and how he views them.

obviously ofa was deku's ticket into heroics, and pretending he could've gotten there by any other means (considering the points of access afforded to a quirkless middle schooler who has no connections) is foolish. but he clearly does not believe the quirk makes the hero, or he would've lost any respect he had for all might the moment he said "now, it's your turn."

*by "worship ofa", i'm not referring to him considering the power as something special. he textually did this and got called out by multiple people for it, most notably gran torino. in this context, it's more like exaggerated reverence for the power as deku's salvation; something that rescued him from the terrible dredgery of quirklessness and opened up endless doors of opportunity for him. whether or not the power actually did this is irrelevant; the point is that deku doesn't think of it that way. he's much more captivated by ofa as a blessing generously provided by all might that allowed him to (specifically) train to become a hero. he doesn't seem to mind very much that he was quirkless unless the idea of his worthiness as a successor is questioned.