Heytemporary - Heytemporary

Chapter 1 Midoriya(Post Sludge Villain) vs Chapter 430 Midoriya

Wanna talk about lack of character growth? How about regression? As a teacher, I'm pretty sure Midoriya could've used the UA facilities to stay fit. Instead, he's practically the same scrawny, quirkless boy who wants to be a hero he was at the start of the series.

His suit is loose on him. There's nothing filling it up. His muscle is gone.

He gave up.

Hero=Quirk

Nothing changed. All the fighting, the pain he went through, and it did nothing. Society as a whole is relying on heroes more than ever, despite leading a movement for acceptance of heteromorphs Shoji still hides his face with his mask, and you can't be a hero without a quirk.

shipping renkaza fucking sucks because you either get people who hate real enemies to lovers and call it toxic or pr*ship because they actually are enemies who want to kill each other instead of friends who bicker sometimes (these people are the weakest link and will not survive the winter)

or you get people who do ship it but only in the gooner dumbing-it-down-to-hardcore-porn way where they romanticize and get off to abuse and r*pe (these people are just gross sick individuals and i hope they go extinct)

and the few people who do see the emotional depth in the homoerotic minutes renkaza spent together and the potential in that for top tier doomed yaoi are few and far in between and i rarely find good fics that aren't just insanely ooc porn

proshippers saying “you’re downplaying pedophilia and incest” will never not make me laugh.

“I treat rape, pedophilia, and incest like it’s a sexy, romantic thing and I try to justify it by using the excuse that it’s fiction. wait… YOU DON’T LIKE ME DOING THAT?! YOU THINK I SHOULD STOP?!? YOU’RE WATERING DOWN PEDOPHILIA AND INCEST!!!”

the next strip for soryuu sensei hakuji! :)

i realized i neglected to mention that it'll loosely follow canon, just in modern times. i still havent decided if i want to save people, and if so idk who or how, but nezuko will probably be a demon next update lol.

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Size difference…?

So I was given an Akaza figurine by my beloved -when I set him up next to my Kyojuro I noticed that Akaza is definitely in a smaller scale and then my brain immediately conjured this meme…

(The amount of effort that went into this joke and now it feels like a ‘you had to be there’ moment… oh well, enjoy this Smol Akaza gazing up in wonder at Big Kyojuro)

What do you think about All Might’s writing at the end?

I thought All Might making a stand and throwing a suitcase at someone with bkdk saving him would exactly be his endgame, but I didn't like how it was executed:

All Might making a desperate stand quirkless is fully in character, but I thought it would be more spontaneous. Him having poured his earnings into a powered suit in secret, with no build-up, and then hide it from everyone while sending literal children to the frontline is not it.

The armored suit was too powerful and was really harmful for the overall balance of the power system in-story and had to be retconned constantly why it was impossible to have quirkless heroes before

All Might 1-man suit combo-ing all of Class A and sucking away the oxygen and highlight from the next generation he supposedly raised was a bad overall decision for the narrative, imho. It made it look like he was taking the power of the kids he was supposed to lift up for himself

All Might learning Shigaraki was Nana's grandson was a huge moment of the first Kamino fight, yet the narrative did nothing useful with it.

So I get that people like All Might looking "raw" in the fight and that AM wanted to have more of his backstory, but to me AFO vs All Might felt really cringe and reductive. It felt like its entire purpose was to build a moment for Bakugou to swoop in as savior and really didn't add much to All Might as a character and took away the story-space from a big Class A combo that has been set-up for forever.

In the epilogue, All Might had not a lot of moments:

he repeated Gran Torino's line about death being salvation

he praised Bakugou and Deku because they saved him

he brought the armored suit to Deku as a surprise, which in the end felt like a gimmick moment and created its own problematic issues around Deku's passivity, etc.

To be honest, it felt to me like those warm moments that All Might was so loved for has gradually disappeared. It says a lot that he had memorable moments with Shoto and Bakugou during the final war, but not really with Deku.

scar reference + notes for my renkaza longfic (under the cut, if you're looking for it)

Slow burn, Ongoing, M rating (subject to change)

You might have answered this or this ask was a long time coming, but what do you think of Bakugo?

He's an author's pet and fandom darling who makes lots and lots of money, so any "development" he gets is entirely Sisyphean. His redemption arc could have been GREAT.

As it is, it stagnated terribly because the author liked Bakugo when he'd get angry and yell at people. Which is precisely what his supposed development should have him NOT doing. Every single lesson he supposedly learns is just a performance for that moment: he doesn't actually learn that lesson because he's just going to backslide after that. The author refuses to commit. Think about how the series ends: the guy still gets mad and yells at the press, and his hero rankings are actively getting worse. The guy claims he wants to be the best. That he wants to be the number 1 hero. But he does absolutely nothing to reach that goal besides train and improve his battle power. The same as usual. He CERTAINLY has the power to do so, given all the boosts the author gave him! Mirio can't do shit to him. In terms of power, Bakugo absolutely should be on top. The entire series hyping this dude to eventually be number 1 and then the ending portraying him as a loser who failed at his one major ambition because his time at UA and all the previous lessons we supposedly saw him learn didn't stick...is baffling. It reeks of the author's fear of fan backlash. He knew a portion of the fanbase didn't like Bakugo, so he has Tin Tin become the number 1 hero instead. Making you honestly question what was the point of all of this? Bakugo is VERY privileged. We've got characters in this series who get basically ZERO character work, have no personality traits or backstory (Sato!) and then here's Bakugo who gets loads of screentime, a whole slew of power ups, gets to come back from the dead and then laugh off his injuries. Mirko lost multiple limbs, Kyoka lost an ear, Endeavor lost an arm and apparently the use of his legs. But the narrative said maybe Bakugo might lose an arm, but he's Bakugo so of course he doesn't. The author loves Bakugo too much, which is why everything is so easy for him: -Everyone loves him despite his anti social and quite frankly utterly unacceptable behavior. His continued bad actions being tolerated looks like blatant favoritism because of his strong quirk.

-He has the easiest lay-up redemption arc ever. NO ONE knows the extent of how horrible he was in the past except for his victim, who has already forgiven him. There was zero push back for him becoming a better person. He doesn't have a "Dabi" or any real opposition. It's entirely about him learning not to self sabotage.

-Even when he got kidnapped by the villains, they treated him with kid gloves. No torture, no beatings, he didn't have his quirk taken from him. He wasn't subjected to any sort of brainwashing. They didn't have to rescue Bakugo as he was in the process of being turned into a Nomu. The villains didn't take his mom and dad hostage to force him to be a villain. The guy is able to attack them the second they set him free, and then the plot bails him out when he's about to get his ass kicked. Let's explore a "What If?" We'll make Bakugo's redemption arc pop more while also giving Shigaraki the last laugh here. Okay, so Kamino happens and Shigaraki is mega pissed. It's revealed that actually, he believes Bakugo would have been a good villain because he had AFO's "friends" go look into his history, and he got ahold of lots of social media and classroom footage of Bakugo's bullying. Bakugo escaped before Shigaraki could show him all this and further make his point about why Bakugo was 100% villain material. So, he puts all of this unedited stuff together in a truth bomb and AFO's contacts, who he has access through via Kurogiri, ensure this gets to every news station in Japan. There's years worth of material of cell phone footage and social media posts, by his classmates, of Bakugo's asshole behavior. People recorded him bullying, yelling, breaking rules, belittling people. Izuku in particular. But the killshot is the stolen classroom security footage where he told Izuku to kill himself. Instantly, Bakugo's life is significantly harder. The new friends he made at UA see him completely differently. The teachers look like clowns for defending this guy on live TV. All Might is dumbstruck that Katsuki was really that bad before and is appalled.

Bakugo then has to fight an uphill battle where it's seriously questioned if he'll get to stay at UA. Having all of his past actions thrown in his face when he thought he was in the clear makes him take a good hard look at how he acted and still acted. He has a very tough discussion with his parents, Aizawa and Nezu where Nezu points out the pattern of behavior he's personally seen from Bakugo during his time at UA. The excessive force used in the battle trials, his behavior during the sports festival, him ignoring orders to go fight at the summer camp instead of using his quirk to fly away to safety, how he failed the provisional license exam for conduct issues, and then his later fight with Midoriya(Deku vs Kacchan 2,) which they now identified is not a "rivals" relationship, but instead a bullying dynamic. Nezu entered into that conversation fully prepared to expel Bakugo and wipe his hands clean of what he saw as a liability to his school. However, Bakugo's genuine remorse for his actions and willingness to do whatever it takes to make this right causes him to change his mind. He's instead put on probation and takes anger management. If he dips a toe out of line from then on, he's done.

Bakugo has to re-earn his friendships, and deal with major negative PR from what he did in the past. Everyone looks at him differently now and he fights an uphill battle to be a hero. He went from the top all the way to the bottom.

We've accomplished multiple things here. -Shigaraki is significantly less impotent than before and he actually inflicted some lasting damage to hero society, and Bakugo in particular. -We organically furthered Bakugo's redemption arc and made him have to confront his dark past just as it seemed like he reached a turning point. -We gave Bakugo an issue to solve that he's forced to either grow from or kiss his hero dreams goodbye. This isn't something that can be defeated with violence. You could even have Midoriya continue to be Green Jesus in this scenario. He forgave Bakugo ages ago. We just have the other characters react to Bakugo not being who they thought he was. Social consequences hurt way worse than physical ones. Bakugo could laugh off a beating, but how's he react when his friends don't want him sitting next to them at lunch anymore? How's he feel when Mineta's the only guy who wants to be seen with him, since his reputation is already in the gutter?

I'll end this by discussing how this series robbed Bakugo of his humanity. Anger is a secondary emotion. When you feel anger, it first begins as something else. Shame, guilt, fear, weakness, helplessness. Anger is just an easy and motivating emotion to feel that can mask what you actually experience inside. So, we get Bakugo's "apology" where he explains how he didn't like Izuku. But why? The series doesn't dig deeper into what he isn't saying. Was it because he saw a kid with no quirk who was heroic and had people who liked him, but Bakugo only felt valued because of his powerful quirk? Did he ask himself, subconsciously, if anyone would care about Katsuki if he didn't have his power, and in his heart, he said no? The guy is unable to truly accept compliments, but he's an egotist who needs attention and to be acknowledged. Why? What's eating him inside that he needs this constant validation, both internally and externally? If the underlying reasons behind why you get angry are addressed, then you stop feeling angry. If it's based on insecurities and those get fixed, you just feel better. You've learned new coping strategies. Even at the end of the series, the anger is still present. He gets mad because people want to talk to their famous hero who killed the quirk devil? Because people give him the praise he's rightfully entitled to for being objectively one of the strongest people on the planet who uses their powers to help people? So he ends the series....not the number 1 hero. He doesn't have much of a relationship with Izuku anymore. And he's dissatisfied. And his anger problem still hasn't been fixed since the issues behind it never got addressed. Well, I guess Shoto is the only real winner among the important hero kids.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I rarely post in these tags but tell me why those orange green heart broccoli explosion emoji combo whiners are trying to infiltrate the bnha critical tags just because their mid ship wasn’t confirmed official.

What actually made you believe bakugo and midoriya was ever going to get together? Like I need you to be serious for a second. Did it seriously take you this long, 8 entire damn years for you to finally get your wakeup call???

Like gtfo out of the tags with your delusional ao3 “”queerbaiting”” ass. I’m trying to see well informed written analysis and learn from Horikoshis mistakes on how not to fail as a writing enthusiast.

Go create your own tags or something like anyone gives a damn about your inherent power imbalance ship.