This Is Probably A Weird Note To End My Time With MHA's Run On; But I Find It So Strange How I Still

ok ummm sorry but why are people talking suddenly like irl domestic violence victims get any sort of widespread sympathy or support??? like, for one, let’s just establish that it’s silly to complain that real, living, breathing people are being treated with more sympathy than a fictional character. but even that alone would also be completely wrong, because… rl victims are not treated well at all??? did we just forget all the victim-blaming, the slander, the cross-examining, the doubt, and the legal institutions that are weaponized against rl victims all the time???

if you somehow see someone condemning rl abuse but dismissing fictional abuse, it’s because they only care about rl abuse in the broadest and most conceptual sense. rl abuse is hated as a contextless idea, or when it’s committed by someone the person doing the condemning doesn’t care about, like some dude they’ve never talked to or some celebrity they have no personal attachment towards. condemnation of, like, weinstein, who most people do not know anything about nor care about, is not the same as popular support for victims as a whole. compare the reactions to weinstein vs reactions to johnny depp or even (god) joe biden. the difference is entirely in how much attachment people have to these abusers.

a character like endeavor makes people trot out an entire circus’ worth of excuses not because these people actually care about irl abuse as opposed to fictional abuse, but because the narrative gives endeavor a way of playing on people’s heartstrings and allowing them to nurture an attachment to him, which they will then vigorously defend even at the expense of his victims. they do this as well with rl abusers who they particularly like or have some sort of connection to. it’s not that ppl’s condemnations of abuse are either existent or non-existent—it’s that they’re frequently circumstantial.

please, let’s be finished with the insinuations that rl victims receive care and support or even, like, lip service that isn’t getting extended to fictional characters.

"Make some friends and forget about being a hero."

Aw, Touya took his dad's advice after all.

so you’d rather the mla stick around as a sore thumb and the lov to stay broke and weak than for both to join forces, creating a definitive resolution to the my villain aca arc and consolidated threat for the heros? are you so against it being settled by a fight that you’d rather it be dragged out?

my feelings about the resolution to the mla arc are honestly mostly negative. i don’t feel like it makes sense for either side join forces (unless they plan on backstabbing each other, or unless hori is deliberately introducing a regression for the lov, which are all possibilities but lets take the resolution at face-value for the sake of this discussion). it’s been laid out since overhaul’s arc that the lov are tight-knit and value one another as comrades. even if you excise tomura out of the equation for his questionable/nebulous attitude towards relationships, twice and toga are very explicitly characterized as protective, and vengeful toward people who hurt one of “their own.” but at the end of the mla arc, they’re inducted into this organization which not only tortured and held giran for weeks, but also has no second thoughts about using their own members as canon fodder—which is, again, almost exactly what the shie hassaikai were like! if hori were going to have them collab with a shie hassaikai-ish organization later on, then why even bother drawing a comparison between shigaraki & the lov and overhaul & the yakuza?

on the mla’s side, their reasons for capitulating (at least as internally narrated by redestro during his defeat) are completely bs. the mla’s vision wasn’t just a nebulous conception of “freedom”; they had a specific vision of what that freedom looked like. they were a group who planned to rebel for the legalization of indiscriminate quirk use (defined as “freedom”), which is a specific, targeted, and limited goal; no amount of marveling at decay indicates that the logical progression is to embrace shigaraki’s desire for indiscriminate destruction. for a group of people who have largely benefited from the overall structure of society (they’re fucking ceos with some top heroes on call and shit ffs), it makes very little sense for them to buy into the utter unpredictability of shigaraki’s agenda just because he put on a very compelling live performance piece by curbstomping redestro. having two different visions of the future really isn’t a narrative conflict that should be solved by a physical fight, or at least not a straightforward a fight as this one.

like, i know it’s the Way of Shounen to have most things settled by a fight as an easy shorthand for interpersonal development. maybe the L is on me for feeling like the conflict could’ve been handled more satisfactorily & for ideology to actually interact in meaningful ways (even if it leads to one side renouncing theirs) rather than for the resolution to be a metaphorical dick slinging contest. sure, it’s true that it does all those things you said (consolidate a base for the villains, become a real threat, etc. etc.). it’s true that it moves things along, and i’m not against that. BUT i think that making these two particular villain groups ally with each other makes both of their characterizations worse: the lov bcs they’re turning back on earlier characterization from the overhaul arc, and the mla bcs it feels like they can’t fucking stick to a conviction. this wouldn’t be such a big problem if the mla were written differently from the start or, yes, if hori took more time to tell me why the fuck these guys aren’t still trying to kill each other, because tbh nothing about these two groups tell me that joining together is the logical conclusion.

My Villain Academia here I come

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.

every family has its traditions

todoroki family drama but make it an HBO show

ngl as someone who's dad to deal with parents similar to EndNevWhore I'd pay money to see Shouto have some sort of break down or Anything because of him but Nope Never Gonna Happen

this is a super good point bcs in addition to all the sucking up to endv going on, the effects of abuse are not dealt with at all?? right now, it feels like the worst consequence of abuse is hurt feelings that can be apologized for, rather than  lasting impacts on a survivor’s psychology that can take so many years and so much therapy to get over, if that’s at all possible. :/

So, I know that the purpose of this chap was supposed to demonstrate what a virtuous person Deku is and further establish him as the moral paragon of this manga because apparently he’s able to ‘sympathize’ with villains. However, the problem here is that this entire message is undermined when you remember how Deku reacted when he actually encountered a villain, who’s made his motivations for becoming a villain explicitly clear, i.e. Dabi.

Remember that the same Deku that says this:

Is the same character that said this:

Despite the fact that he knew about all of this:

It just undermines any of the emotional impact that this chap is supposed to have.

🍓🍓🍓

You know, “canon is fake” and “reducing every vaguely sympathetic character in every piece of media to one of the same three generic archetypes for ease of shipping is a poor foundation for critical engagement” can both be true at the same time.