🌟🦅🥔

Chapter 246 - Message

kofi request for @/touyacentric on twitter; Hawks and Tokoyam enjoying yakitori together uwu

pause. the Shigaraki-Rapunzel parallel specifically in the context of AFO making his hair grow long and luscious just because he can and then stealing his freedom and his body. Then his long white hair being cut and turning back to black, signifying Tenko regaining his autonomy and getting a fresh start.

mid-day naps

downfall

my growing collection from redacted dot com 🥲

I personally believe Himiko Toga truly represents growing up as a girl who doesn't actually fit the mold of what society expects from being born as one; the refusal to be objectified and subsequently abused to obligate to fit in, despite the cost of rebelling.

It's alright when Himiko hasn't developed her Quirk—her sense of personality and identity—because her parents can play dress up with her as they please. Himiko can just be anything they want her to be.

She has been taught being cute is being human and this link is repeated over and over again when we hear about her. Her parents punish her individuality by calling her a monster, denying any possible humanity and forcing her to suppress herself; Himiko cannot just be anyone she wants to be.

This idea is stressed when she is paired up against Ochako over and over again throughout the series.

Ochako is the perfect example of what a girl should be like. She is selfless, innocent, kind—but she buries deep down, to an unhealthy extent, all possible ugly things. When she is in love or jealous or even sad, she refuses to let these things show until she is alone as opposed to Himiko, who has learned to let herself go (with a cost, of course.)

What does Himiko mean when she says she wants to be like Ochako? We understand that she literally wants to become somebody else, because that is the way she loves, but has Himiko ever loved herself?

In the final battle, Himiko takes the blood of Ochako only to offer all of her blood back. The detail is, when she does this, she keeps parts of her actual features this time. The lightning is used specifically on that side of her face, because Himiko isn't hiding herself anymore under someone else's face in order to feel loved.

She learns to fully love herself because Ochako, someone who has grown on the side of normality, fights to let her know what she means for her. She is ready to take more than one stab wound just to reach Himiko and let her know that she envies her smile. Her freedom. Ochako may have always been accepted, but she now validates Himiko's way of living however she pleases and even claims to want to have the liberty she does.

And Himiko allows her (and eventually literally pushes her) to live however she wants to.

do you ever think about how Hawks had the biggest failure in the manga? Like if the core theme is that people who are left of society need others to reach out to them and that if people genuinely try to understand others there can be a connection, essentially the character and narrative who completely failed this theme is Keigo and Jin. Keigo failed Jin. Like, Keigo's even been the mouthpiece for this theme of connectedness in the manga and bringing people together (his comments when Deku was brought in), several times over, and I keep thinking of how it will look when Shigaraki is saved and reached out to by Deku, how this will look when Touya is finally home with his family, when Himiko gets to have a normal night with Ochako and just be a normal girl. Keigo's just going to have to live with the very apparent realization that the kids succeeded where he failed and that Jin's blood is on his hands needlessly. He'll look at the kids and the villains they saved and look around himself and realize he could have had that, too, if only he'd tried to connect. Hawks has always been a really tragic character, and I know from the start we were into this idea of a boy thrown into tragic circumstances with no freedom out of them, but I think there's something to be said that the biggest failure in this manga, and likely of his life, was due to his own actions and buying into his own narrative of never having another choice.

Another art of Keigo. Now I can get back to working on my comic.