Oh fuck everything
"Touya loves his dad" and "Touya hates his dad" both don't get the full picture. Dabi loves the IDEA of Enji as his father but he HATES the person Enji is. Any love he has is for the idea of what his father *should* be or *should* have been and his hatred is based on the reality of who Enji is as a person
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 āvigilante endgameā.
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 arenāt going to talk to shigaraki right now he has stuff and things letās just hang out the two of us. geten is there watching trumpet suspiciously and prepared to protect rikiyaās virtue.
muscular appears again cuz jail SUCKS finally gets to reveal that he was raised in a baby-fighting ring. he claims itās no big deal but everyone is like āoh my god iām really sorry that happened to you no one should be raised in a baby-fighting ringā. he realises that yeah. YEAH. being raised in a baby-fighting ring was actually kind of fucked up. he cries, and heās 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 sheās no hollaback girl but it twigs something in the back of her mind, and then bam urarakaās life is in her hands, and itās gonna be the most poignant bloodletting of all time.
okay you asked favourite villains and iām 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. thatās dabi i think heās gonna straight up die like heās 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 āsleeeeeepyhead.............weāve been waiting for you........ā and itās gonna be so good. if iām feeling kindly iād say that skeptic somehow manages to rescue dabiās lil charcoalād 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 iāve 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 shigarakiās 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 spinnerās 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 rvb13Ā āis locus gonna fuckin dieā levels of anxiety but stretched out tortuously. i know i wonāt get what i want i never do but itād be SUCH a missed opportunity. and also if i speak my hopes and dreams out they wonāt happen and iām literally paranoid, like superstitious about it. itās so clear in my mind but if i donāt get it iāll throw a fuckin fit. okay breaking it down into high level points.
in dekuās journey to the shigaraki death trap fight he encounters spinner, words are exchanged, spinner says something pings dekuās hero sense and heās 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 āsavingā 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 weāll get a moment where kurogiri fights between his programming, loyalty to AFO and protection of shigaraki blah blah blah, spinnerās begging and resolution is crucial helping kurogiri be like āyeah tomura is a grubby lil weirdo whoās only ever rude to me but this spinner guy. heās really something huh.ā i didnāt discuss my kurogiri endgame but kurogiriās defense of shigaraki when they arrive on the battle scene causes aizawa to waver and thatās 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 thereās friction cuz the kiribakus have a bit more longevity to their name, but the spinarakis get to be of Endgame Significance and also canāt 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 shigarakiās plot. like obviously being driven entirely by anger and hatred only sticks him further into AFOās control, an obvious allegory for the impact of abuse and grooming, and i maintain that shigarakiās endgame (along with the heroes taking like five seconds to take shigarakiās grievances seriously) is to buffer that anger and hatred and giving him a drive with something else. ie, realizing that he doesnāt hate the league, is actually really okay with them, and wants more for them than dying or being in jail. and thatās the wiggle room.
anyways so thereās 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 dabiās being eaten by ghost orphans and they decide to respect his personal business. as a prelude to this point thereās been a lot of personal realizations and shake ups about how the league really do want to Live but maybe the murder terrorist train isnāt 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 itās like half a step away from me creating OCs related to AFOās secret numbers and iām too shy for that.
last but not least AFO gets turned into a child and heās just the sweetest little thing. i stole this one from @codenamesazanka who was joking in a tangential discussion but iām taking it dead fuckin serious now <3
i know you've touched on this subject before but it really pains me to hear how people voice their want for touya to die instead of being on life support despite the fact that he, himself, still wanted to live. "there are still arguments I want to have, and things I still want to say," after all.
i think people misunderstand a lot of touya's feeling about taking his own life at the end of it all. from what i took about his character, as soon as he reclaimed is name again, he regressed back into how he was emotionally as a child, and it only got worse from that point.
a damaged child, especially a neglected one, will always hurt themselves and care little when they've been shown no care. so how do they get that care? hurting themselves, and if necessary, ending their life. but he doesn't need to do that anymore.
he wanted to live, and though his circumstances are saddening (or well was, let's hope he can finally do things considering there was no confirmation), it's a good thing he showed some kind of regret about the fate he nearly had, and expressed a desire to still continue.
I think this is fully on how Horikoshi depicted the situation with needlessly cruel horror that feels really unnecessary.
If Ch 426 put more care into depicting Touya:
1. Not being in pain
2. Getting relief from his family coming to see him
3. Getting affirmation that heās loved and always was
4. Showed that people were in fact grateful for being saved
People wouldnāt feel like Touya would have been better off dying. Think in comparison how nobody says that Spinner or Overhaul would have been better off being dead and it becomes painfully obvious how Horikoshi undermines his own narrative with the circumstances he set up, which feel like needless horror.
I fundamentally understand what heās trying to portray, but I think his art choices are at odds with his narrative goal (if that is to depict a peaceful death for Touya as a fix-it for his violent death on Sekoto peak).
Even if he wanted to depict Touyaās hopeless, miserable state,he could have shown the chapter in parallel from an internal headspace where we can see child Touya getting emotional relief -sort of a continuation of the Ch 388 image.
Me: I'm done yapping
Reads Viz's translation for chpt 427
Actually no I'm not.
Let's talk about Izuku Midoriya, intense hero fanboy, everyone he looks up to is a hero, ect ect
Passively listening to Spinner as he sorrowfully tells him "he was my friend. He was my hero".
Like??? Midoriya doesn't even bat an eye but at the least that should resonate some with Midoriya. He can at least imagine what it'd be like to (permanently) lose All Might/Toshinori. Or Bakugou who was dead for long enough in the Sky Coffin. And we get.... A close up of Midoriya, showing some dark circles under his eyes and a blank stare. What. The. Fuck. Does he have so little empathy once people turn into "villains"? That he can't sympathize and try to ease their pain? And we're supposed to believe he has this incredible heart that's so inspiring to even antagonistic characters who've otherwise lost hope in hero society? (I'd maybe say that he's still processing the end of the war, dealing with his own stuff, ect ect and excuse that lack of interaction if not for the fact that he quips back "make it a comic book" - which he's not a big quip person so it's not like that's in his character to do, especially not during emotional exchanges. I'm sorry but it's just... callous at worst, tone deaf at best)
If someone can explain this chapter's Deku to me - not with suppositions, but with canon only evidence - that'd be great. But I no longer believe that Midoriya has such a great heart. Show don't tell, but we had plenty of telling and little showing.