A little doodle of the boyfriends
it’s been rainy 🌧💙
surprise
I live
Another day, another event focused on the LOV and their targeted psychic attacks on Skeptic's blood pressure (+ ReDestro's wallet)
The event starts with the gang fully embracing the freeloader lifestyle: lounging around and playing cards, ordering premium food on the PLF's dime, and doing absolutely nothing to actually help out with running the organization they violently took over like a week ago.
Everyone praises Tomura for being good at cards, with Compress and Twice wondering how he can be so good at reading others even though most of them are wearing masks. Jin then proceeds to shout out what his hand is, solving part of the mystery behind Tomura's undefeated winning streak in record time.
They want to play another game, but Tomura shoots them down bc it's close to noon and he's hungry. They agree to stop playing cards and get some lunch, and start talking about what sort of gourmet (read: expensive) foods they should try next. Tomura breezily talks about how nice it is to finally have money to burn (he's the worst ♥️), which inevitably summons Skeptic from the fourth ring of hell to bitch everyone out about wasting the PLF's precious funds.
"Thanks a bunch~" If Skeptic murks you in your sleep, you really only have yourself to blame Mister.
No one does "endearing in a criminally insane way" quite like Tomura. 😬
Trumpet senses that things are about to get ugly (or that skeptic is about five seconds away from a full blown hypertensive crisis) and intervenes, suggesting that they play a game of cards-- If Tomura wins, the PLF will foot the bill. If Skeptic wins, they either have to pay for their own lunch or just go hungry.
Tomura (quite predictably) says "fuck that" and tells Spinner just to go buy them lunch at a convenience store.
>be me >be stuck in a secret base hidden deep in the mountains >be literally miles away from civilization and the nearest town >tfw warp gate is doing ten-to-life and warp sludge is being gatekept by the world's most toxic Ivo Robotnik cosplayer 😔 >my boss, fully aware of all the above, orders me to walk to the nearest town and buy him a frozen burrito from a gas station >mfw
IS THIS YOUR MAN, SPINNER.
Tomura lightly bullying his friends and making unreasonable requests is nothing new, but this one strikes me as hilariously mean spirited even by his standards bc it’s also implied Tomura expects Spinner to foot the bill on top of all that:
BRO FALL IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE ELSE 😭
Trumpet eventually convinces Tomura that it would actually (read: obviously) be faster to just settle the issue with a game of cards-- Tomura finally gives in, and they settle on a game of blackjack.
Compress explains the rules of blackjack and offers to deal the cards-- Trumpet shuts this down immediately and says that HE will deal the cards, thank you very much:
As an aside, I love how utterly shameless they make Compress in these events lmao.
Tomura and Skeptic begin their game, and Tomura quickly makes it apparent that he approaches blackjack with the same suicidally reckless abandon as he does pretty much everything else:
Out of context MHA, eat your heart out.
Spinner, Compress, and Dabi all worry that Tomura has drawn too many cards and is gonna lose by default, but Jin and Himiko both express their faith in his abilities as an ill-gotten bread winner (<3)
Tomura and Skeptic both reveal their hands, and we hard cut to the aftermath where the LOV are gushing about all the high quality meat they bought on the PLF's dime while Skeptic seethes in the corner.
>Tomura
> making logical choices
well, there's your first mistake.
Trumpet tells Skeptic to stop being a hater and dig in, casually siding with the LOV now that they've won their premium beef:
Trumpet:
Like a true politician.
The lunch party continues until ReDestro enters the scene... gushing about some high quality meat he managed to get ahold of and asking the League if they'd like some hot pot. :) Skeptic realizes his life is a cosmic joke. The event ends.
Bonus Stuff:
This is starting to feel less like a case of the LOV simply liking sushi and more like a united effort to haze Dabi. Deserved, tbh.
Jin telling Himiko to eat her veggies and Compress fondly watching her eat her weight in meat......... they r SO cute wtf..................,😭
>I start joking about Tomura being the most rancid godawful tsundere in existence
>somewhere out there, apollo draws back his dodgeball arm
He sure complains a lot for someone who grumpily indulges their every whim, huh.
As dedicated readers of BNHA and meta for BNHA meta would know, the way characters drawn and depicted, the way certain scenes are framed, all of that is crucial to points Horikoshi makes about his characters, the plot, and the themes he wants to convey. Something to note is expression and how people are drawn. On the subject of Hawks, we know from in-text reactions to him that he is seen as conventionally attractive, and typically has a cheeky or happy-nature in his expressions. It's alone or in tense movements that we see something else.
What we do have is faces that break the Uncanny valley, like the famous image pre-"attacking" Best Jeanist, or getting confirmation about the raid where he very much show-cased his heteromorphic side, or the frightening image of him from Jin's pov as he was shrouded in shadows and looked very much like a predator.
What's consistent in these images is 1. Hawks was in control at of himself when he makes those faces 2. They usually don't *take* away from him in terms of find him "palatable" even if he's frightening. And there's a point to this.
Hawks isn't unflappable; there are plenty of moments where he loses his facade and cool, and we can argue those faces were truer to his inner nature than the bubbly cheeky personality he puts on a lot of the time.
But facially, it's interesting that he was so solemn as a child, and when alone and comfortable with himself, he seems to be mostly blank-faced and not very expressive. Perhaps that is the "default" Keigo.
Why all of this talk of faces and how Hawks is drawn? Because with 374, something has changed, and it means something very heavy is coming up with Hawks in the future.
First off, let's read about a certain trope
If a character is deranged or has just lost it for a moment, one eye is drawn as being very different than the other. Commonly, the Mad Eye (or its iris/pupil) is much larger than the other. Can also double as an unspoken Oh, Crap! moment. For extra effect, may be paired with Twitchy Eye.
Consistently, Dabi has been shown to be drawn with this trope time and time again. It's featured in promo art, in his battles, and this example up top. Dabi is clearly mentally unstable, openly and not unlike his friend Twice. The "Mad Eye" trope is meant to be a visual indicator of mentally instability. There's nary been a time where we've seen Hawks drawn like this. Even when he was drawn smirking before "killing" Best Jeanist, the eyes were the same.
It's interesting that his expression and eyes were relatively stable through out the process leading up to killing Bubaigawara Jin. But in the same panel where he kills him (right in the image above), half his face is obscured. Still, there's still an element of control here. I, and many other meta writers, have written about how control is a specific element in Hawks's character. His skill is in his technique, where he lacks in pure power, his skill in using his quirk in extremely adaptable and creative ways shows that he has an intense amount of control over it. And essentially his quirk is in that - controlling feathers do the various things they're capable of (sensors, listening devices, controlling their movements, flexibility, hardness, etc).
When being in control is so crucial to Hawks's quirk functioning, and being out of control so crucial to his narrative (the frequent caged bird references), it's interesting that most of the time Keigo is control of himself, even if he isn't in control of his circumstances. It's what made the HPSC make him a spy and what makes him, in my opinion, an interesting character.
By interesting, I don't mean "good" or "bad", moral or immoral or amoral, etc. I mean interesting in that he's complex and there's still mystery to him. It's very hard to understand Hawks because Keigo's story and personality are layered and presented to us in a way that it's difficult to get a full picture.
So what do we see in this chapter?
Keigo losing control.
He's been remarkably poised this war arc. He started by immediately trying to assassinate AFO without hesitation: While he's had emotional moments, one of the most striking things is that in earlier chapters against AFO, he's been repeating something that shows where his mindset is:
This whole fight Hawks has been telling Endeavor to keep a cool head, to not be provoked, to regain control of himself. He also keeps trying to play the circumstances - delaying so heavy-hitters like Enji can get a shot in, making sure everything it together.
Something else to notice is Hawks is wounded over the left side of his wave, and there's blood drying over his eye. However, there are numerous pictures of him in this state where his eyes are open at the same time or half-closed and there's no indication that he can open more than other.
As you can see here, this is Hawks with the blood over his eye in various expressions. Even when stressed, his expression never gives us indications of the "going mad" trope as the most recent chapter does. Thus, whatever is going on cannot be explained as due to his wound - it hasn't been shown before.
Why make so much of a single panel?
Because it's important.
We have Hawks, known for being very in control of himself and who tries to be in control of situations around him, and we have heavy build up by Hawks being the one to remind Endeavor to not lose it.
And yet....
This is not like anything we've seen from him so far. The mere sight of Twice alive again, the knowledge that what he did was for naught, heck, All For One is provoking him just on that basis:
"Time to learn how it might have turned out if you hadn't made his death your top priority back then."
Hawks's extrajudicial assassination of Twice became a viral moment, and don't forget it was drawn that way in the same time Japan had started undergoing protests for police brutality in 2020 due to viral videos of local beatings going viral amongst Japanese social media and twitter. Hawks has had to face immense scrutiny and criticism over his choice to kill Twice for the past few months, and his reaction to it has been to publicly apologize that he couldn't find another way to deal with him and to privately tell Best Jeanist that he admired the person he killed and wishes to be like him.
There's been no real show of regret, no reflection. And suddenly, with the appearance of Twice once more, we see a crack in this veneer:
Hawks's first words at the sight of the man he killed is to scream that the clones have to be killed immediately. Hawks's first expression at sight of Twice is one not of collected focus, nor even his usual anger or frustration.
He's drawn as if he's fucking crazy.
Horikoshi doesn't do panels like this for nothing. The way the panel beautifully lines up with one of Dabi's back covers, and the fact it's the first time Hawks has been drawn with the "mad eyes" trope is significant. It's showing us that Hawks, for the first time that we know of, is losing control of himself. And for a character whose narrative has been about controlling what people think and know about himself (and letting others do that for him), that's elemental to breaking down all we know of him.
This panel promises to show us another side of Hawks, a side he cannot hide away, or charm and joke his way out of. Naked, raw, and with no ulterior motives to control the situation, this face promises that we might finally hear what Hawks thinks of his actions and the reaction to them.
gamer bfs <3
Finally got inspiration for the day 7 of inktober
Just two dads in roadtrip with their kids ❤️
They are mike and will 😭💙💛
Just a place for me to keep all my random musings and fangirlingishness... Yerp.
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