Still Laughing At Endeavors “disguise”, I See Where Dabi Gets It From

My full piece for @bnhaslumberpartyzine !!

Shop reopens next week so you can still get yourself copy of this lovely zine 💖💖💖

Not-Really Chapter Thoughts BNHA 424

You know, I really think there should be a point at which Deku rushing in with no plan and doing whatever he thinks feels right should become Heroic Malpractice.

Just me?

Because, like, Shouto had a plan. He spent the time between the two war arcs specifically developing a brand-new combat technique that he planned to use to shut down Dabi's combat advantage without killing him. He convinced his dad not to change the plan like Endeavor was hesitantly sounding him out about[1]; he went out and talked and asked questions, and even if they weren't the right words every single time, he did his best and he did it with intention. If Dabi proves to be dead, it won't be because of anything Shouto did to him; it'll be because Dabi himself chose to stand back up, take a warp gate across the country, pick a fight with the guy who doesn't have the power set to shut him down without unduly hurting him, and try to replicate an Ultimate Move specifically tailored for someone with a balanced power set Dabi doesn't have.[2]

And if Dabi lives, it's still going to be because Shouto booked it across the country and used that same technique to stop him again.

1: Dabi surely would have preferred to fight Endeavor from the start, and it probably would have been the more "just" choice if it had to be one or the other, but Shouto is the nominal focal character between the three of them, so, critiques of the broader Hero-side decisions aside, Shouto's arc has to come first. This is one of those places where you can clearly see how much the decision to let Endeavor survive where Horikoshi originally planned for him to die hurts the shape of the later story.

2: Obviously ultimately if Dabi dies, it's going to be because his family and Team Hero made repeated choices to ignore and neglect him, culminating in the entire family swearing to deal with Touya together only to passively accept a battle plan that involved splitting them all and letting the kid who knows Touya the least be the one to fight him. But like, in the context of that fight, Shouto isn't the reason Dabi takes all that hurt.

Uraraka may or may not have had much of a plan, but at least the words she said to Toga reflected that she had been seriously thinking about Toga in the here and now, what Toga's told her, what Toga needs. If Toga dies, it will be because Toga chose to give Uraraka an unsupervised blood transfusion with no intention of stopping it. (With the same general caveats as in Footnote 2.)

But Deku? From the very beginning, Deku has been valorized by the manga for how much he doesn't plan. All Might tells him specifically that it's a sign of greatness shown by future "top Heroes" that, in some crisis situation, their bodies moved before they could think. Bakugou's Rising chapter is defined by him reaching that same state.

Deku claimed he wanted to save Shigaraki; he's sad in the latest chapter that he couldn't save Tenko's[3] life. But did he ever have a real plan to do that? With all the quirks he had at his disposal - both his own and those who would be in the flying coffin with him, or classmates whose presence he could specifically request - did he think hard and come up with a technique that would let him stop Shigaraki without harming him? Did he try to connect with the Shigaraki right in front of him by citing to the future?

3: And I have nothing but scorn for Deku's insistence on that name when "Tenko" goes out very pointedly calling himself Shigaraki Tomura.

Well, no. Deku obstinately yelled at the phantasms in Shigaraki's mindscape that he had no plan whatsoever. The only plans we saw him carry out were ones handed to him by the OFA collective that involved "breaking" Shigaraki's psyche; the only plans he came up with himself involved more efficiently breaking Shigaraki's body.

Way back in Chapter 130, Nighteye harshly scolded Deku by saying that his way of thinking was arrogant. He said, "Go after him haphazardly and he'll slip through our fingers. You're not so special as to be able to save who you want, when you want. (...) This world is not so accommodating that you can act the Hero because you feel like it."

It felt like something that Deku should have taken to heart, a lesson to be learned and applied later, but I never much got the feeling that he did. Nothing he did in that moment, in that arc, or anywhere else in the series afterward indicates that he thought Nighteye was right. He just chose not to talk back, and the arc ended with Nighteye dead and no longer around to pose objections to Deku's mode of heroism.

But Nighteye was right. Three hundred chapters later, Shigaraki is dead because Deku could not be arsed to plan for how he could stop Shigaraki without killing him. Because he let Gran Fucking Torino give him the intellectual out that killing someone could be a means of saving them. Because he followed his gut instincts of prioritizing the phantom Crying Child that he always saw as more valid and real than the human being standing in front of him.

Because he haphazardly acted the Hero and let his body move without thinking.

And he wants to act sad about it now? I hope Nighteye materializes in his bedroom to sneer at him every night for the rest of his life.

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Incidentally, fuck All Might, seriously. "Wow, Deku and Bakugou, you two are the greatest Heroes ever. Fuck me and everyone else who fought tooth and nail, arm and leg, eye and earjack, life and death, to contribute to the pile of damage that was necessary to kill and/or save Shigaraki and All For One. You two got the last blows in, so you're the only ones who get the credit for it in my eyes. Hero Society is definitely going to be different and better with you two around."

a quick Shigaraki sketch before bed

I used a color palette for this and I think it turned out pretty cool!

how it feels like sometimes

Real talk what are your hopes for your favorite villains?

wow sooooooo glad you asked because i have a LOT of strong thoughts but unfortunately my hopes and dreams do not line up with what i actually think is gonna happen. but for like absolutely bare minimum my hopes are just like. "alive". my second bare minimum is that i really need a bnha shippuden. most secret revered hope is “vigilante endgame”.

firstly obviously i would like for mr compress to no longer be in jail somehow but if i can't have that then he SHOULD be a hannibal lecter-lite to best jeanist and the majority of their conversations revolve around bondage innuendo. i believe i have expressed this desire before but i still stand by it. anyways i just wanna learn his fuckin full backstory man horikoshi PROMISED me personally. anyways in bnha shippuden whoever is left of the villains SHALL bust compress out and best jeanist will erotically hunt him down but never truly be able to put him back behind bars. it's all very heart-wrenching trust me.

trumpet is gonna start a political riot in order to distract the guards from how geten is very carefully and delicately using whatever water is in the prison and like burst the whole thing open (shamelessly stealing this from @stillness-in-green because it's only justice) and they get rikiya the fuck out of there and i haven't like, figured out how much further i can go with this outside of them like meeting up with the remains of the league but in bnha shippuden they will be used to significantly have the students question their society now that everything's been rocked to pieces and the MLA remainders are both figuring how to live according to their philosophy in the new world while also stepping around the fact. rikiya is constantly like side-stepping the growing implications that he was kind of groomed in a cult which is easy cuz trumpet's sitting there like "everything is FINE i will take CARE OF YOU because you are my my beloved my dear leader. no we aren’t going to talk to shigaraki right now he has stuff and things let’s just hang out the two of us. geten is there watching trumpet suspiciously and prepared to protect rikiya’s virtue.

muscular appears again cuz jail SUCKS finally gets to reveal that he was raised in a baby-fighting ring. he claims it’s no big deal but everyone is like “oh my god i’m really sorry that happened to you no one should be raised in a baby-fighting ring”. he realises that yeah. YEAH. being raised in a baby-fighting ring was actually kind of fucked up. he cries, and he’s actually a really gorgeous crier? like the kind of crying that makes you wanna cradle a person. this does nothing about his love for murder but at least i was right.

moonfish gets to eat a guy <3 straight up unhinges his jaw and swallows someone whole. no one knew he could do that.

okay toga this is gonna be complicated because the manga isn't gonna have the space for it but i've been OBSESSED with comparing power csm and toga and their relationship to blood as they use it as a means, symbol, and substitute for relationships, and a big thing for showing how deeply power cared about denji is that she let denji drink from her and later straight up gave him her blood so she could survive yeah?? so i'm still turning over in my head how to get from toga embracing herself and her desires, but also still very much on the murder train, and how to get her off the murder train without devaluing who she is as a person, but i would LOVE for her to get to the point where just like how twice gave her an emergency blood transfusion in MVA, she's like standing over a bleeding out uraraka or something and she goes. damn this actually sucks. but because i am a brilliant person, like my beloved friend twice, i will also know how to perform a blood transfusion. bc one hell of a twist on how toga experiences love by taking blood would culminate in her giving it right?? i have a funnier riff on this that i shared elsewhere but i shall be coy. but at some point uraraka manages to somehow PROVE that she has genuinely thought about toga and is willing to reach out more and toga tries rejecting it cuz she’s no hollaback girl but it twigs something in the back of her mind, and then bam uraraka’s life is in her hands, and it’s gonna be the most poignant bloodletting of all time.

okay you asked favourite villains and i’m a known dabi h8er insomuch as i am known but i WANNA say before i move onto the most important endgame hopes. you know that one tumblr post about how hamsters are born seeing a thread and they stubbornly follow it straight to their deaths. that’s dabi i think he’s gonna straight up die like he’s barrelling so hard at it. but CRUCIALLY, i think it will happen one of two ways. a) shouto manages to break through to him and soften that hatred and vengeance inside of him but unfortunately the power of love does not have a lot of medicinal benefits in this universe compared to the power of hatred, so dabi expires. or b) just as dabi is gonna land the killing blow on his little brother, the GHOSTS OF THE MURDERED ORPHAN CHILDREN suddenly appear to finally get their revenge. and they like drag him into hell or something. horikoshi is gonna include recordings of like this ghostly, childish rattling going “sleeeeeepyhead.............we’ve been waiting for you........” and it’s gonna be so good. if i’m feeling kindly i’d say that skeptic somehow manages to rescue dabi’s lil charcoal’d brain and stick it in a robot (i know skeptic can do this) and they have mediocre but ultimately okay sex for the rest of their lives.

now that i’ve given dabi his pity fuck we gotta move onto the real important fellas.

okay shigaraki is even MORE complicated because horikoshi has refused to let shigaraki speak to anyone from the league since chapter 233 and i want them to be crucial in shigaraki’s endgame and downplay deku as much as possible, because deku is a bad character, and a horrible foil for shigaraki. also obviously my shigaraki endgame has to be closely tied into spinner’s endgame because spinner is the most special fella in the entire world.

problem is that actually thinking of spinner makes me so anxious that i feel nauseous, like this is rvb13 ‘is locus gonna fuckin die’ levels of anxiety but stretched out tortuously. i know i won’t get what i want i never do but it’d be SUCH a missed opportunity. and also if i speak my hopes and dreams out they won’t happen and i’m literally paranoid, like superstitious about it. it’s so clear in my mind but if i don’t get it i’ll throw a fuckin fit. okay breaking it down into high level points.

in deku’s journey to the shigaraki death trap fight he encounters spinner, words are exchanged, spinner says something pings deku’s hero sense and he’s torn between rushing to the fight, or taking this avenue, this barest sliver of a chance, that interacting with someone who cares about shigaraki might be crucial to his whole “saving” thing. conversation helps spinner figure some things out, modifying his course and his resolution. deku ends up overusing his quirks and falls into the ocean to drown.

also spinner is on his way to lift kurogiri from jail. this is to make coordinating placements easier. also we’ll get a moment where kurogiri fights between his programming, loyalty to AFO and protection of shigaraki blah blah blah, spinner’s begging and resolution is crucial helping kurogiri be like “yeah tomura is a grubby lil weirdo who’s only ever rude to me but this spinner guy. he’s really something huh.” i didn’t discuss my kurogiri endgame but kurogiri’s defense of shigaraki when they arrive on the battle scene causes aizawa to waver and that’s gonna be one of the clinchers in The Escape.

spinaraki completely fuckin steals that big kiribaku moment from the kamino arc. on the surface level kiribakus and spinarakis become allies but there’s friction cuz the kiribakus have a bit more longevity to their name, but the spinarakis get to be of Endgame Significance and also can’t be ignored for the rest of the manga cuz that was the rest of the manga. however, I will devoutly defend the honour of the kiribakus cuz i have like one beloved kiribaku mutual. i can be an ambassador.

okay so crucially for shigaraki’s plot. like obviously being driven entirely by anger and hatred only sticks him further into AFO’s control, an obvious allegory for the impact of abuse and grooming, and i maintain that shigaraki’s endgame (along with the heroes taking like five seconds to take shigaraki’s grievances seriously) is to buffer that anger and hatred and giving him a drive with something else. ie, realizing that he doesn’t hate the league, is actually really okay with them, and wants more for them than dying or being in jail. and that’s the wiggle room.

anyways so there’s an emotional moment, spinner and kurogiri get shigaraki the hell out of the death trap, they take a moment to pick up toga, maybe they stop by dabi but dabi’s being eaten by ghost orphans and they decide to respect his personal business. as a prelude to this point there’s been a lot of personal realizations and shake ups about how the league really do want to Live but maybe the murder terrorist train isn’t like, an awesome path to be on.

bnha shippuden involves a lot of the league confronting themselves and their actions while still not succumbing to being absorbed by Society and slowly, accidentally stumbling their way into vigilantism. spinner and shigaraki will get a really smooshy and angsty plotline here but again, i am coy.

also. six will turn out to be alive. he and koichi? just chilling in hiding the entire time. they actually intended to join the endgame battle but turns out, they both suck at directions! i have secret fantasies here but it’s like half a step away from me creating OCs related to AFO’s secret numbers and i’m too shy for that.

last but not least AFO gets turned into a child and he’s just the sweetest little thing. i stole this one from @codenamesazanka who was joking in a tangential discussion but i’m taking it dead fuckin serious now <3

13 yrs. Touya under care of Ujiko [theory]

I really like hori Noumu design it a perfectly mixture of hideous and cute

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I don’t think Ujiko is a good person, he really twisted and a mad scientist type. but I think he have soft spot for all his creature [aka. noumu] like it his child/possession.

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I wonder if Noumu is cuddlable? or even comfortable to cuddle or not [but it made out of flesh so maybe it smooth for texture?]

OK BUT WHAT IF

essentially Dabi said no to League Bonding Camp to go spend the month hanging out with Shigaraki’s creepy stepdad and weird necromancied dogs

I think Rei's writing is actually quite consistent, unlike another person we won't mention here. I think you actually answered your own question in your post, the reason why Rei reacted to Shouto's and Touya's situations differently was because they were different situations. It's the same logic to why Shouto and Touya reacted differently to their abuse and when you apply the same logic here it becomes easier to understand why Rei approached them differently (continue)

(continue) I think the other issue though is that Rei also didn't understand Touya either. She understood more than Endeavour but didn't understand fully which is why she wasn't able to reach out to Touya. I think the problem is Rei believes only Endeavour can get through to Touya. This was the case 16 years ago when Touya was 8 and this is still the case when Touya is 24. The only difference is she's more demanding but she's still missing something vital when it comes to understanding her son.

You bring up a lot of good points that I don't totally disagree with, anon, and that's fine! But I still maintain my conclusion in my original post.

I think the issue with Shouto vs Touya is that Rei applied the same tactics to Touya as she did Shouto, but it didn't land because Shouto's existence was justified and celebrated by his father for the sheer fact that he was born with the "perfect" quirk. His internal conflict arose not from his existence, but his similarities to his father, which he feared would result in him becoming exactly like his father, since that's essentially what Enji was gunning for -- creating a child that could be the perfect version of himself, rather than working to be that version of himself.

Whereas Touya was born "imperfect," so trying to meet his father's expectations against all advice and despite all the pain it caused him was never about being a hero and was all about validating his own existence. So I actually think the issue there was that Rei approached them the same, when Touya required an approach that acknowledged and validated his different circumstances.

Also, I agree that Rei didn't completely understand Touya because she couldn't fully relate to his experiences, but she definitely understood enough to know that Touya was aware of his father trying to replace him and that this would impact him negatively, hence his acting out and continuing to train, because we get confirmation of that in the flashbacks of Ch 301 & 302.

this wouldn’t leave my head (version without dramatic shading underneath!)