My Hero Academia Is Ending After 10 Years This Month

i think hawks only felt like a child whenever he'd feel powerless against his father's rage i think he couldn't wait to grow up i think it's crazy that horikoshi confirmed that 22yo hawks tries to grow a beard to appear older

Night patrol 🌙

Wiping my feet, putting on indoor slippers from my backpack: So, so. I can't stop staring at the Miruko and Hawks art. The OFFICIAL one, where they're wearing highschool uniforms because WE STAN BIRDIE-BUNNY FRIENDSHIPS. Just. Let Miruko adopt a dumb bird, please. When she saw this cheeky ass bird child, she thought he was funny but she did not at all expect to adopt a baby bird as a little sibling-ish person thing. He's a mess but she'd kill for him. Thanks, Bellamy-senpai!!

Rumi is a genuinely cool and popular upperclassman who thinks it’s absolutely hilarious that the new kid Takami seems very cool on the surface but is actually just, like, a complete disaster in reality. He has absolutely minimal practice interacting with people past uncomfortably canny surface level social signaling and pretending like his inability to smile is because he’s too cool to do so, and is way too enthusiastic about using pop culture references for someone who seems to have accidentally wiped the ‘childhood media’ folder from the hard drive of his brain. He is most honest when he’s being an asshole, which is hilarious because he pulls it off with exactly enough shit-eating gravitas that nobody ever calls him on it, so she thinks they’re going to bond over that... but it turns out that once she cracks him open like a walnut, he’s stupidly easy to bait into feeling bad with some crocodile tears. At least he is when he’s not emotionally manipulating Rumi’s class rep into begging some extra credit for Rumi off of their teacher because he’s just so worried that she lost points because he made her help him with some family stuff, and he’d feel so bad if it was his fault that her grade suffered -

She wrestles him into the dirt after school for that, because fuck you, ‘Hawks,’ don’t project the bug he has up his ass about getting a single B onto her. She’s not the one that got raised in a test tube or whatever, she can damn well fight her own fights without any little freshman rats sneaking around behind her back!

It’s more ride-or-die than she expected him to be, though, and before she knows it she’s more than ready to return the favor. She graduates before him, and it’s a happy occasion as any until she realizes that she’s probably his only genuine friend in the whole school that knows him beyond his stupid facade of superficial idol-like popularity. It’s not the whole reason that she registers herself under her own agency (because like fuck is she going to sidekick for anybody!), but it doesn’t hurt that doing so means she’s technically legal to send internship request forms to high school students.

parting gift

Chapter 266 - Happy Life

Afternoon rooftop comic

woahgh.. old hawks stuff in my forgotten files.... epic

I have mentioned before that in literature, sharing a meal is symbolically an act of communion, usually for the purpose of making peace or coming to a mutual understanding.

At a symbolic level, this scene is Hawks and Endeavor trying to understand each other and their respective ideals. It's a peace offering and request for cooperation on Hawks' part. The strange thing is despite Endeavor's overbearing nature, he let Hawks choose the food and the location of their meal. As much as Hawks said he wants to sit back and take a supporting role, Hawks was the one taking all of the initiative and Endeavor was letting him lead with only moderate complaining.

And this meal did lead to an understanding between these two. It's only because of the understanding they reached here that Endeavor was able to understand Hawks' later message warning of the PLF. It wasn't a perfect understanding: they finished their meal together, but the restaurant was shattered before they could pay the bill. Hawks still kept his face and hands covered by his costume. He was still not being forthright about his intentions. He planned on using Endeavor as bait for the noumu without informing him. And Hawks was not being honest about why he wanted to direct Endeavor's Number One Hero career. Hawks phrased it in terms of not wanting to work hard, but it was in truth about his personal admiration of Endeavor and a systemic critique about the fragility of the existing system that needs heroes on alert at all times.

looking back at my initial reaction to this moment when it happened in the manga, i can't believe i didn't immediately realise that it wasn't supposed to be taken positively. as someone who's been preaching about shigaraki being an unreliable narrator for years, it's really weird that at the time i didn't realise that the contradiction in what hawks saying ('i had support') and what he's thinking about (his toy. he didn't have any real support, only himself and his dream) is intentional, and didn't notice that his speech-bubbles are shaky. he's not really fine or alright, but he's convincing himself that he is to keep going.

high hopes - hawks amv (youtube)