Lurker Here, I Just Gotta Ask, Since Ua Is A Point Of Extreme Criticism In Your Bnha Stories, What Are

things that happened to me when i was a woman in STEM:

an advisor humiliated me in front of an entire lab group because of a call I made in his place when he wouldn't reply to my e-mails for months

he later delegated part of my master's thesis work to a 19-year old male undergrad without my approval

a male scientist at a NASA conference looked me up and down and asked when i was graduating and if i was open to a job at his company. right before inquiring what my ethnicity was because i "looked exotic"

a random male member of the public began talking over me and my female advisor, an oceanographer with a pHD and decades of experience, saying he knew more about oceanography than us

things that have happened to me since becoming a man in STEM:

being asked consistently for advice on projects despite being completely new to a position

male colleagues approaching me to drop candid information regarding our partners / higher ups that I was not privy to before

lenience toward my work in a way I haven't experienced before. incredible understanding when I need to take time off to care for my family.

conference rooms go silent when I start talking. no side chatter. I get a baseline level of attention and focus from people that's very unfamiliar and genuinely difficult for me to wrap my head around.

like. yes some PI's will still be assholes regardless of the gender of their subordinates but, I've lived this transition. misogyny in STEM is killing women's careers, and trans men can and do experience male privilege.

Sorry for not being on in, like, forever. Life’s just gotten in the way.

Anyways, that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. What I really wanted to focus on is something I’ve been thinking a lot on lately, and that’s the idea of asshole characters.

Obviously asshole characters come in all shapes and sizes. Each have their own motivations for being an asshole and/or unfriendly individual. Katsuki, Shota, and Hitoshi are asshole characters themselves, but why is it that I dislike them so much?

At first I thought I didn’t like asshole characters in general. However, I then remembered that there are several characters people would classify as assholes/unfriendly individuals that are characters I adore. Lysithea from Fire Emblem 2 Houses and Natsuki from Doki Doki Literature Club are characters who are rough around the edges and aren’t nice to people immediately. The reasons behind their behavior aren’t too far off from why Shota and Hitoshi act the way they do, that being trauma, so why am I able to look past their behavior and not that of Shota and Hitoshi? With Katsuki, it’s obvious, but the other two had me scratching my head for a bit.

The answer, outside of the fact that Lysithea and Natsuki are multi-layered characters written far better than Shota and Hitoshi, is that the girls are REACTIVE assholes while Hitoshi and Shota are ACTIVE assholes.

What do I mean by that? Well both Lysithea and Natsuki for the most part keep to themselves. Something that someone does ends up causing them to snap. For Lysithea, it’s when she feels that her time is being wasted after someone approaches her about something irrelevant. For Natsuki, it’s a defensive mechanism triggered by a perceived attack on her character. Now, is that an excuse for their behavior? No. There are better ways to defend yourself and to get people to stop talking to you, but it’s at least understandable that they’d snap due to their traumas.

Katsuki, Hitoshi, and Shota aren’t like that. When they’re an asshole, it isn’t because they’re provoked into being one by someone else’s actions, but because they’re the ones doing the provoking. Katsuki’s rude and aggressive to everyone around him, choosing to make the life of another boy absolutely miserable without any provocation. Hitoshi decides to mock 1-A and issue his “challenge” not because anyone approached him, but because he himself is looking for trouble. Yeah, Katsuki gave off a shitty first impression, but Hitoshi already was planning on challenging 1-A from the beginning. Shota’s the one who controls his teaching style and is a position of authority. Rather than do his job, he’d rather tear someone down.

Am I supposed to sympathize with these so-called heroes? I for the life of me can’t seem to do so. Meanwhile, with characters like Lysithea and Natsuki, I can because they don’t mean to be an asshole, it’s just that they want to be left alone.

Now, am I saying reactive assholes are better characters than proactive assholes? No. Proactive assholes can have great character development. The problem is that proactive assholes are tougher to warm up to, especially when they’re meant to characters the audience is meant to root for. MHA’s writing does nothing TO make people want to root for these guys. They’re just assholes who wanna throw their weight around and never receive punishment for it/are called out for it. Hell, MHA seems to think these characters ARE in the right for being the way they are and/or doesn’t take the fact that they are assholes seriously (looking at you Katsuki).

Anyways, I thought I’d write this up to really explain more of my thought process and why Katsuki, Hitoshi, and Shota bother me so much whereas I find myself adoring characters such as Lysithea and Natsuki.

I just realized something about BNHA that I'm sure nobody on here talked about yet.

The show suffers from a protagonist centered morality.

Izuku or to a lesser extent those that're on the side of the heroes, are always seen as in the right and that anything going against that is automatically in the wrong and should be called out. Even if the other side makes a good point about something.

Take Eri and the reporters for example. The reporters raise good points about Bakugou and how irresponsible UA is, but are told "na nuh!" By Aizawa and it just ends at that.

Then Eri... She literally went from one place who used her power to another. It literally falls into "It's okay if WE do it!" even though this is supposed to be a story meant to point out the flaws in society but gets onto anyone who dares try to say anything bad about it!

God even after all this time BNHA still makes my blood boil!!

People need to talk about this more.

Good and bad in MHA has less to do with morality and more to do with who are the heroes and who are the villains. Which could have been a GREAT setup, only for Horikoshi to never talk about it.

Any time ANYONE has a point, they are immediately discredited or brushed aside. Like Izuku dismissing what Dabi said by defending Endeavor as his mentor. For this to come from our protagonist of all people that late in the game? It not only ignores something blatantly being called out, it also makes our protagonist look worse. Instead of addressing and amending the propaganda he set up, Horikoshi repeatedly reinforces it for some reason.

(This is a repeated problem with Izuku especially. He's such a blank prop that never got the development he deserves that any critiques about the world around him go right over his head. It's actually bittersweet that in the epilogue he is starting to come to a realization because no it's too late)

I've talked many times about how the LOV regressed into irredeemable monsters to make their suffering and the points they made meaningless. Spinner suffered from this the worst. He was the member of the LOV who didn't crave destruction and wanted to change things, only to forgo all of that in the Final War.

To watch all this happen when I used to love MHA is just so disappointing

僕は僕だ。

mbti tertiary functions (boredom functions)

INFJ/ISFJ: true crime, scrolling through wikipedia for hours, looking up riddles, scrolling through "onlyjayyus" tiktok, has a huge duolingo streak

ENFJ/ENTJ: uses se to support te/fe ambitions (sports, performing arts, community service, cleaning)

ESFJ/ESTJ: fantasizing, vision boards on pinterest, adding items to amazon wishlist, makes a bucket list for the year,

ESTP/ENTP: touches grass, hangs our with friends, class clown, watches reality tv, starts drama for no reason, debates on the internet (or fights irl if you're an estp 👀)

ESFP/ENFP: random urge to organize computer, random internet debates, creates new playlists, watches video essays about random topics, argues with friends about either stupid or smart things

INFP/INTP: reminisces about things. procrastinates. overthinking past conversations in the shower. collects cool rocks. photography. listens to the same song over and over again.

ISFP/ISTP: planning and...stuff. zodiac, psuedoscience, etc. strategic/world building video games, has a whole fictional world planned out in their head.

INTJ/ISTJ: "write in their feelings diary" 💀 IM SORRY, introspection, often known as super "self aware" as a result, watches nostalgic or comfort movies

Close up

chomp chomp 🦈🦈💦

really appreciated ur mp100 meta post — i’ve never understood terumob as an actual ship and it’s always a little bizarre to me how frequently represented it is in fanworks - or, more specifically, mob crushing on teru/returning his feelings. i love teru and mob’s dynamic so much and think it’s such a genius way of indirectly showing how everyone is someone’s Most Important Person and someone else’s Just Some Guy. like, tsubomi really is just some girl! but thru mob vision, she’s ahything but. and mob is shown the entire show to be just some guy (ignoring the psychic powers) but teru looks at him like mob looks at tsubomi meaaaaning no one is inherently special so everyone means something special to different people !!!!! like terumob + tsubomi are such a great way of looking at the message of the show but ppl r too busy looking at it thru shipping goggles despite mob sadly showing no interest in teru as anything more than a friend. this is rambling and incoherent but u get my gist. tl;dr thank u agreed 1000% im glad i’m not alone in my reticence about terumob as an actual functioning ship

dude you worded this excellently and i agree entirely. it sucks too bc a lot of people are reading that post and being like "this is a great analysis!" and then tagging it as terumob?!?!?? like dude you did not read what this was about at ALL. but you're so absolutely right, it's all about how nobody is particularly special and the only things that separate us are our built up feelings and personal experiences--everyone is the main character because everyone has an entirely different view on the world

“Worship me but don’t WORSHIP me” is an insane line to say to your brother who jerked you off and is now explaining himself, and who you’ve been unconsciously (?) grooming since the moment you set foot in Thailand.

Saxon Ratliff you’re not sane in the head….

Like I knew Lochlan was batshit insane, and I know they’re both deep in denial (especially Saxon), but this reaction is not the reaction a normal 26 year old adult would have after something like that happened with a younger sibling. The sexual component of the relationship only appeared in episode 5, but it was the “innocent” kind of worship that got them in trouble in the first place. That’s why you’re both here dude, because you blurred all the boundaries between the two of you. And that’s his response??

I swear to god that whole scene had me cracking up. Between Lochlan calling him a narcissist (deserved), and Saxon just trying to bury all of it so blame doesn’t have to be assigned…

chronically 19yr demon slays while slaying