#bnha worldbuilding

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XV - My Villain Academia)

(Skewing away from the wiki arc titles here, because come the eff on; everyone on god's green earth calls this My Villain Academia, not "The Meta Liberation Army Arc.")

At the request of a kind asker, I'm trying something different with footnotes this time; you'll find them at the end of the relevant bullet point, rather than at the bottom of the post. I've also flagged the numbers in purple, though I left the text itself the default color. I hope people find that a little easier to handle than having to scroll all the way to the bottom, have two tabs open, or wait until the end when they've forgotten the context.

Content Warning: Mentions of the KKK, as well as anti-Korean hate crimes/speech in Japan.

The My Villain Academia Arc (Chapters 218-240)

Chapter 218: 

Tsuyu’s weakness to cold is noted in-canon, rather than in a volume extra profile.   

All of the people featured specifically in the Detnerat commercial are heteromorphs—a four-armed woman, a walrus gent, and a little gelatinous boy.  Re-Destro pontificates about how people with these “newer types of bodies” struggled in the new era because they couldn’t find products that would meet their daily needs; mass production was not equipped—could never really be equipped—to handle the endless variety of body shapes and sizes that came about due to the Advent of the Extraordinary.  It recollects the mall scene back in Chapter 68—or, even further back, Ojiro’s character sheet and UA’s lack of varied desks—and calls the reader to consider, once again, the sorts of special needs that those with heteromorphic bodies might have, and how difficult it can be to meet those needs.    RD says that his company’s ability to rapidly customize and produce unique goods for every customer has made them #1 in their industry (lifestyle goods).  Assuming there’s at least some truth to the commercial shpiel—and the newscaster does at least call Detnerat “a big player”—it suggests that plenty of other companies are not so good at the rapid+customizable combination.  Of course, not all companies are trying to be all things to all people, but specialization costs money—as do speed and customization, really, and note that nowhere in the commercial is there a talking point about affordability!  So mainly what the commercial leaves me wondering is what degree of inconvenience is still felt by heteromorphs, especially those who are somewhat cash-strapped.    That strikes me as a particular hazard when it comes to child bullying.  Of course, Japanese schools have uniforms, but I wonder how available tailoring and alterations are for students with particular needs?  Is there a provided budget for that sort of thing?  Financial aid?  How much did Ojiro’s parents have to pay for him to have a full set of uniform pants with a hole for his tail in them?  How about Shouji getting all his uniform tops made sleeveless?  What arrangements had to be made for Shouto’s gym uniform to be fire retardant?    Even setting uniforms aside, there are also their social lives outside of school to consider.  Kids will absolutely notice when one of their number wears the same clothes all the time, or home-made clothes instead of name brand, or with obvious patchwork and repair.  As in real life, it’s at the intersections of more than one type of disadvantage—in this case, a heteromorphic body combined with a low-income family—that problems become more likely.

Here in 218, almost fifty chapters after the first mention of them, we finally get the proper introduction and explanation of the Meta Liberation Army.  Of course, they aren’t heteromorph-specific—the closest any of the named commander-types in RD’s inner circle get is Curious, with her bright blue skin and black sclera,[1] though certainly Re-Destro himself has drifted somewhat away from baseline compared to his ancestor.  Regardless, their foundational belief is the deregulation of quirks, stemming from a time when any deviation from the norm made meta-humans targets.  The compromise society reached—that quirks require a license to use—is restricting enough on those whose abilities are found with a baseline body, but, as I’ve brought up before, it makes life even more potentially fraught for heteromorphs.  That kind of thing is basically a pre-written excuse for heroes or police to stop and harass a heteromorph they don’t like the look of!  And while the evidence of that kind of bias has been pretty circumstantial thus far, it’s about to get way, way less so.    [1] Wacky hair colors being somewhat de rigueur in anime, we’ll give her a pass on the purple hair.

   Chapter 220: 

Here we finally hit the major leagues: the Creature Rejection Clan, or CRC.  The Japanese is igyou haiseki shugi shuudan, with igyou and shuudan being pretty straightforward—igyou is, of course, “heteromorph,” and shuudan is any sort of organized or self-identifying group of people, anything from a family unit to a business organization, even all the way up to a nation.  Haiseki shugi is the important bit, with shugi meaning “doctrine; principle” and haiseki meaning “rejection; expulsion; boycott; ostracism.”  Thus, “group whose doctrine is the rejection of heteromorphs.”[2]    Note that, in the Japanese, the word in the group’s name is heteromorph; they didn’t pick something more insulting or derogatory.  They didn’t really need to, since igyou is, as discussed back in the introduction to this piece, plenty derogatory all on its own.  So Caleb Cook went with a translation of igyou that would better get that derisiveness-in-the-context-of-a-hate-group across than his choice way back in Chapter 14.  Creature Rejection Clan is a fairly localized translation, but Cook was pretty frank in his Twitter thread on the chapter that he was thinking about the KKK when he made the decision.    And it’s not an unwarranted comparison!  Of course, I wouldn’t think to presume Horikoshi’s that up on the history of racism in the U.S., but combine the cod-religious trappings and the full robes and hoods with an explicit textual description of hate crimes, and it’s an extremely easy parallel to draw. [2] The Japanese also gives the abbreviation of CRC, with the databook eventually coming out and revealing that it really stands for the name they’ve chosen for themselves in English, the Curious Rejection Committee.

That established, it’s notable that Spinner, in describing them, says that they commit hate crimes against “people with heteromorphic quirks”—a nearly word-for-word translation of the Japanese igyou-gata no ningen.  This leaves aside the idea I’ve spent so much time talking about, that heteromorph discrimination is aimed broadly at those with heteromorphic bodies, and not only those with the more narrowly defined heteromorphic quirks.  Shortly, however, I’ll cover some evidence that Spinner is over-generalizing, or just misinformed.

In the meantime, take note of a few things the CRC guys[3] actually say here, starting with the fact that they call Spinner a lizard. Instantly, a word that was previously a snippy and dismissive little shrug in Dabi’s mouth takes on the weight and ugliness of a slur.    Further, they call the League of Villains “sins against nature”—or, in a more literal translation, “impure criminals.”  I provide the more literal translation there because it’s more specific.  My immediate question of the English translation would be whether the CRC judge the League as being sins against nature simply because of their criminality, or because of their association with Spinner, but the Japanese makes clear that there are two separate labels being flung there: the League are both criminals and impure.    This idea of impurity brings in a religious dimension to heteromorphobia, a dimension heightened by the line (dropped by the English translation) in which the CRC accuses the League of invading a sanctuary—in Shinto, shrines have to be kept pure.  The CRC calling their hideout a sanctuary, with the added context of, “They have a lizard with them.  How disgusting,” thus makes it pretty clear that the impurity is about Spinner’s presence, not just the League’s assorted crimes.  This spiritualistic justification for bigotry will later be made even more explicit in Shouji’s flashbacks.    [3] With skull masks right there on their hoods!  A real, “Are we the baddies?” moment, but given some of the other things we get on them later, it's possible the skulls are meant to contrast what e.g. Spinner or Koda’s skulls might look like: baseline human versus animalistic or “misshapen.” Credit to @codenamesazanka for connecting the dots on that!

Spinner also gives us here the line that I covered back in the terminology section at the beginning:

We’ll go with the official version this time.

So here we have the observation that the word absolutely everyone uses, the word that, as far as we know, academically defines an entire category of quirks, is an unpleasant, even rude word.  But what is the alternative?  We’re never given one.  Indeed, Spinner doesn’t suggest one; he says that the nice thing to do is “avoid” the word instead.  In other words, talk around it.  See again what I said at the start about all the difficulties baked into that prospect.

Later, we get the first drops of Spinner’s backstory, and hit again on the “lizard” thing, with the note that Spinner’s backwater, stuck-in-the-last-century hometown called him “the lizard freak.”  He grew up with it, grew accustomed to it, thought there was nothing he could do to change it—he might even have internalized it somewhat, though clearly by the time Chapter 160 rolled around he was ornery enough about it to complain.    It's perhaps also notable that Spinner knows who the CRC are.  Though we’ll later find out that their numbers have hugely diminished, he not only recognizes them, he’s not even surprised to see them—unlike many, Spinner knows the CRC never truly went away.  (Compare his lack of reaction to, for example, Shouji's unsuspecting classmates, who will later be shocked, just shocked, that this kind of ugliness still exists in their country.)    So just to state the obvious here, yes, the presence of active hate groups does irrevocably shift the lens on everything we’ve seen up to this point.  You can’t say calling a heteromorph an animal is harmless, a little insensitive at worst, maybe even meant as a cute nickname, when that same language is used by openly violent bigots.

The volume version gives us, at the end of the chapter, further notes on the CRC.  It’s full of relevant tidbits, so I’ll provide the text in its entirety:

Once superpowered society grew more stable and less chaotic, this group emerged, based around a lack of acceptance for those with body-altering quirks.  They started out with demonstrations and protests but eventually started committing violent hate crimes.  Most felt this was taking things too far, so the group saw a sharp decline in membership and a scattering of factions.  These days, one faction might only reject people with animal properties, while another focuses its hate on people with irregular heads.  These two, among others, have very few members left.  The faction that Tomura and the villains attacked was one that stood by the original group's fundamental tenets.

So what is there to gather from this?  Let’s break it down a point at a time.

“Once superpowered society grew more stable (...)”    If you’ve ever lived through a time of increasing acceptance for a marginalized group, particularly if that acceptance involves measures for legal protections being passed, you’ll recognize what this is.  Just to pick a few U.S. examples, the KKK didn’t exist until after the Civil War;[4] proactive federal bans on same-sex marriages didn’t start getting passed/proposed until individual U.S. states started legalizing them and civil unions.  When opposition to something is the norm, said opposition often doesn’t start organizing until they see that status quo being threatened; they weren’t organized before because they never imagined they’d need to be!  That’s what we see with the CRC: they didn’t formally declare themselves until it started looking like quirks—and especially non-baseline quirks—were going to find legal acceptance.    [4] Literally.  The last day of the war was May 26, 1865; the date the first Klan was founded was December 24 of the same year. Easily the most vile thing I learned in the process of writing this piece.   

“(…) based around a lack of acceptance for those with body-altering quirks.”   This is what I was referring to when I said Spinner's characterization of the CRC might be a little bit off: the CRC wasn’t founded because of a hatred for specifically heteromorphic quirks; they were founded because of a hatred for different bodies, a descriptor that could also apply to those with transformation-style quirks!  Those, too, are quirks that alter bodies, after all; it’s just possible for people to turn them off, which is not the case for those with heteromorphic quirks.  So Spinner was not quite on the mark before.    Further, note that the phrase “body-altering quirks” is used here—a phrase that’s similar in meaning and much less othering than igyou.  It doesn’t fully cover everything I use “heteromorphic” and “non-baseline” to cover, in that it’s still murky in situations like e.g. Cementoss’s, where his emitter quirk is entirely independent of his oddly shaped head, but it’s still a useful term!  Except for the small complication of where it isn’t found: anywhere in the actual story.  The fact that Horikoshi uses it in an author’s note, but it comes up nowhere in BNHA proper, puts it in an unclear place as far as in-universe alternatives go.  Has it just not come up because Horikoshi hasn’t thought to include it?  Or has it not come up because it’s not a phrase people in-universe use?

“They started out with demonstrations and protests but eventually started committing violent hate crimes.  Most felt this was taking things too far, so the group saw a sharp decline in membership and a scattering of factions.”    Confirmation here of what Spinner said about the CRC and hate crimes, but note what this doesn’t say: that the CRC was outlawed.  There are, I suspect, a couple of factors influencing that.   o Firstly, while Japan has legal methods to restrict undesirable organizations,[5] making it difficult for them to raise funds or engage in publicity, the country doesn’t actually de facto criminalize membership in such organizations.  That distinction is part of the legacy of violent crackdowns on labor groups and protest movements in the first half of the 20th century; people tend to get very loud about anything that whiffs of the government trying to give itself the power to get that heavy-handed again.    Assuming that the laws haven’t changed overmuch in HeroAca!Japan, then, I wouldn’t expect membership in the CRC to have been criminalized outright, but the volume extra doesn’t mention any kind of legal repercussions at all.  That, I think, may go more to my next point.    [5] The relevant laws are aimed mostly at terroristic groups or organized crime.      o Secondly, another thing Japan has very, very little of is hate crime legislation.  From my research, there are only two laws of any note: a federal law passed in 2016 and widely regarded as toothless thanks to it lacking any criminal provisions targeting offenders,[6] as well as a local ordinance passed in Kawasaki in 2019 that went as far as mandating fines against repeat offenders, among other measures.[7] [6] It required the government to start “implementing measures” to eliminate such speech/behaviors, as well as to “respond to requests for consultation” from victims, but did not directly mandate consequences for offenders. [7] I suspect from some of what I read that Osaka has picked up a similar ordinance, but I didn’t find anything detailing it specifically.  Osaka and Kawasaki are home to the largest and second-largest population of Koreans living in Japan. One major thing neither of these measures did, though—and something activists have been pressing for—is to establish standards for considering discriminatory motivations when issuing sentences against those who have committed violent crimes.  To pick an example that made the news last year, a man committed arson out of openly admitted hatred for the Koreans he targeted, but nowhere in the trial or discussion of his sentence did the prosecution ever bring up discrimination.[8]    [8] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220829/p2a/00m/0na/015000c    Also, it’s worth noting that both of these measures were aimed at ethnic discrimination—speech and behavior targeting people living in Japan while being themselves, or being children of, people of non-Japanese ethnicities.  They did not address discrimination based on e.g. religion or sexuality.    Folding both of those points together, the image we have of the CRC is of a violent hate group whose existence is regarded as perhaps distasteful and extremist, but not actually illegal.  Even what few laws Japan has now wouldn’t have applied to anti-heteromorph discrimination, because, while they may look wildly different from a prototypical Japanese person, heteromorphs still are Japanese, and therefore not protected by a law based solely around ethnic discrimination.    Incidentally, the ordinance in Kawasaki laid out a number of specific examples of the kind of behavior it was looking to address, and one of those examples was likening victims to something other than human.  I know why that was included in the context of anti-Korean sentiments,[9] but it certainly does shade e.g. Dabi calling Spinner a lizard more harshly to know that there’s legal precedent for categorizing such dehumanizing language as hate speech.    [9] An extremely common form of anti-Korean hate speech in Japan is to refer/allude to Koreans as cockroaches.

“These days, one faction might only reject people with animal properties, while another focuses its hate on people with irregular heads.”     This is a good echo of the sort of factionalization you see in organized religion, wherein the minutiae of tenets that seem similar to an outside eye are the topic of vicious, vehement inter-group debate. More to the point, however, it provides an excellent illustration of the senselessness of bigotry.  They can’t even keep their own discriminatory dogma straight!    Probably the second most common complaint about the story’s use of heteromorphobia—after calling it retconned-in bullshit that didn’t exist until Chapter 220—is that it’s illogical, that it makes no sense to judge people because they look a little different in a world where everyone is now a little different from the way we see the world.    And I wonder if the people who say that are listening to what they’re saying.  “Illogical bias that has no foundation in reality is unrealistic?”  What do these people think bigotry is?  Racism, sexism, xenophobia, ableism, religious discrimination, all the many different shades of queerphobia: all of these are built on foundations of fear and hate for people who are fundamentally still as human as anyone else, yet they all exist, and have existed, and will go on existing for quite some many years still.  Because irrational hatreds are, by definition, irrational.  Heteromorphic discrimination is the most realistic societal dynamic in the entire series! That little rant aside, I also want to highlight the first group in the excerpt above—people with animal properties.  Check any talk on the theme of, “So you can believe dragons but not black people in fantasy?” and you’ll run into the ways people are much more ready to suspend their disbelief for full-on fantasy than for something that, rightly or wrongly, pings them as incorrect, and it’s easy to imagine animal-associated heteromorphs running into a similar issue: it’s fine for people to just look weird, but looking like an animal, that’s bad and unnatural.  A heteromorph who just looks like nothing in particular other than “non-baseline” is not evoking the baggage of animal anthropomorphization and cultural animal symbolism that someone who looks like a bird, a lizard, a dog, an orca, etc. is.   

Chapter 223: 

Shigaraki refers to Gigantomachia as a gorilla.  It’s debatable how much this is of a piece with Dabi calling Spinner “Lizard”—Machia’s only actual animal quirk is Mole, not anything simian, nor is Machia particularly ape-like in anything other than his large size—but it does stand out to me that Spinner, who we know to have strong opinions about animal epithets, just refers to Machia by name or as “the big guy.”

Chapter 224: 

Mr. Compress calls Machia “our pet gorilla”; see note above.

Chapter 226: 

Curious introduces the idea of quirk counselling, telling us that its goal is to align people to a unified understanding of how the world and society work, but that it’s flawed in that it winds up emphasizing peoples’ differences instead.  The advisor at the hospital raid will include quirk counseling in his litany of grievances, so I’ll discuss its possible utilization against heteromorphs more there, but for now, recall that I talked previously about how quirk-based behavioral tics might vary from person to person by comparing Hound Dog with Sansa.  With that in mind, it’s not a big reach that some heteromorphs might run into similar problems with quirk counselling.   

There are a good number of what appear to be heteromorphs through the Curious fight; whatever the MLA’s core views on quirk supremacy, the organization self-evidently makes ample room for heteromorphs, even if, like e.g. the red panda guy in the crowd jumping Toga inside the noodle joint, they don’t seem to have any other stand-out powers beyond the fur and fangs.   

Chapter 229: 

Twice notes in his flashback that something about his eyes always rubbed people the wrong way, scared them.  We’ll eventually see this same thing with Tenko on the street—a totally normal-looking child, but the look on his face scares people away even more than the blood.  And I can’t help but think, “If even a totally baseline person’s eyes can creep people out, how much easier—and more extreme—is that reaction for the more out-there sort of heteromorph?”   

Gori makes the tiniest of cameos in Twice’s flashback, playing backup off to the side when we will, in current times, find him having worked his way up to the interrogation chair himself.   

Chapter 230: 

Geten brings us quirk supremacy via his understanding of the MLA’s goals.  It’s hard to say how accurate this is, since the MLA leadership is inconsistent on what exactly their vision of Liberation entails.  Whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t seem to dissuade the MLA’s own heteromorphs, though of course there’s a big difference between how e.g. Spinner or Ojiro versus Gang Orca or Mirko would fare in a societal quirk free-for-all.  Likewise, the MLA is a cult, so one can’t discount the likelihood of double-think in its members.   

Chapter 232:

Re-Destro talks about the state of the country in Destro’s infancy, a period in which metahumans suffered “constant abuse—blatant discrimination.”  Merely for speaking out that her child was just like everyone else—that his special power was just a quirk—Destro’s mother was killed by an anti-meta mob.  This gives us further evidence of the violence metahumans faced.  Of course, in that time, the hate wasn’t distinguishing between types of quirk, but with that being said, an emitter and a transformer can still hide the truth about themselves with far more ease than heteromorphs—recall All Might’s discussion about the early days of quirks back in Chapter 59, in which the panel showing four people with quirks contained only one baseline person.  It would be entirely unsurprising for an outsized number of the metahumans killed in those days to be heteromorphs.

Chapter 233: 

The confrontation between Trumpet and Spinner gives us Trumpet clucking about Spinner having a weak meta-ability—Gecko lets him cling to walls, and that’s about it.  It’s a striking contrast to someone like Mirko or Gang Orca, or even Tsuyu, all of whom have some combination of big power moves and a veritable fleet of sub-abilities.  We can see the way Hero Society prizes powerful, flexible quirks in this.  Having a strong quirk can help overcome the societal bias about heteromorphs, but if you’re stuck with a weak quirk and a weird face, you lack that metaphorical ticket out.[10]    [10] Incidentally, the fandom reflected some of that attitude as well.  There was a widespread assumption that Spinner’s quirk would be really useful or situationally powerful, otherwise why would Horikoshi have hidden it for as long as he did?  Then, after the reveal, there was a certain amount of complaining that Spinner was useless to the League, and why even bother with him?  Sometimes, life imitates art in some very unflattering ways.

Trumpet brings up that Spinner was a recluse, “mocked and pilloried,” and we see Spinner in his hikikomori days.  What we’ve gotten on Spinner up to this point suggests that the abuse he endured was mostly verbal, though one can imagine it was pretty rough when he was young enough to be the target of school bullies.  There’s a certain amount of temptation to minimize that in comparison to his response: most people who are bullied or targeted by discrimination don’t grow up to become terrorists.  But there was, we will eventually find, more visceral stuff going on—and parts of the country that were even worse than Spinner’s hometown.

Spinner spent most of his life trying to fit himself into the world around him; his strongest parallel in the League in this regard is Toga, as they were the two that held themselves back, let the world define what they were and how they should act, right up until they saw something that caused them to snap.[11]  Trumpet tries to do much the same to Spinner here (albeit probably less as an intentional psychological attack than Skeptic’s attempts on Twice), but Spinner, like Toga, is long past the point where he would swallow that abuse without fighting back.  When you tell someone they are something long enough, they eventually start to believe it—but if you aren’t careful, they’ll start to embrace it, at which point those weaponized words change hands.    [11] Shigaraki and Dabi, by contrast, pushed back harder, trying to get the world to accept them and never accepting it when their families (and particularly their fathers) told them to stop.  Twice was ejected without getting the chance to try to contort himself into a shape that fit the world, whereas Mr. Compress seems to have been raised to reject his society's accepted norms from the start.   

Chapter 234:

We see an image excerpted from Quirks and Us, a children’s book published by Curious’s outfit, that exhorts the reader not to judge people by their quirks.  It really, really begs the question, “If this is what’s being said in literature published to coax people towards anti-suppression radicalism, what on Earth is normal society saying?”    Regardless of that absolutely wild disparity, though, the fact that there are children’s books being published about quirk bias being wrong suggests that the world very much does have a problem with quirk bias.  Indeed, that much has been shown throughout the series, not merely in terms of anti-heteromorph bias, but also the bias against “villain quirks,” as well as the widespread idea that people with weak quirks—or no quirks at all—are weaker people overall, pitiable folk who lack the power to live their fullest lives or pursue their dreams unhindered.[12]    People on more than one of these axes of discrimination will, as in real life, be more likely to experience discrimination and violence. [12] Villains like All For One and Geten may say it more loudly, but it’s not only villains who believe it—perfectly good-hearted people like All Might and Midoriya Inko fall into that trap as well.   

Chapter 237: 

Nothing much to say about Shigaraki’s flashbacks save to note that, if people won’t stop to help a lost and bloodied (and baseline) child, they sure as hell won’t intervene in anti-heteromorph bullying.  Recall that Kirishima was accused of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong for trying!

-----

Thanks as ever for reading along, everyone! How was the new footnote format? Should I keep that up for lengthy meta going forward?

I was kind of expecting to be able to wrap this up (the main canon, at least) in one more post, but I underestimated the amount of writing I'd be doing for the first war arc. For next time, then, I'm looking to cover the Endeavor Agency, Paranormal Liberation War, and Dark Hero Villain Hunt arcs. See you all then!

#bnha #heteromorph discrimination plot #bnha worldbuilding #bnha meta #my writing #creature rejection clan #tw racism #tw hate crime #bnha spinner #iguchi shuuichi #meta liberation army

[floof-ghostie]

Given the diversity of mutant quirks, and how many characters in the story either have animal characteristic quirks, quirks based off of animal abilities, and are actually animals, then it's very possible that Mothman exists and is a pro hero in America.

#bnha #bnha worldbuilding #surprised nobody's talking about this but oh well

[codenamesazanka]

Spinner used to be a hikikomori and NEET, which means he was a recluse who wasn’t in school or employment (and technically still isn’t) and had withdrawn even from his family to hide out in his room.

We get two one-panel flashbacks to this era of his life and the imagery prove the label undeniable. As official Viz translator Caleb Cook notes:

…Book stacks, tied-up garbage bags, general clutter. This is the classic NEET/hikikkomori living space, as portrayed in media like Welcome to the NHK and other series. It screams "young adult whose life is in shambles.” There's huge visual contrast between a NEET apartment and a teen's room in manga/anime. The latter is almost always spick and span. In Japanese media, excessive clutter is often a visual marker for characters who have failed society's expectations of them. Practically a trope.

Going by this imagery, guess who else is a hikikomori/NEET— or, is (supposed to be) read as a hikikomori/NEET?

Shigaraki Tomura’s room fulfills all the requirements of this trope, down to every tiny bit of filth on the floor. There’s really no difference between his and Spinner’s room.

And Spinner likely recognizes this. While everyone else is watching Shigaraki after they escape from Kamino - minus Mr. Compress and Toga who are talking - Spinner is the only one staring at the dirty floor, lost in his own thoughts.

＊

I’ve seen meta before about how Shigaraki’s living conditions are a direct result of All For One’s lack of proper education - that All For One purposefully wants Shigaraki to have bad hygiene, to wallow in his own filth and just completely neglect any basic upkeep. Just another way to whittle him down. That’s a fair assumption, but I think it’s worth pointing out that in Tenko’s early years living with All For One, his room is neat and clean, even after he starts to accumulate toys and books and general stuff.

The best time to teach a child to set (or not set) habits is when they’re young, and clearly Tenko knew at least to not toss litter around carelessly, to put things away, and even to make his bed:

Of course, it could be that the teaching of deterioration started when AFO gave Shigaraki Tomura his name, but the people around Shigaraki the most have always shown to be neat and proper: AFO is always dressed in a suit; the Doctor’s lab is crowded with a lot going on, but not dirty; Kurogiri, who we assume has been babysitting Shigaraki for years, keeps the bar immaculate. AFO’s other wards also live in neat, clean environments:

That’s not to say AFO didn’t contribute at all to Shigaraki’s hikikomori vibe - simply keeping someone isolated and depressed will bound to make a mess of their mind and that will be reflected in the environment; just that AFO didn’t have to purposefully teach Shigaraki not to clean up after himself - he didn’t need to when Shigaraki does it on his own.

In any case, Shigaraki reads as a hikikomori/NEET from the start, someone alienated from society and wildly off the typical, proper life path expected of him as a young man, and resents the rest of the world for it.

＊

Combining the two observations, I think this is another aspect to why Spinner had so quickly grew attached to Shigaraki after the Doc calls Shigaraki a loser

Being hikikomori/NEET is just another commonality they both share, in Spinner’s eyes. Before the crumbling, glittery horizon of Deika; even before the revelation of Shigaraki’s grand ‘Destroy Everything’ goal, Spinner was just some depressed 20-something-year-old who saw another depressed 20-something-year-old and recognized their similar pain, then wanting to lift that burden somehow, however he could.

＊

*Important to note: Often hikikomori/NEETs are seen as failures that can really only blame themselves, lazy parasites on their families and society. Of the three hikikomori the series have shown so far - Shigaraki, Spinner, La Brava - the story have been careful to clearly draw a line between the marginalization they face and why they ended up how they did. Shigaraki was kidnapped by a criminal mastermind; Spinner stayed inside for his own protection because walking outside got him sprayed with pesticides, among other things; and La Brava was bullied and mocked by her peers. Horikoshi have made all three characters incredibly sympathetic and made the root cause of their alienation not from faults of their own but from how society had failed them.

#Spinner #Shigaraki Tomura #nalslastworkingbraincell #bnha #mha #HeroAca #hikikomori #NEET #worldbuilding #?

[theladyheroine]

Songs that would be good writing prompts ✨

❥ This is just a short post for funsies! Enjoy if you’d like!

I See the Light from Disney’s Tangled

Strangers Like Me from Disney’s Tarzan

Son of Man from Disney’s Tarzan

I’m A Star from Disney’s Wish

The Neglected Garden by Cecile Corbel

The Voice by The Celtic Woman

Running With the Wolves by AURORA

Now I See by Lou & SQVARE

Wonderful from Netflix’s Over The Moon

To The Sky by Owl City

Dinosaur Park by Owl City

Under The Circus Lights by Owl City

Lavender by JVKE & Pink Sweat$

Broken Melodies NCT Dream & JVKE

Just A Cloud Away by Pharrell Williams

#writers of tumblr #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writing prompts #romance writing prompts #otp ideas #otp writing prompts #urban fantasy writing #fluff prompts #fantasy writing #fluffy prompts #worldbuilding #fantasy aesthetic #fantasy writing prompts #fantasy au headcanons #fantasy au #worldbuilding prompts #fantasy x reader headcanons #the bad batch headcanons #clone wars headcanons #kingdom hearts x reader #kingdom hearts headcanons #bnha headcannons #bnha x reader #bnha headcanons sfw #Disney

[theetwinkleboy]

just. when i think about the way that yagi toshinori transformed one for all and its purpose.

i'm on ch 305 rn, aka the izuku's-coma-slash-ethical-debate chapter, and just. it's really really striking me how much one for all, and the users' understanding of it, has evolved over history. We know that they didn't know it could be passed on until after Yoichi's death, and Banjo says that AFO tried to steal OFA from him and En twice, and failed both times, and I wonder if the users even knew it was unable to be stolen until Banjo figured it out.

It brings this moment from a previous chapter to mind:

"They weren't really chosen ones"--they were just trying to keep the quirk alive, even as they died. And it's kept alive because, as yoichi says in this chapter--

This quirk was an unwanted gift, followed by a mutation and a happy accident, and then, until Nana, it was kept alive to keep the fight against AFO going, with the hope of someday killing him at last.

And then along comes Yagi Toshinori.

It's so telling that Nana abandoned her son to keep him safe, but then this other kid tells her his dreams and plans for a safer society, and she gifts him with a death trap target on his back of a quirk in response.

I think i'm about a hundred chapters off from Toshinori's origin story, so I don't know the exact details of a lot of vestige stuff, but like. This quirk, up until now, has been passed on in desperation. But All Might inspired something in Nana so clearly that she made him a chosen one in a way that she and others before her never were.

And then he takes this quirk that has been kept alive specifically to kill one man, and he uses it to save. He uses it to transform society. And both he and that transformation had shortcomings. but that's another post because this post is about the vision of this man.

And all might is able to defeat one for all, able to become the number one hero, BECAUSE the users before him kept this quirk alive for him to be able to use to achieve his vision. And then here's what the successor Toshinori chose (another chosen one, the second of his kind) has to say when even Nana says that Shigaraki can't be saved:

Yagi's the only user of all for one that's not fully there in this meeting, but nonetheless, his presence is still SO loud.

It's so important to me that All Might didn't choose Izuku as a successor to defeat AFO. He chose him as a successor for his other vision for his quirk.

And Izuku's not All Might. He's a transformation himself, one that gets me all kinds of emotional, but that is ALSO another post. But the thing is, he's able to use this power to save in part because it was given to him in order to save people, not in order to kill. And that's because of Yagi Toshinori.

#anyway! I'm done rambling! #I'm absolutely sure there's more because as I said I still have a hundred chapters before I'm caught up #but like! people who bash all might just! I don't think they get it! #I'm not arguing that he's perfect the man has SO many flaws but that's what makes him a good character #and that's what makes the worldbuilding interesting too #yagi toshinori #all might #tt reads bnha

[wanderingchocolateeclair]

May I introduce my Space Rangers AU, just a teeny tiny bit?

At least- some initial doodles including some designs for it-

While there are a lot of other characters that have fun designs and backstories for this au, these four (+ Rusty) are the main focus for now-

They're space experiments, escapees from A.F.O (not the person), an organisation that experiments and tries to create perfect beings using solar and lunar energy extracted from suns and moons!

Brief character info:

PL:

Was stolen as a child from Earth and experimented on, ended up busting out and saving a bunch of the other kids.

Took them to Yuuei (a built up safe haven for all, home of the space rangers)

Ended up going on some adventures with Ecto, who was now his best friend that would tag along with anything.

Became a ranger captain and eventually built a crew with Ecto

They accept odd jobs and commissions, no matter the manner of them, and get money through them (+occasionally thieving things)

He ends up rescuing and breaking out more experiments from different A.F.O bases, and takes them to Yuuei for safety.

Rescued Rusty, who was in the animal space trade, and now looks after him and treasures him.

Hes about 70% space rock and metal and random alien blood at this point-

Loves to visit earth to get the snacks there.

Ecto:

Was a royal from a planet with constantly shifting gravity, so his body allows him to just kinda switch his own sense of gravity around if that makes sense-

(he can just vibe on the ceiling whenever he wants lol)

Also has this shadowy bone demon that lives within him/as part of him.

Got stolen and his planet kinda got wiped out, and off he went to go get experimented on.

He was supposed to be 'scrapped' but survived bc of Higari.

They made friends with each other when still young, Higari saved Ecto from being killed and he helped him break out.

Ever since then, he stuck with him and became a ranger with him (also ended up falling for him and becoming a huge mess about it)

He really likes the sweets that Higari gets him from Earth.

Tsunagu:

From an ancient civilisation that is now long gone, his entire kind was wiped out after him and a other kids got stolen by A.F.O.

Was part of the original experiments carried out by the actual AFO(person) before Tsunagu kinda went rogue, killed him, destroyed the original base and fled.

He is OLD as fuck.

He would qualify as a "royal" but wouldn't use that title, as within his civilisation they were all perceived as noble beings.

He can shapeshift, never shows his natural form due to insecurities with how he was experimented on, and trust issues.

The experiment on him went VERY wrong, and he was accidentally injected with the Solar energy of an ancient Celestial Solar Being :]

It inhabits his being and goes rogue sometimes. It is searching for its "Home", which happens to be its other half - an ancient lunar being <3

He is dangerous and grouchy as hell, but has a sense of humour deep down.

Also met Higari and his crew by being broken out of jail by him and now constantly relies on him to break him out of jail. Very often.

He's a captain of his own ship and crew.

Shinya:

Was stolen from earth quite a long time ago as a baby and not only experimented on, but raised by the scientists.

He was brainwashed and all that jazz to become one of their "higher functioning mercenaries".

He aided in their schemes and killing for quite the long time until he was sent on a mission out to earth.

This didn't go well, and he ended up losing all of his memory to do with A.F.O and space and only knew the information he was given to fit in: "Shinya Kamihara, age 33, scientist and medic for space exploration"

He came back out to space on an expedition and it went wrong, he got stranded with important dangerous stuff, and eventually gets helped by Higari and his crew and meets Tsunagu.

The rest is all a very long plot. He has to find out who he was and is.

He has hidden markings from his experiment mercenary days, and only certain circumstances/equipment/technology can reveal it.

He also, mirroring Tsunagu's predicament, is the host for the Celestial Lunar Being that is searching for it's home.

:)

Rusty:

The Bestest Boy

Is a Space Travelling Dinosaur

He is small, very huggable, and likes to eat seeds and nuts and occasionally anything else thats handed to him.

Rescued by Higari from being traded in the space trade.

He can blow lil sparkly galaxy bubbles from his nose-beak-thing, and step on them if he wants to.

He is The Best Space Ranger.

#tw caps #bnha #best jeanist #edgeshot #eclair’s art #hakamada tsunagu #kamihara shinya #power loader #ectoplasm #higari maijima #ectoloader #edgejeanist #rusty the space travelling dino #space rangers au #eclair's aus #well. #this au is. very beloved but there is a lot #and imma need another post for lore and stuff and worldbuilding #and the relationship dynamics oh god the relationship dynamics /lh #this is as summarised as i can get it #hope you enjoy <3 #will post some more doodles for it soon

[agnesandhilda]

the ua sports festival is a crazy concept on so many levels but it must be so different from the perspective of a general course student. imagine you're just some kid going to a fancy school and you're forced to participate in the OLYMPICS as a mandatory school event. you have to run a marathon featuring actual death traps against classes full of superpowered nepo babies. your whole family is watching

#bolo liveblogs #yeah I'm still watching bnha but it's so interesting to think about what worldbuilding aspects that make for fun battle scenes #must be horrible for Literally Anybody outside this small elite group

[thebnha-auhoard]

Busts through the door

Au where Personas exist in the MHA universe and all of Class 1-A slowly gets Personas over the course of their first year.

It is first to be said though that this is not the first time that someone was brought into the Velvet Room to fight against a threat endangering the world. It is not the first nor it will be the last.

This however, is perhaps the longest instance of Persona Users fighting a Threat and arguably the most dangerous one.

It should not be a surprise that humanity's downfall would come from a human. Though, many would go and argue that All For One is hardly human now. Instead more of a caricature of what is believed to be all the worst villains in media and blended together into a terrifyingly cruel and powerful man.

Across time, One For All users would take up arms and unlock their Persona to fight All For One in both the real and cognitive world, all passing down the Quirk in hopes for someone to beat All For One. At the same time, they pass down access to the Velvet Room and potential to unlock their Persona.

When All Might landed the final blow on All For One all those years ago, it was thought to be the end of the conflict and a final goodbye to the Velvet Room for quite some time.

That of course did not happen. All For One is somehow still alive, Yagi doesn't have a successor and can't quite use his Persona as he used to, and it is becoming apparent that this World is running out of time.

So Igor does what he does best, he looks at humanity, chooses one person, and invites them to the Velvet Room.

Ruin has once again threaten this world. And now, the world needs its tricksters to stop it.

------------

Shouta sighs. “I hope you all know the gravity of the situation.”

He flips through the papers. “Breaking and entering, Larceny, Vandalism, Computer Crime, Destruction of Property, Possession of Firearms, Involvement with the League of Villains, Obstruction of Justice, and Vigilantism. You all have a file and it’s going to affect all of your futures.”

He looks up at all of them. “Especially since all of you are heroes in training.”

The entirety of Class 1-A looked away from him. None of them particularly looked like the famed Phantom Thieves but it's always the ones you least expect.

Again, he sighs. "You all are incredibly lucky that you were allowed to be interrogated together. I don't know what Nedzu pulled to allow this but it's something that you should be grateful for."

Silence, before a quiet- "...Mei should be with us."

Shouta winces. "I am aware that Hatsume Mei is part of the Phantom Thieves but she was to be requested to be interrogated alone due to her separate crimes of both Vigilantism and illegal manufacturing of Support Equipment and Firearms. If you're worried for her then I want you all to know that Nedzu is making sure that the police won't arrest her for anything she didn't do and that she is getting a fair interrogation."

"How about Present Mic? What's going to happen to him?"

It takes all of Shouta's willpower to show nothing on his face. Hizashi is...What Hizashi did throughout the entire school year turned out to be a lot more than just "Figuring out who the Phantom Thieves actually were". He doesn't understand what Hizashi found and why he kept digging for more and why he continued to keep in touch with the people he did but he hopes- And he goddamn hopes that Hizashi did it for the right reasons.

There was a reason why he was here and not helping Tsukauchi with interrogation.

Instead of answering, he takes a deep breath. "Look, I can't help you if none of you say anything. And considering the present...circumstances of the world, you have to say something so that all of you may avoid jail time or worse. I can't guarantee that you'll still be able to attend this school, but I will try my best to protect all of you."

More silence.

"What about Shouto?" asks Kaminari. "What- What about him? He isn't here right now and- And I trust you Mr Aizawa I really do but we don't even know if he's-" Kaminari hiccups. "He got hurt really badly and we don't know what happened to him."

Kaminari looks at him with wide eyes. "Mr Aizawa is he-"

"He's recovering," he says immediately. "He's recovering and doctors are optimistic about him waking up soon."

Immediately, the entire class breath out a sigh of relief and god. That shouldn't happen. They shouldn't have to worry about their friend dying now. They shouldn't have to ever worry about their friend dying. He's trained them so that they can save people while also preventing their own deaths. So that this scenario will never happen to any of them.

So that someone doesn't have to see their best friend die in front of them.

Shouta can't help but wonder where it went wrong. When this year started, all of his kids were heroes in training, all promising, and all ready to do what was right.

Now he sits across from them interrogating them about Vigilantism and Association with the League.

"...Mr Aizawa?"

"Yes Midoriya?"

"I'm the Leader of the Phantom Thieves."

"Yes. You went and told us that the moment we first apprehended you all."

"Yeah. That also means I know how this started. And uh..." His student pulls on his sleeve. "Mr Aizawa, when do you think this started?"

Shouta thinks for a moment. "The Aldera Junior High Incident. A principal confessed all of his crimes regarding the mistreatment of students, bias towards Quirks, complacency towards bullying, and poor management of staff."

"Bingo. That's where it began. But uh- That was just our first successful mission. We had to go back and forth between it all so that we could succeed. To go and find a route to steal his Heart."

"And how, Midoriya did you manage to achieve that?"

For a moment, Shouta thinks Midoriya would close up again, that this was a piece of a puzzle that he had to figure out, but instead Midoriya talks.

"On my phone," he says. "There's an app. It's red and it has an eye in the middle of it. That's how me and Kacchan stole our former principal's Heart. That's how all of us were able to steal all the Hearts of our previous missions."

"...And how does that work?"

Midoriya leans back. "Mr Aizawa, I want you to first suspend all disbelief because if you don't then this is going to feel more confusing than it already is."

Shouta looks at his Class and sighs for what seems like the millionth time this hour. "I think considering the state of the world, I feel like I can believe anything at this point.

Midoriya nods and takes a deep breath. "That app is called the 'Metaverse App', and me and Kacchan got that app around our final months of our Second Year at Aldera Junior High."

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #my hero academia au #boku no hero academia au #mha au #bnha au #persona au #igor persona #all for one #yagi toshinori #aizawa shouta #midoriya izuku #hatsume mei #yamada hizashi #todoroki shouto #kaminari denki #kiwi writes #mod kiwi #please god ask me about this au there is so much in this au. you have no idea how much worldbuilding has been done for this #several personas already have been chosen and i am so excited to just talk about the plot because oh my god- #there has been several callbacks from several games and you have no idea how excited i am #i swear no one dies

[mymarifae]

going back to these tags. this shit literally haunts me like i haven't touched bnha since watching the first season when it came out YEARS ago but i still lay awake in bed some nights grieving the loss of This story. i was watching it with my high school ex and i started complaining when all might told deku he'd give him one-for-all and my ex was like "but it'd be so boring if deku didn't get powers. the story wouldn't mean anything." and i was so in shock that i kind of wanted to kill him because WOW . we are not on the same creative wavelength AT ALL are we . like you're telling me you saw alllllllllll that build-up with deku being bullied for not having a quirk and everyone mocking his dreams of going to UA and becoming a pro hero - the build-up that culminates in the scene where he rushes headfirst into danger in a desperate attempt to save someone's life when all the so-called "heroes" with their "superpowers" stood around doing jack shit and you... still wanted him to magically get a quirk via the powers of Lazy Plot Convenience ?!??! you didn't start expecting a story about defying a world that hates you and wants you to fail... ?!?! that's boring to you? nothing about that resonates with you? at all¿!?

#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #another thing he said was 'it wouldn't be realistic' ?!?!??!?????IT'S A FANTASY WORLD? #one of the characters has an entire bird head that canonically has nothing to do with his quirk and you care about realism now?!?! #speaking of that: part of bnha's worldbuilding irt the quirks is that after they appear for the first time #they're incorporated into the 'normal' gene pool. #like once upon a time someone in fumikage's family was born with a bird head and that was their whole entire quirk. that was it. #now the bird head thing is just in his blood and had he not been born with the shadow manipulation thing he'd be considered quirkless #so like. it's not out of the question for deku to have one or two 'superhuman' traits that no one gives a fuck about because they're so #commonplace in this world. #like wasn't deku's father's quirk supposedly the ability to breathe fire. or something #maybe deku could have some fire resistance. that's something that would have to be in your dna to develop the ability to breathe fire #and again this just isn't considered a quirk anymore because compared to like bakugo a little extra resistance to fire is nothing #even though in Our world that'd be insane #BUT ALSO WHO !!!!!!CARES

[insanesanitysparks]

The Dragon's Warrior

Barbarian Katsuki Bakugo & Dragon Eijiro Kirishima

This was supposed to be short...a lot longer than I anticipated. This is supposed to be like the abridged version of what I've got in my head! Lol.

Basic premise. Barbarians protect dragons. Dragon queen gets kidnapped, Barbarians rescue her. Miscommunication, Barbarians think dragons are mad so Katsuki offers himself as a peace offering. Dragons think he's asking to learn their ways. Dragons take Katsuki and raise him as one of their own. He meets Eijiro and they become brothers. Katsuki eventually returns to save his clan. He becomes a powerful, badass warrior that no one wants to mess with and Eijiro keeps in touch.

The dragons are an endangered species, hunted near to extinction for their scales, bones, blood, and magic. Adult dragons are hunted to be killed, baby dragons to be raised in captivity to either be killed later or forced into a life of servitude. Alive or dead, life is hell for a dragon if a human manages to catch you.

But not all humans were bad, some still had good intentions, some still wanted to see the dragons thrive. The Barbarian tribes offered up their sacred mountains to the dragons, a maze of cliffs and rocks where they could raise their young safely. It would difficult for anyone to get through those mountains to the dragons. But if they could, they'd first have to get through the Barbarians and the brutish tribes knew that anyone going toward the mountains was after a dragon. Anyone going towards the mountains was a fair target to kill and loot, to protect the dragons and build on their clan's honor.

As time passed, the Barbarians came to see less and less of the dragons. The beasts were able to almost completely disappear in the mountains and they preferred to stay that way. They would happily fade into legends if it meant that they could live the rest of their days in peace. Though most of the legends that emerged were not very flattering.

Many legends spoke of dragons sitting on hoards of treasure long forgotten by man. Others told of reclusive beasts that developed a taste for virgin females every couple hundred years. Vicious monsters that wanted to burn or eat everything in their path. Very few supported the idea that dragons were intelligent or sociable creatures.

Eventually, even the Barbarians would come to doubt the dragons existence. Only sighting one or two every couple decades. Depending on who the lucky viewer was, the encounter might be brushed off as a hallucination by a drunkard.

Until one day when a Barbarian scouting party stumbled across a small caravan. How the group of thieves managed to get this far without being noticed was beyond them. Per tradition, the scouts attacked and killed the invaders. What they didn't expect was to find a female dragon when looting the invaders' wagons. She was in human form, but the runic tribal markings on her skin marked her as dragon royalty. The Barbarian's had studied those runes for centuries, but they never once expected to actually see them used. It was a shocking moment for the usually stoic warriors.

Knowing that the dragons might be angry with the clans for allowing a group to almost steal the dragon queen, the Barbarians immediately set off for the closest mountain pass toward the home of the dragons. Most of the tribe came along for the journey with precious gems, gold, fabrics, incense, and livestock to offer to the dragons. To keep the peace.

The dragon king and a few of his knights. The dragons released horrific roars when they saw their queen, wounded and weary. The Barbarians feared the dragon's fury as the beasts stomped the earth, belched flame, and gnashed their teeth as they roared. Barbarians were not a race to admit fear. To calm the dragons, the young son of the chief threw himself at the dragon king's feet. Because of the ordeal the queen had gone through, she likely wouldn't produce an heir for a long while. Thus it was fitting that the chief's son offer himself up? An heir for an heir.

The dragon king eyed the tiny human with curious eyes, noting the way the baby Barbarian trembled in his boots before him. He grumbled to his knights and one stepped forward, scooping the Barbarian child into his mouth before flying off. The young warrior could hear the choked sob of his mother as he was carried away. He too cried, though none could see his tears inside the dragon's mouth.

At first, the little warrior thought that the dragons intended to take him to their home and fight over him. Or feed him to the queen when she got stronger. But then he was dropped, unceremoniously into a nest with a waiting female. He thought she was going to eat him, but instead she pushed him under her wing with her nose. There he was confronted with a baby dragon, which was still much larger than him but a baby nonetheless. He thought it would eat him too, but instead it just sniffed and poked at him. It ignored his pained shouts when it poked too hard or tried to push it away, that is until it's mother hissed at it and the tiny creature curled into a ball to sleep. The mother looked at the young Barbarian too, nudging him toward her baby and pushing him down to lay down. He got the memo. Sleep.

Every day, the young warrior expected to be eaten. Surely they were just fattening him up to eat him later. But it never came. He grew bigger and taller. Well-defined muscles came about through his constant struggle to keep up with the dragons. The baby dragon, which he'd deemed Red, liked to play rough. If he was going to survive, he'd have to be able to beat a dragon with his bare fists. So he trained. He ate everything the dragons brought no matter how disgusting it looked. Snake and wolf meat weren't very appetizing but if they were all you had you managed to swallow it one way or another.

Eventually, Red was able to take on a human form. Though that didn't mean he could speak the basic tongue most humans spoke. He was eager to learn though and just as the Barbarian taught him basic, so did Red teach his warrior friend Draconic.

As the two grew up together, they became more than friends. They were brothers. They trained together, fought together. Some of the other young dragons would laugh at Red for having a human brother. Well, that is they'd laugh until that human brother managed to kick all of their tales in combat. He might have been human but he was far from weak!

Then one day, the Barbarian and his brother were flying through the lower mountains. It had been a long time since the Barbarian had been through this area, he'd almost forgotten what the land looked like. He noticed something strange, warriors from a clan his tribe had never been on good terms with. Their party was much, much larger than he remembered his clan being. He worried for his parents. There was no way they would abandon their clan. They would fight to death to protect their clan, even more so without their son there. They wouldn't have anything else to fight for. If they lost their clan then they'd lose everything.

That night, his dragon parents noticed how distant he had become. Looking down the mountain toward the place they'd taken him from, a forlorn look in his eyes. He didn't eat or drink or sleep. Red told him what they had seen in the lower mountains and Red's father took the information to the council. The Barbarians had saved their queen all those years ago, now it seemed they needed someone to come to their aid.

Red's mother eventually managed to coax the Barbarian to eat and sleep. While he slept, the dragon knights gathered and flew ahead. When the Barbarian woke, Red pulled him out for a flight. After hours of gliding through the clouds, the Barbarian noticed that Red was descending and he could hear the clash of swords of scream of dying warriors. His body tensed as the clouds dispersed and a horrific scene of his clan retreating and his parents surrendering to give their clan time to escape. But before the enemy warriors could raise a blade to his parents' throats, the young warrior was launching himself from Red's back to continue the fight!

With the strength of a dragon in the body of a man, he beat his opponents back bit by bit. They were wary of this stranger. Who was this dragon warrior? A wild brat raised by wild beasts? They backed away but didn't realize that they were backing into the waiting claws of raging dragons. The enemy clan disappeared as quickly as they came, the young Barbarian only felt a small bit of pity for their wives and children who would never see their return.

He turned to his tribe and knew that they didn't recognize him. He wasn't the child that had been carried off in the mountains in a dragon's mouth. He was a powerful man who fought like and with dragons. He brandished large muscles and a rugged appearance, covered in blood and dirt from the battle. He spoke in a voice that was raspy from lack of use and growly from becoming so acquainted with the dragon tongue. "Ol' man? Hag?" He croaked and watched the realization spark in their eyes.

"Katsuki!" They screamed in unison before tackling the child that they never thought they'd see again.

In the aftermath of the battle, there was a huge celebration for their victory and Katsuki's return. The dragons, now able to speak basic, came to realize that there had been a misunderstanding when they took Katsuki. The Barbarians thought the dragons were upset, hence Katsuki offered himself up to appease them. The dragons thought that Katsuki was asking to learn the dragons' ways as a reward for saving their queen. They didn't think he could do it but it was unlike them to leave a debt unpaid, so they took him and put him in a nest with a dragon around his age to grow and train together.

The dragons left a few days later, saying their goodbyes to Katsuki and promising to keep in touch. All of the dragons left except for one, Katsuki's brother Red. It never mattered how many times the dragon reminded Katsuki that his name was actually Eijiro. The Barbarian never called him by his given name.

Eventually, Eijiro would return to his clan to take a mate and start his own family. But he always made sure to visit his human brother at least once a year. The dragons began to thrive once more and became legend no more. Many hunters would try to ascend the mountains, but they were always stopped by a wild brute. A man with the muscles and power of a dragon and the wild ferocity of a Barbarian. Few men ever lived to tell the tale of seeing this legendary warrior, usually only witnessing his combat from afar as they watched some fool get slaughtered for attempting to hunt dragons.

Stories were scripted, tales were told, and songs were sung of the legendary warrior. Of pale hair, tanned skin, fur armor, and dragon's might. The infamous Barbarian Katsuki Bakugo, the Dragon's Warrior, Defender, and Brother.

#mha #bnha #fantasy au #strangers to friends #brotherly friendship #Bakugou Katsuki #Kirishima Eijiro #Barbarian Bakugo Katsuki #Dragon Kirishima Eijiro #Language Barrier #Misunderstandings #Worldbuilding #Lore #Fluff #I really wanna right this idea #But I need to finish my other stuff #I want someone to write a song for this #But not me #Because I suck at poetry

[comradekiwi]

I just adore when fics have young pro-heroes deku and dynamight be like, #35 and #22 and still making their way up over the years (as opposed to prodigies, straight to top five out of UA) cuz it’s not their time yet and their upperclassmen or hawks n miruko etc are in the top ranks bc it’s THEIR prime. and our kids are okay w it bc it’s normal for things to take time n it’s literally a nonissue they know it takes time and work to get to No. 1

#bkdk #bnha #I JUST LOVE WORLDBUILDING THAT INCLUDES THE CALM. YK #like when things are normally paced #that’s so good #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bakudeku #boku no hero academia manga #bakugou katsuki #decchan #bnha manga spoilers #midoriya izuku #katsudeku #izuku midoriya #deku #boku no hero academia manga spoilers #kacchan #kiwi talks

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs & Heteromorphobia (Introduction + Terminology + Arcs I - V, Entrance Exam to Sports Festival)

Being a project to observe and document the use of the term “heteromorph,” the people described by it, and the depiction of their experiences with discrimination in My Hero Academia

OR

“No, heteromorphobia isn’t new or a late-story retcon.  The non-heteromorph main characters just weren’t confronted with it for a long time, that’s all.”

Introduction

In this series of posts, I will be examining heteromorphic characters and heteromorphic discrimination chapter by chapter, arc by arc, up through the plotline coming to a head in the attack on Central Hospital.  My overall aim is to demonstrate that, contrary to widespread assertions otherwise, heteromorphobia had ample groundwork laid long before it burst to the forefront in My Villain Academia.  My analysis will generally fall into one of the following categories:

General observations about heteromorphs in the world: how the reader is introduced to them individually and as a group, their demographics, the language used to describe them, how they fit into the structure of professional heroism, etc.    

Aspects of the series—scenes, character beats, worldbuilding details, etc.—which I believe canonically point towards heteromorphic discrimination, even before that discrimination was explicitly acknowledged.

Aspects of the series that could be read as evidence for said discrimination, but which may or may not have been intentional on the part of the author.    

Discussion of how individual characters intersect, or could intersect, with this form of discrimination.

I would like to fold the Vigilantes spin-off into this analysis as well, as that series is very good at taking aspects of worldbuilding from the main series to their logical, street-level conclusions; I may also examine other extracanonical material (the data books, the movies, TUM and the novels, etc.) if I find—or have suggested to me—anything relevant to the topic.  More on this as I get closer to the end of the material in the series proper.

The current plan being to end my mainline analysis with the hospital attack is largely because, at the present time, Shouji’s response to the mob seems to be the series’ last word on The Problem of Heteromorphobia.  I may, however, continue beyond that point if the series circles back to the issue in a major way between now and the completion of this project.

In the meantime, join me below the jump as I lay out my thesis, explain the rationale behind the terminology used in this piece, and dive on into the canon material, from Chapter 1 up through the conclusion of the Sports Festival in Chapter 44.

   

The Thesis 

Anti-heteromorph discrimination has been present as a background element in the series from the very beginning.  However, this is obscured by the main character’s lack of awareness of it, the overlap between such discrimination and the broader dehumanization of villains, and, perhaps most crucially, the fact that the term “heteromorph,” while serviceable as a descriptor for a broad categorization of quirk types, is uselessly broad for discussing heteromorphic discrimination.

It’s very easy to say, “The idea of heteromorphs being discriminated against is a ridiculous retcon,” if one views the story as suggesting that all people with heteromorphic quirks are subject to the exact same levels of discrimination, while transformation and emitter types are never discriminated against at all, no matter how they look.  This, however, is demonstrably false if one instead looks for patterns in the types of discrimination demonstrated throughout the series.  The common element in heteromorphic discrimination is that it becomes drastically more likely the farther away one is from the “normal” appearance of humans prior to the Advent of the Extraordinary.  This is particularly the case for those with heteromorphic quirks tied to animals or those who live in rural areas.

   

On Terminology

Baseline/Divergence: “Baseline” is not a canonical term, but it is a useful one.  I’ll use it to describe bodies that look more or less “normal,” with features like those humans would have had before the advent of quirks.  Bakugou is baseline; so is Momo.  Tokoyami and Koda are not.  I’ll also sometimes use “divergence” or “divergent” in association with this concept, especially for people who have no more than one or two cosmetic differences that are not associated with an animal.  Jirou’s earphone jacks or Iida’s pipes would be examples of such relatively minor divergences from “baseline.”  It is, as I will argue, a significant factor in the extent of discrimination that heteromorphs face.

Igyou/Heteromorph: The Japanese term Spinner objects to in Chapter 220 is igyou, literally meaning “fantastic; grotesque; strange-looking; suspicious-looking” per Japanese dictionary site jisho.org.  It’s often appended with gata, “type,” and people who have quirks of that type labeled as igyou-gata no ningen.  The Viz release translates igyou to “heteromorph,” and igyou-gata to “heteromorphic” or “heteromorphic quirk.”  It’s much more clinical-sounding to an English ear than a more literal translation of igyou would be; thus, when Spinner suggests that the word is not very politically correct, the Japanese reader will have a much clearer understanding of why than the English reader.

Another thing Spinner says about igyou is that, despite the fact that it’s not a good word for formal contexts, everyone uses it day to day.  However, as far as I can tell, and troublingly for fans who want to avoid using an offensive word, there is no polite alternative.  We see people using the word to describe themselves, Aizawa uses it freely in discussing how his quirk affects the type in question, but we don’t get to see an academic paper or expert interview letting us know what we should say instead.

I’ve only seen two alternatives.  One is buried in Vigilantes and is less “a polite alternative” and more “a mouthful of words to prevaricate around not having a polite alternative”: tokushuna taikaku no mochinushi, or, per the Viz translation, “individuals with unique bodies.”  The other, used by the firebrand PLF advisor leading the hospital riot, is kotonaru katachi, which means, roughly, “differing forms.”  It’s better, but still more of a descriptive phrase than a noun, and runs into the issue that something vague like “differing forms” could also apply to, for example, congenital anomalies or amputations. It also uses the same kanji as igyou, just a different reading of the characters, so it’s unclear if Spinner would find that wording just as objectionable.

It’s tricky to navigate this, too, because it’s not all 1:1 translation.  Spinner doesn’t object to being called igyou while thinking that igyou-gata or igyou-gata no ningen would be fine—that is, he’s not saying he doesn’t like being called a heteromorph, but being called a heteromorphic type or a person with a heteromorphic quirk would be fine, in the way that you see debates about person-first versus identity-first language in e.g. the autistic community.  It’s the word igyou/“heteromorph” itself that he dislikes.

Why?  Well, the obvious answer is that the word itself, down to the kanji involved, denotes the people it’s used to describe as being strange or different from normal.  Transformation-type quirks have a similar if less pronounced issue: henkei can mean “transformation” or “metamorphosis,” but it can also mean “deformity.”  Emitters are the only ones who don’t have this problem at all, with hatsudou meaning simply “invocation” or “put into operation.”

When that kind of normativity is baked into the language itself, it’s impossible to even talk about without Othering the people you’re discussing.

While neither addresses the language issue specifically, Ujiko and Re-Destro both offer some useful insight on why the issue exists.  Ujiko says, “With each passing generation, quirks become more mixed, more complex, more ambiguous(...).”  Re-Destro, meanwhile, asks, “Isn’t it odd how society insists on conforming to the old ways of thinking while eliminating anyone who doesn’t fit the mold?  Especially since we as a species have moved beyond the very notion of normal!”

My suspicion, then, is that no polite alternative exists because the concept itself is so nebulous, and talking about it—as we will see—leads to thorny, difficult-to-categorize places when people prefer to keep things nice and tidy, easy to sort and put away.  This is convenient for people who are uncomfortable talking about it, since policing people about their language is a great way to shut down discussion entirely.

Indeed, I’ve seen as much in the fandom—thoughtful, well-articulated posts wholly dismissed with snotty rebukes against using the word “heteromorph” on the basis that it’s equivalent to a slur, with no further engagement on the posts’ actual content.  I often see “mutant” used instead, but I don’t view that as any kind of solution, for two reasons.

Firstly, and more simply, using “mutant” creates confusion due to its overlap with the idea of quirk mutations—situations like Eri’s.  Indeed, in the Japanese, while Pops uses the Japanese word for “mutation,” kanji that would normally be read as totsuzenheni,[1] the furigana show that what he's actually saying aloud is the English word, giving the reading as myuuteeshon.  The word igyou is totally unrelated—it doesn’t even have any kanji in common with totsuzenhi—so I feel it’s best to not add ambiguity where none exists in the original text.

Secondly, and more irksomely, “mutant” is what the most widely available fan scanlation used as a translation for igyou.  Scanlation!Spinner says it’s the word “mutant” he dislikes; it’s not dodging offense to use the scanlation version instead of the official when they’re both placed in the exact same objectionable context![2]

Pictured: me being extremely unimpressed with people who use “mutant” accusing people who use “heteromorph” of using slurs.

All that said, in the absence of any polite alternatives provided by the canon, and in the interest of not throwing out the only word we have in favor of a nonexistent nicety the story’s victims themselves have no access to, I will be using the word those victims themselves use: “heteromorph.”

For further specificity, I will use “heteromorph” to describe anyone, regardless of quirk type, with a physical form that diverges from the pre-Advent baseline, while using “heteromorphic quirk” to denote quirks of said category and those who bear them.

Categorizing Quirks & the Division of Arcs:

Usually, when I denote a quirk as a given type—emitter, transformation, heteromorphic—I’m using the English fan wiki’s classification.  However, note that, while these broad quirk classifications are discussed within the series, there is no canonical source that categorizes the vast majority of the quirks we see in the series.  In character sheets, data books, narrated quirk explanations or the anime’s tic of showing characters’ names and quirks on-screen, the only information given is the quirk’s name and a brief explanation of its function.

Fan wikis, however, are run by curatorial fans, who want to have that information all down neatly, so I’m sure there are whole discussions behind classifying some of the more borderline cases.  I will be discussing the insufficiencies of the current system of classification, but any time I declare a quirk as being classified as a certain type, that’s based on the wiki, not the text itself.

The wiki was also my reference for the breakdown of arcs in the series. They are equally noncanonical, but convenient for the purposes of keeping this piece broken down into digestible pieces.

Let's get started.

   

Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia Chronologically

The Entrance Exam Arc (Chapters 1-4)

Chapter 1: 

On the very first page, we meet li’l Tsubasa, the winged boy who is implied to eventually become the Winged Noumu during the Stain arc.[3]  No longer in Bakugou’s friend group by the time they’re in middle school; according to the data book, that’s just because he changed schools, but that information does come with an ominous ellipsis trail-off…    

The very first villain we see is a heteromorph, yelling at heroes to go away.  We’re told he’s a purse-snatcher who transformed into his large size—he maintains his base appearance even after being captured and shrinking back down to a normal size—when cornered.  Called “pure evil” by Kamui Woods and while that does speak more directly to the dehumanization of villains than that of heteromorphs, it’s notable that this very first comparison between what heroes and villains look like shows such a stark difference between which one looks human and which one doesn’t.        o  Kamui Woods himself is a transformation-type rather than a heteromorph-type, but he blurs the line between quirk categorizations.  Even at “rest,” his limbs have a wooden appearance; he transforms their shape and size, but not their basic nature.  In that sense, he has a heteromorphic body.  His humanoid size and dimensions, though, as well as his mask, make him appear baseline at a casual glance.  I’ll be discussing him in more depth later, but note that if you read this first confrontation in light of later reveals about heteromorphic discrimination, it’s the one who wears a mask that’s a hero.

But with Mount Lady getting the final blow, note how everyone in this picture is baseline except the literally muzzled villain.

Of twenty-four visible kids in Deku and Bakugou’s class, only two have clear-cut heteromorphic quirks.  One girl has horns but no other divergent features nor other apparent power in use; the other is of the “different head” style, a boy with what looks like a pair of needle-nose pliers in place of a normal head.  One other boy has gnashing, sharp teeth; it’s unclear whether they look like that all the time or whether it’s a transformation effect.  The rest of the students all seem to be emitter or transformation types.    

Introduction of the Sludge Villain, whose body is entirely fluid.  Implied to kill those whose bodies he possesses, at least the ones he intends to fully hide himself within.  We’re now two-for-two on villains being heteromorphs.    

The crowd full of bystanders are all baseline:

Keep this image in mind for when we get our first crowd shot of villains.

Chapter 3+:

You can identify both Shouji and Tokoyami in this chapter, but Deku doesn’t talk to either of them, so they don’t have anything solid in the way of dialogue.  Shouji does get one focus in the art, though: a shot of him from behind, typifying the information-gathering type.  Nedzu first appears in silhouette but also has no speaking lines beyond a shared impressed noise with the also-silhouetted Vlad King.  One or two other heteromorphs can be spotted throughout the exam, but they’re definitely fewer in number compared to the rest.    

+: Others will crop up as Deku has his first day with Class 1-A and Aizawa in the following chapters; Tokoyami, befitting his eventual Number 3 placement at the Sports Festival, has his name regularly shown near the top of assorted exam/class activity rankings.  Shouji’s name appears likewise in Chapter 7’s track and field test rankings.    

The Quirk Apprehension Test Arc (Chapters 5-7)

Chapter 5:

Iida is, strictly speaking, the first named heteromorph in the class.  There will never be any particular sign that Iida is subject to the judgement and bias that more divergent heteromorphs are.

Chapter 6: 

Tsuyu is the next named heteromorph, the first one with an animal-associated quirk, and the first student whose facial features are clearly intended to be anything other than baseline human.  Her quirk is not yet officially introduced, but she’s identified as a froggy type by her hopping, her long tongue, and her ribbit talk bubble.    

In the same chapter that gives us our first instance of an animal-type heteromorph, we also get our first instance of animal-type name-calling:

Note the ever-stoic Shouji’s pointed lack of a response.

This is not particularly highlighted in the moment, but it will get a callback over 300 chapters later as something that warrants an apology.  Note that both Sero and Mineta are themselves heteromorphs, but neither are animal-associated. This already sets up a discrepancy between what kinds of heteromorphs experience significant discrimination, even though the reader won’t get context for that until Spinner introduces us to the CRC.    

The Battle Trial Arc (Chapters 8-11)

Chapter 11:

Shouji is formally introduced, name and quirk alike.  Tsuyu proves to be relatively outgoing despite her demeanor, grouped with the affable Kirishima, Mina, and Sato in introducing herself to Deku after the indoor battles.    

The first appearance of the League of Villains in the stinger with Shigaraki, Kurogiri and the USJ Noumu.  None of them have heteromorphic quirks, as we’ll eventually find, but it’s immediately apparent that—like both of Chapter 1’s villains—they’re much more monstrous in appearance than the heroic cast.  This correlation of appearance with criminal activity will continue to bear itself out throughout the series, getting more prominent and more explicit in the text as it goes along.    

The U.S.J. Arc (Chapters 12-21)

Chapter 12: 

Contains Ojiro’s character sheet, which notes that he always has to ask for clothing alterations when he’s shopping, which has become standard practice since the proliferation of quirks.  Another profile page leading Chapter 32 will note similarly that he has a hard time sitting normally in a chair.  Indeed, despite U.A. being the premier school for heroes, their accommodation seems to top out at exaggeratedly large doors; there doesn’t seem to be any accommodation in things like desks given for people with differently shaped bodies, like Ojiro’s tail or Mineta’s small stature.     It’s possible that specially made desks, like clothes alterations, could be provided upon request, but that puts the onus on the person with the need to ask.  Between the people in question being teenagers and Japan’s culture of meiwaku (not causing trouble for others), that’s a pretty significant disincentivization compared to just incorporating different desk sizes into the class by default, either by having a selection available in all classes or by proactively asking students about their needs during the enrollment process.

Chapter 13:

Bakugou calls Tsuyu “frog-face,” starting a trend he will continue for a long, long time of immediately going for animal traits when he’s reaching for an insult to use against an animal-type heteromorph.    

Thirteen talks about how the use of quirks is heavily restricted and monitored because, “It only takes one wrong move with an uncontrollable quirk for people to die.”  The series will go on to provide all sorts of examples of conflicts that arise from this state of affairs—reduced bodily autonomy, repression of biological compulsion, quirk-based discrimination—but Thirteen doesn’t bring up any of that.  As Mr. Compress will call out later, the UA kids are seldom given much in the way of opposing viewpoints, and that’s visible here, where Thirteen provides a very basic explanation of the status quo with zero historical or sociopolitical context.[4]

Chapter 14:

As was the case for Shigaraki’s chapter-ending stinger at the bar, it’s very noticeable that the group at USJ have a far higher ratio of frightening appearances in crowd scenes.

Venus fly-trap hands, paper ofuda body, three with weird heads, face-chest dude, the dude with four legs: some of them might well be transformation types rather than heteromorphs, but either way, they’re a lot creepier across the board.

First use of the term heteromorph, from one of the villains Shigaraki brings to the USJ attack.  It’s followed up with Aizawa distinguishing “heteromorphic types” from “operative” and “transformative” types.  As I said in the terminology section, “heteromorph” is less fraught than the Japanese term igyou, but one might guess that Caleb Cook didn’t see a discrimination plotline coming—especially since the first person to use the word is self-describing!—so went with something a bit drier.

   

Tsuyu provides the first example of a character’s quirk being named simply for the animal they resemble with the formal introduction of her quirk, Frog.  I have to wonder somewhat about the politics of this—who chooses what to name a quirk?     Do the parents themselves do it, choosing a name and the kanji to use, and then just have to get the name approved when turning in a registration form at the local government office?  Or does the clerk at said office do it after getting a description of how the quirk operates?  Is there an appeals process if your choice is rejected/you don’t like what the clerk saddled your kid with?     Are heteromorphs, especially animal-types, more likely to just get assigned the exact same quirk name as their family members, regardless of any difference in their abilities?  Both of the Iida brothers, for example, have their quirk listed as Engine, though their pipes are in different places on their bodies.  We’ll later be told that Spinner’s whole family has reptilian quirks, but his is particularly weak.  Nonetheless, it’s still called Gecko, the same way Tsuyu’s is called Frog, even though she has a whole suite of abilities—she can do anything a frog can do!—and all Spinner can do is stick to walls.  And I wonder what the culture is like on that, and who makes that call.     As a further thought experiment, consider that if heteromorphs are more likely to get blanket names of their quirks than emitters, what does that mean for the quirk registry as an investigative tool for police?  Sure, there might be a lot of fire-users in the area, but the name and description of those quirks in the database will offer more ways to distinguish between them and how a fire-using suspect wielded their flames. You don't get that when your suspect had a lizardish quirk, there are fifteen petty criminals with lizardish quirks in the city, and all the quirk registry says is, “Lizard: Has lizard-like abilities and features.”     This homogenization of people who are already discriminated against compared to the apparent effort made to distinguish people with desirable emitter-type or colorful transformation quirks[5] leaves a lot of room for lazy, shoddy or even actively vindictive police work.     (Incidentally, Hound Dog and Gigantomachia both have quirks just named Dog.  Machia’s version only grants enhanced smell and hearing; he lacks Hound Dog’s canine features completely.  This would seem to indicate that simplistic quirk names aren’t limited by family groups, but rather assigned quite widely.)    

At the end of the chapter, Tsuyu’s character page notes that she gets cold easily—a weakness to cold that fellow ectotherm-based-quirk-haver Spinner does not seem to share, despite his appearance being considerably more divergent than Tsuyu’s.  On the other hand, his power set is much, much weaker.  Possibly the more abilities you have from “your” animal, the more of their more “negative” traits you also have to deal with? This would track with Mirko’s panicky “rabbit survival senses” kicking in the instant she saw Shigaraki in the tube.[6]

Chapter 15: 

Nedzu is introduced as the Principal.  Nedzu’s an interesting case.  He must be assumed to have a heteromorphic body as he’s clearly not a baseline mouse!  And his quirk is heteromorphic in the same sense that Ujiko’s is—its effect is both limited to his own self as well as being inherent to him—he can’t turn it on and off, and he can’t affect others with it.  Yet we can’t quite assume he experiences heteromorphobia in the same way humans do because he isn’t human; if people assume he’s animalistic or less-than-human, well, he is an animal, and he isn’t human.     Personally, I think Nedzu’s experience of heteromorphobia is most interesting for how it might intersect with that experienced by human heteromorphs—for example, what do people assume about Nedzu that’s similar to what they assume about other heteromorphs, and what do people assume about heteromorphs because of Nedzu and other rare instances of animals with quirks?

Chapter 21:

Introduction of Cementoss.  His quirk’s an emitter-type, but his body, and particularly his head, is very clearly not baseline.  Similar to Tokoyami, his appearance is technically independent of his quirk, though there are visual ties.  This begs a lot of questions about the arbitrary categorization of quirks and the insufficient language to talk about people whose appearances are very far afield from the old human norm, if the only word there is for a very different body is a word that’s also used to talk about a quirk category, and it’s considered a somewhat rude word at that!     In any case, with his squarish, cement-block head, he’s also our best look so far at someone with a heteromorphic body who has a visual tie to something that is a) a recognizable, extant thing in the world, but also b) inorganic in nature.  He won’t be the last or the weirdest of these.    

Introduction of Sansa, our first animal-type civilian heteromorph.    

Shouji’s character sheet, noting that Horikoshi thinks he’s cool even if he’s not the type of guy to stand out in the crowd, and wants to feature him in the story but isn’t sure when it will happen.  The character pages often—not always, but often—show what characters look like underneath various masks and costumes.  Shouji is the first exception, with his face remaining covered by his mask even here.  I see very little reason for that to be the case unless Horikoshi was concealing his scars for a dramatic later reveal.     Horikoshi also mentions here, for the first time, that he really enjoys drawing non-human-looking characters.  Given that he will also later say that he really enjoys thinking up personal details and backstory stuff for characters, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that he might have had the idea that “rural areas are still discriminatory” from the very beginning, even if he didn’t know how much of a role it might wind up playing.  This is especially the case if he had already begun conceptualizing the members and stories of the League of Villains, as discrimination is inseparable from Spinner’s reasons for becoming a villain in the first place.    

The U.A. Sports Festival Arc (Chapters 22 - 44)

One thing that stands out to me about the Sports Festival—no particular chapters, so I’m putting it at the beginning; keep an eye out next time you read it!—is that the audience members are far more varied in terms of how they look than the street crowds tend to be.  This is particularly the case as you get towards the finals and get more crowd commentary, and thus comparatively more detailed crowd shots.

Unincluded but equally telling panels include the ones with the skeleton knight or the parasitized snail guy.

While some of this can probably be chalked up to Horikoshi’s assistants getting better at drawing colorful random extras, I don’t think that’s the only reason, given how consistent the patterns in crowd make-up are throughout the series.  Rather, it’s notable that the attendees to the Sports Festival are, by and large, Hero industry people—most of them are, judging by their costumes,[7] heroes. We know from later on in the series that Japan has hundreds, probably thousands of active heroes in the modern day, and heroism is a good path for heteromorphs who don’t want to become villains but feel stifled at the prospect of being civilians; if nothing else, having a license is a preventative against being harassed for public quirk use just because you exist!  So it’s not surprising that the mid-ranks of heroes—people with middling quirks who are, For Some Strange Reason, not popular enough to make it to the tops of the charts—are flush with heteromorphs.

Chapter 26:

The full roster for Class 1-B is shown, though only a few of them get much in the way of dialogue through the Sports Festival material, most prominently Shiozaki, Tetsutetsu, and Monoma.  Class B is where a lot of the really weird first-year UA heteromorphs wound up.  Class 1-A has got nobody even a sliver as Downright Bizarre as Fukidashi Manga and Bondo Kojirou.

Chapter 27:

Hatsume Mei’s character sheet implies that support goods are mostly a thing for heroes—a government license is required to produce them; using them requires a hero license.  Most notable from her page is the sentence, “For those whose quirks impede everyday life, permits for special life-improving items may be granted after a rigorous examination.”  That’s a lot of qualifiers, isn’t it?  You might get to have support goods that improve your quality of life if you can prove to someone from the government that your life is sufficiently impeded by your quirk—oh, and that examination is going to be really demanding.  There’s an obvious example in Aoyama’s belt, and Aoyama’s certainly no heteromorph, but it’s easy to imagine that kind of thing affecting heteromorphs disproportionately.

Chapter 29:

A small thing, but Tokoyami notes that the only person he has previously told Dark Shadow’s weakness to is Koda, another of the Class 1-A kids with a more significantly heteromorphic appearance.  We will eventually find in a volume extra about the CRC that one of their branches is a group that rejects those who have strange heads—Tokoyami and Koda are the clear examples in Class 1-A, give or take Shouji’s unmasked features and Mina’s horns and odd coloring.     The wiki notes that Koda and Tokoyami were together for the USJ attack, so the weakness may simply have come up there, but I don’t believe it’s explicitly specified anywhere what the circumstances were for Tokoyami telling Koda that information.

Chapter 30: 

A “raccoon eyes” from Bakugou aimed at Mina, a reference to her black sclera.  The Japanese here just translates to black eyes, though—still a reference to a heteromorphic feature, but not an animal insult.

Chapter 32: 

Opting to rest up during the Sports Festival’s pre-final break, Tokoyami, the bird head guy, does this by stashing himself up on a tree branch.  While I don’t think Tokoyami tends towards a lot of avian mannerisms, he will later be deeply impacted by Hawks encouraging him to fly.    

In a strategic tactic to rile up Midoriya by insulting his classmate, Shinso derisively calls Ojiro a monkey.  It’s super-effective!

Chapter 33: 

In a not-so-strategic patch of angry internal monologue about Ojiro spilling the beans on his brainwashing quirk, Shinsou thinks of Ojiro as a monkey.

Chapter 35:

Mount Lady comments on Shiozaki’s strength by calling her another plant user when talking to Kamui Woods.  We’ll see this sort of quirk solidarity in a number of other places—Endeavor’s agency full of fire types, a fire-type dude on the street expressing his support of Endeavor, Hawks quipping about both him and Tokoyami being birds—but this is the nice, safe version of something that raises a lot more questions when it’s e.g. Tsuyu’s parents both being frog-type heteromorphs.  More on that in the relevant bonus chapter.  In short, the solidarity’s nice, but pushed too far, it’s easy for that kind of thing to turn exclusionary.

Chapter 41:

The introduction of Stain.  Stain’s another interesting case of someone not being denoted as heteromorphic—Bloodcurdle is an emitter-type—but, like Cementoss, having physical traits that clearly fall in line with their quirk.  I would say Stain’s an even more borderline case than Cementoss, actually, as far as having a quirk that blurs the line on typing.

Cementoss is clearly strange-looking—less scary than Stain, but also less human—but his physical features do nothing whatsoever to facilitate the use of his Cement quirk.  Stain, though, has his tongue: too long to be a normal human feature, and certainly helpful in terms of making it easier for him to taste other peoples’ blood.  Yet we don’t call Stain a heteromorph because, in contrast to a feature like e.g. Sero’s elbows, Bloodcurdle would work the same way even if Stain had a totally normal tongue.  So how would one discuss any discrimination Stain might ever have faced over it?     Thus, my belief that the discrimination we see in the story is based, not simply on having a heteromorphic quirk, but on having a sufficient number of heteromorphic features.

---------

Thanks for reading so far! A lot of this first post was introduction and set-up, but the hints will be growing more overt as we press on. I'd like to make this series either weekly or biweekly, time and other projects depending, but it's written all the way up through the Edgy Deku arc, so I don't anticipate major delays.

I hope you all enjoy; this one has been in the works for a long, long time.

Next time: the Stain arc on through the License Exam, plus the (very telling) Tsuyu bonus chapter.

------------------- FOOTNOTES -------------------

[1] AFO uses the correct reading when he’s explaining Decay’s sudden appearance to Tenko in Chapter 222.  I assume this is because Pops is a mobster while AFO has been married to a quirk scientist for seventy years.

[2] Also too, even if I were inclined to pick one word to use as the rude word and one to use as the more formal term, “mutant” is closer to the rude connotations of igyou than “heteromorph.”

[3] Knowing what we know now, it’s possible that l’il Tsubasa is fine, and that said Noumu only has a copy of his quirk via Ujiko.  Its impulse to save/grab Deku could be chalked up as something caused by said quirk’s vestige, which the lower tier Noumu might simply lack the brain function to filter out.  It’s difficult to say if the current story will find time to address this.

[4] One has to wonder if hero schools save all the crunchy classes about Hero Civics and Modern History for the third-years, if the younger grades are learning it but Horikoshi thinks it’s too dull to show, or if students are just never taught about it at all beyond the bare minimum necessary to do their jobs by the book, and anything more than that is the reserve of higher education or specialized study.

[5] Consider the simplicity of animal-type quirk names and then compare them with e.g. Helflame vs Hardflame Fan, Explosion vs. Landmine, Float vs. Air Walk, Magic vs. Poltergeist, Bubble vs. Clean Bubbler, or Scalemail vs. Scales vs. Shield.  And that’s limiting myself to only quirks named directly in the manga!  It gets even more ridiculous if the patterns in the anime’s invented names for quirks are taken into consideration.

[6] Of course, lots of people get chills from being around Shigaraki, even before the surgery but especially after.  Everyone else has that response to a conscious Shigaraki, however.

[7] Conversely, when Mei scopes out some Support industry dudes in Chapter 35, the two she focuses on as well as nearly everyone seated around them are just baseline dudes in suits and ties.  Only one of the fourteen visible faces in that panel is a probable heteromorph.

#bnha #heteromorph discrimination plot #my writing #so much writing #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding

[floof-ghostie]

Some Western Hero Society Worldbuilding

In the early days of heroics, the first hero schools were mainly in America (Rhode Island, New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco)

In Canada, the first hero school was a boarding school, founded in Victoria, British Columbia. In those days, you either went to B.C to train to be a hero, or you went to an American school.

The second hero school was founded in Montreal, Quebec. The third was founded in Medicine Hat, Alberta (yes this is a real city)

The fourth hero school in Canada was founded by the Teleportation hero, Blink. This school is called Antony Meyers Hero Academy, and is located in downtown Toronto.

Now, each state and province/territory has more than one hero school, as heroism is a bigger industry than before, and not everybody can afford to ship their kid to a whole other city.

Canadian hero schools put a bigger emphasis on learning new languages, adaptability, and travelling for hero work.

Canadian school in general teach French, but Canadian hero students are encouraged to choose more languages other than French to study.

This depends on which hero school you go to, but American schools value marketing and branding when it comes to heroism, or fighting without relying on your quirk.

The American hero school system's equivalent to U.A's sports festival is a tournament of sorts. But students are only eligible to compete if they are in their third and fourth year of school. Some only allow seniors to participate.

Furthermore, Canadian and American hero schools do not have a general education course. They only have management, heroism, and support.

Seeing as Bnha takes place in the future, I'd like to think that the western education system has been improved, if only a little, given how taxing the heroics industry is. Nepotism and favouritism however, is a very big problem in the west.

@s0ursop @insomniac-jay @opalofoctober @calciumcryptid @elflynns-horde-of-stuff @obsxdiannn @rogues-rps-and-such

#bnha #bnha worldbuilding

[codenamesazanka]

Chapter 370! A few quick notes:

The flashback at the beginning isn't Spinner's; It's Shoji's.

To my understanding, the words thrown have religious/Shinto connotations: kegare 穢れ - with that specific kanji 穢 - means defilement, and imi 忌み is taboo/something to avoid. I think Heteromorphs aren't just discriminated against; they're seen as dirty/impure and abominations.

The 'blood' talk is especially unnerving.

"I can't believe you have tainted blood...You people tricked us!" So is this idea of deception.

The countryside sucks ass, apparently.

Quirk counseling doesn't work, probably because they don't actually teach acceptance, but instead are intended to assimilate children into strict societal norms and standards.

Both the PLF speech guy and Shoji have large visible scars on their faces, presumably from being assaulted violently.

Shoji only looks several years younger in his flashback - the assaults and hatred, they all probably happened in the past five years. Definitely not a thing of the past.

Gran Torino notes that Hero agencies pop up in places with dense populations. Countrysides probably have little to no Heroes. "The light does not shine on us" indeed.

Also: throwing rocks and hate speech doesn't require use of quirks. These bigots won't be classified as Villains. Heroes won't be after them.

The Heteromorphs who fight back using their body-which-are-their-quirk can definitely be classified as Villains tho.

Most of the manga have taken place in city areas; nearly all the history lessons we ever got about quirks and HeroAca World in the manga are from the villains - Heroes just don't seem to talk about history; Spinner was a hikikomori and Shoji was told not to leave his house; (this is from Vigilantes but) infrastructure don't accommodate for all body shapes/sizes/needs - this heteromorph stuff exploded because it was hidden and held back, out of sight, and just not dealt with for so long. No wonder there's so much rage.

.

I've been rambling meta about heteromorph discrimination since 2019, even before My Villain Academia. So none of this was out of no where - the information was there in the manga, all one needed to do was look carefully and think. Everything could be extrapolated.

I was right, I am right, I'm always right. Heck yeah.

#nalslastworkingbraincell #worldbuilding #Chapter 370 #Spinner #Shoji Mezo #bnha #mha #HeroAca

[nutzgunray-lvt]

For world building purposes (and future fics), is it ever specified what cirriculum the hero course follows?

It's been said that it's advanced and fast-paced, but nothing beyond that. We see in Ectoplam's class that they're solving a trigonometry problem, but from what I've read, first year high schoolers in Japan learn geometry.

What do they learn in English, Literature, Art, Science, and Physics?

#mha worldbuilding #mha #bnha #ua high school

[thyandrawrites]

I knew the Creature Rejection Clan would come up again as a plot point sooner or later. Man, I feel sorry for all the anime-onlys who will be missing out context because Bones decided the beginning of MVA was skippable

#Bnha spoilers #Thyandra.txt #This stuff is... Heavy holy shit #Are they really implying ethnic cleansing or am I reading too much into this #I mean I can totally believe it based on the sparse worldbuilding #And on the words the cnc directed at spinner in that chapter #But holy shit #Also side note but this puts Dabi calling spinner a lizard in a whole different light in retrospect #We already knew it was a slur but knowing the history behind it... Dabi you better apologize to him once this wraps up