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A Hero's First Step (MHA)

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Getting one of the top 100 pro heroes as Izuku's quirk counselor. Mamadorya definitely knows what her son would like. Super mom for sure.
 
Lunaryon said:
Sure, there have been some times when people shoot spitballs into your hair, and on occasion people are clumsy and end up spilling glue on your chair or your uniform. A few other students are jerks who've written horrible things on your desk. But that isn't bullying. That isn't hurting you. The teachers have said so.

The closest thing to anyone actually bullying you was when some student ended up coating the lock to your locker in peanut butter. That was almost bullying. The rest of all of that...
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Lunaryon said:
But even if some students were a bit meaner than others, the fact that so many people were rude is just... Proof that you weren't being bullied. It couldn't be possible that every member of your class and all your teachers could be working together to bully you.
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Okay, these two snippets, paired with his intense, narrow focused interest of quirks and heroes, leads me to suspect that comorbid with Shonen Protagonist Disorder is an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis. Kinda neat, I can certainly empathize with his social struggles and special interest, being on the spectrum myself, I've never watched MHA so can't speak to any other diagnostic criteria he may or may not meet. On the other hand, if he had been diagnosed ASD, he'd probably be treated even worse than he was here, because the society of MHA sounds like it's ableist as FUCK. "You have even the smallest ability above the human norm? You're trash that'll never amount to anything!" would turn into "You have a condition that makes you 'worse' than the baseline and don't have a Quirk? Kill yourself or I'll do it for you". Izuku is Chandrasekhar levels of density if he can't realize he's a victim of bullying, let alone assault and battery.

If given a choice between Brockton Bay, MHA Tokyo, or Gotham City as a Superhero setting to live in, I'm leaning towards Gotham at this point.

Zendrelax said:
...Metaphorically, here. I think in-setting most heroes literally don't wear capes either.
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On a lighter note, this is probably because a notable fashion designer for superheroes had noticed a worrying trend of hero deaths and refused to design costumes with capes.
 
zernoc56 said:
Okay, these two snippets, paired with his intense, narrow focused interest of quirks and heroes, leads me to suspect that comorbid with Shonen Protagonist Disorder is an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis. Kinda neat, I can certainly empathize with his social struggles and special interest, being on the spectrum myself, I've never watched MHA so can't speak to any other diagnostic criteria he may or may not meet. On the other hand, if he had been diagnosed ASD, he'd probably be treated even worse than he was here, because the society of MHA sounds like it's ableist as FUCK. "You have even the smallest ability above the human norm? You're trash that'll never amount to anything!" would turn into "You have a condition that makes you 'worse' than the baseline and don't have a Quirk? Kill yourself or I'll do it for you". Izuku is Chandrasekhar levels of density if he can't realize he's a victim of bullying, let alone assault and battery.

If given a choice between Brockton Bay, MHA Tokyo, or Gotham City as a Superhero setting to live in, I'm leaning towards Gotham at this point.


On a lighter note, this is probably because a notable fashion designer for superheroes had noticed a worrying trend of hero deaths and refused to design costumes with capes.
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Something Bakugo canonically told Deku "You wana be a hero so bad, I got a timesaving idea for you. Pray to be born with a quirk in your next life and take a swan dive off the roof of the building."
 
Izuku seems more like just someone who is very passionate about their hobby/dream and has fully immersed themselves into it as a way to cope with all the shit that is happening to them.
Could be on the spectrum, sure, but i don't really see it myself.

Apart from that, i kinda hate the "NO CAPES" meme, it's over done.
There's nothing wrong with capes as a design choise, the whole "someone might grab them or get sucked into a turbine" feels like after the fact a justification (because capes suck to animate) that people latched onto.
And the practical issues are easily solved by an easy to tear away cape.
 
Trondason said:
Something Bakugo canonically told Deku "You wana be a hero so bad, I got a timesaving idea for you. Pray to be born with a quirk in your next life and take a swan dive off the roof of the building."
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Cool, further confirmation that he's an Ableist shitwipe along with the rest of Aldera middle school and the greater Musutafu area. Guess it's a small miracle that the manga author wasn't an out and out eugenicist, but it's still pretty clear to me through the few fanfics I've read that it's likely akin to being a second class human if you're quirkless. I'd take my chances with the nutjobs in Gotham.
 
Hm, with the mention of Worm, one wonders what Taylor would make of Midoriya, about their respective positions towards heroism in general, of what heroes are.

Taylor would probably, not without justification, see Bakugo as Midoriya's Emma, though the situations are not quite the same.
 
zernoc56 said:
Cool, further confirmation that he's an Ableist shitwipe along with the rest of Aldera middle school and the greater Musutafu area. Guess it's a small miracle that the manga author wasn't an out and out eugenicist, but it's still pretty clear to me through the few fanfics I've read that it's likely akin to being a second class human if you're quirkless. I'd take my chances with the nutjobs in Gotham.
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Notably on that front, the Mangaka has gone on record saying that he really wishes he could redo the first chapter, and that he had Bakugo act far out of line for where he was supposed to be in order to shortcut getting the viewers to dislike him.
 
zernoc56 said:
Guess it's a small miracle that the manga author wasn't an out and out eugenicist, but it's still pretty clear to me through the few fanfics I've read that it's likely akin to being a second class human if you're quirkless.
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I'm...not quite sure what fics your reading. But while it is shitty to be quirkless in the world of MHA, it feels...a bit odd to treat the author as holding the same beliefs as the kind he is explicitly displaying as wrong to have.

Endevour isn't being called a Hero for practicing Quirk Eugenics.
 
Hikari said:
I'm...not quite sure what fics your reading. But while it is shitty to be quirkless in the world of MHA, it feels...a bit odd to treat the author as holding the same beliefs as the kind he is explicitly displaying as wrong to have.

Endevour isn't being called a Hero for practicing Quirk Eugenics.
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Like I said only a few. They never got very far into their stories, but enough to pick up on the fact that the main character has been abused by his peers and his teachers to the point that he internalizes that his name is the insult that his abusers regularly refer to him as, not the name his mother gave him. An insult that tells him he is the equivalent of a wooden doll with no arms or legs. Useless and broken, to be thrown out with the rest of the garbage.
 
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Angelform said:
…aren't the hero rankings national? Even that many is rather impressive for someone mostly limited to his home city.
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He has a train pass to the entire Greater Tokyo Area though. And Japan has an amazing rail system and public transportation.
Besides that UA is kind of a hero beacon.
 
zernoc56 said:
Okay, these two snippets, paired with his intense, narrow focused interest of quirks and heroes, leads me to suspect that comorbid with Shonen Protagonist Disorder is an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis. Kinda neat, I can certainly empathize with his social struggles and special interest, being on the spectrum myself, I've never watched MHA so can't speak to any other diagnostic criteria he may or may not meet. On the other hand, if he had been diagnosed ASD, he'd probably be treated even worse than he was here, because the society of MHA sounds like it's ableist as FUCK. "You have even the smallest ability above the human norm? You're trash that'll never amount to anything!" would turn into "You have a condition that makes you 'worse' than the baseline and don't have a Quirk? Kill yourself or I'll do it for you". Izuku is Chandrasekhar levels of density if he can't realize he's a victim of bullying, let alone assault and battery.
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Personally, I don't see ASD as particularly likely for Bakugo, as he's actually fairly good at reading people socially, and not in a learned way (as he really, profoundly, does not care most of the time). He's just a dick. He does have some of the special interest stuff, but as someone else on the spectrum I tend not to feel like he actually meets many of the other criteria, and the interest in question is incredibly common to boot...it's possible to have popular sports as a special interest for an ASD, but not everyone who is super into sports is on the spectrum, y'know? Especially if they intend to do the sport professionally.

But maybe I'm biased because I rather profoundly don't like Bakugo and don't want to have things in common with him.

zernoc56 said:
Like I said only a few. They never got very far into their stories, but enough to pick up on the fact that the main character has been abused by his peers and his teachers to the point that he internalizes that his name is the insult that his abusers regularly refer to him as, not the name his mother gave him. An insult that tells him he is the equivalent of a wooden doll with no arms or legs. Useless and broken, to be thrown out with the rest of the garbage.
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In fairness, he doesn't exactly internalize it, he decides on that as a hero name specifically and explicitly to reclaim it and change the meaning from that to something else (that's not interpretation, by the way, that's literally what he says he's doing and seems accurate). It's pretty similar in motivation to minority groups reclaiming something used as a slur, which is reasonable enough.
 
zernoc56 said:
They never got very far into their stories, but enough to pick up on the fact that the main character has been abused by his peers and his teachers to the point that he internalizes that his name is the insult that his abusers regularly refer to him as, not the name his mother gave him. An insult that tells him he is the equivalent of a wooden doll with no arms or legs. Useless and broken, to be thrown out with the rest of the garbage.
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So. To note, you realize that Izuku takes the Hero name of Deku as a way to reject the idea that he's powerless right? Like. To quote.
However, Ochako says it sounds similar to dekiru, which has the opposite meaning of "to be able." So, while Deku told Ochacko the name was fine because he was nervous around her, he eventually adopts the title as his hero name as it's a great way to reclaim the nickname that was originally intended to be an insult. Midoriya turned a negative into a positive and embraced his humble beginnings.
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
In fairness, he doesn't exactly internalize it, he decides on that as a hero name specifically and explicitly to reclaim it and change the meaning from that to something else (that's not interpretation, by the way, that's literally what he says he's doing and seems accurate).
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One of his classmates mistook it as a positive sounding name.

He decided to run with it. Like. He fully goes by Izuku Midoriya. Deku is just a nickname people call him.

In the same way his classmates adopt the nickname he has for Bakugo, Kaachan.

Deku is not nearly as 'broken' as the fanfcs you've read seem to write him as.
 
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Indeed, they are national, and indeed getting that many is impressive. Even if some are technically store bought photocopies.

He's got 15 that he actually got in person. But 4 of those were top 100 heroes.
 
Hikari said:
One of his classmates mistook it as a positive sounding name.
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Yeah, Dekiru(You can do it), Japanese apparently very commonly gets words wrong like that.
She had no idea of the negative connotations, innocently says what she thought, and Izuku immediately goes with it because pretty girl is being nice.
Later on he claims it as a hero name for deeper meaning, but not then.
Personally I really hope we can completely get rid of Deku in this Quest. Reclaiming it is one thing, but being called that by friends after his childhood and Aldera just always felt really bad for Izuku's mental health to me. Hero/Nick name probably should have actually been Dekiru at UA.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Personally, I don't see ASD as particularly likely for Bakugo,
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I was talking about Izuku being ASD, not the nitrosweat asshole. If anything, I'd armchair diagnose Bakugo as Narcissistic Personality Disorder at least.

Hikari said:
He decided to run with it. Like. He fully goes by Izuku Midoriya, it's just a nickname.
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As to not knowing about the whole "reclaiming the name" thing, again, never read the manga, watched the anime, and have read maybe a small handful of MHA-centric crossover fics that didn't last all that long. You may be wondering why I'm here in a MHA quest if I don't really care for the series. It's because I like Luna's work and the premise is interesting enough to see where is goes.
 
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zernoc56 said:
I was talking about Izuku being ASD, not the nitrosweat asshole. If anything, I'd armchair diagnose Bakugo as Narcissistic Personality Disorder at least.
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That's more plausible, but his reading of social cues is still a lot better than most people with ASD and seems to do so instinctually rather than intellectually. Like, he's in denial about being bullied, but he reads other social cues as well as you'd expect a 15 year old boy with a history of abuse to.
 
Lunaryon said:
The colors are... different from how they were before. The leaves seem greener, and the sky is bluer. The street below Mom's car is richer and darker, even as the lines of paint on the roads seem starker and clearer than ever before. But that isn't the only thing that has changed, and the other changes are... Odd. The car rolls past an old park, flowers set along the play area's edge, and it almost hurts your head to take a look at the flowers. It is hard to try and describe the colors that you are seeing in those flowers. Some flowers that you remember being yellow before are now striped in golds and oranges and yellows.

A few of the other flowers you know used to be white, but instead they have a strange greenish tinge on their petals, forming strange beautiful patterns that you've never seen the likes of before. And then there are the flowers that seem to be almost glowing in the light now that you are getting a proper look at them. All of this is strange, unlike anything that you can remember ever seeing before... But there has to be a reason for all of this, and you aren't meaning the fact that your eyes have changed. Except, well, you are meaning your eyes. There has to be something that your eyes are doing now that they weren't doing before that would be able to explain why things look differently from how they did before.
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Interesting. I wonder if we can see infrared and ultraviolet, and that's why things seem to have more colors.

Lunaryon said:
Then, quietly you hear your Mom sigh. With just that breath, she sounds so utterly and totally exhausted. "Izuku..." Mom says quietly, and you can't help but wince at the way that she says your name. She doesn't sound angry, instead just tired and disappointed.

You aren't sure what you've done to make her feel this way, and as you slouch, sinking down in your seat for a moment you try to think of something to say.
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oh, poor Midoriya. why do you immediately assume it's your fault? Don't you realize you might have died if things went wrong?

Lunaryon said:
"About what was happening at your school." She says simply. "And that you were being bullied."

"What?" you finally manage to say softly, your mind roiling in confusion at your mother's words. "I... Mom... I wasn't being bullied." You tell her, but the look that she gives you makes it clear that doesn't believe you in the slightest. "Like... Sure, I know that I wasn't exactly popular because I didn't have a quirk." You try to explain, "But that doesn't mean that I was being bullied. I just... Some kids in my class were jerks, but not like that. This... What happened to me... That was different. I've never been... This wasn't... What happened to me... It's never been like that before." you finally manage to say, but even then it sounds weak to your own ears.
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"they never tried to drug me before, so it wasn't bullying".

Yeah, it doesn't sound really convincing

Lunaryon said:
And you are telling the truth. You might not have been the most popular kid, but that doesn't mean that you were being bullied. Sure, there have been some times when people shoot spitballs into your hair, and on occasion people are clumsy and end up spilling glue on your chair or your uniform. A few other students are jerks who've written horrible things on your desk. But that isn't bullying. That isn't hurting you. The teachers have said so.

The closest thing to anyone actually bullying you was when some student ended up coating the lock to your locker in peanut butter. That was almost bullying. The rest of all of that...

It just...

It wasn't bullying.

It wasn't.

You weren't being bullied. You are a smart kid, you'd know if you were being bullied.

You would... You know that you would know.
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...poor kid. they gaslighted him.

Can we report these teachers to the police, or some educational authority? That's just not right.

Lunaryon said:
But even if some students were a bit meaner than others, the fact that so many people were rude is just... Proof that you weren't being bullied. It couldn't be possible that every member of your class and all your teachers could be working together to bully you.

A plan that big, a plan that heavy is the kind of thing that people can't hide. Like conspiracy theories. Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead and all that.

So you weren't being bullied. That just isn't the way that the world works.
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...I get why he'd think that. It just make his situation all the more sad.

Aldera should never reopen. Teachers need to be fired.

Lunaryon said:
And Kacchan is your friend.
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he is NOT!

Lunaryon said:
"If there was another quirkless student at your school," Your mom starts to say, and already you can feel yourself starting to get nervous, even if you aren't entirely sure why... "Would you just sit back and let the others in your class treat that student the way that they have treated you?"

Before the last word is even out of your mother's mouth, you are already talking, not even thinking for a moment. "No. Of course not." You say firmly.

"Why?" She asks, and there is just a flash of a moment where you look at her incredulously. How in the world could she asks that?

"Because it is wrong." You say, barely managing to keep the heat out of your words.
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...yeah, that would do it.

Make it impersonal. Make it about a general case.

If it's not wrong with someone else, why would it be right with you?

Don't be an hypocrite, boy! Not even if the only victim is yourself!

Lunaryon said:
Your entire class and your teacher can't all be wrong.
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They definitely can.

They shouldn't, but the majority can be wrong just like the minority or the one can be.

At least if you are using a specific definition of Right and Wrong.

Lunaryon said:
You... You might actually be normal.
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:rage:
 
Yeah, the one thing that the more sympathetic Villains have in common is that the society of MHA is incredibly fucked.

Admittedly, part of it is having a joker-tier demigod sitting behind the stages for most of recent history continually stirring the pot to feed his own desire to exert power and keep the boot down on everyone, but the population as a whole still had to consistently make those choices.

All Might was a band-aid, which was needed, yes, but he lacked the cunning to really lean into political power to enact genuine changes. Admittedly, part of this boils down to "One for All would never be handed down to someone who would use it like All for One uses his own power, even if the intentions were good". But nobody else stepped up to prop up the openings he created, they were just content to correct the most egregious faults and coast from there on his protection.
 
I think the worst part about the abuse is how much the characters we see internalize the shit they go through. Like as much as Izuku just in this last update is able to agree that such shit happening to anyone else is wrong, he's gotten to the point where he's been treated awfully for so long that he considers it fucking normal. He very much dreams of his situation improving, but he can't imagine how he'd go about pulling it off until series start gives him an All Might sized kick into high gear.

As for on the societal level, for all I can remember, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason Re-Destro was able to build his own Meta Liberation Army was because of All For One's manipulations intended to produce a wide variety of potential recruits. I can also seriously imagine AFO sitting in his chair and going, wouldn't it be hilarious if Destro's kid actually pulled off a quirk supremacist rebellion just like his dear old man? And AFO would be waiting in the wings to take over and rebuild the world even further in his glorious image.

Ugh, I feel kinda dirty just making that theory...
 
Red_Knight25 said:
I think the worst part about the abuse is how much the characters we see internalize the shit they go through. Like as much as Izuku just in this last update is able to agree that such shit happening to anyone else is wrong, he's gotten to the point where he's been treated awfully for so long that he considers it fucking normal. He very much dreams of his situation improving, but he can't imagine how he'd go about pulling it off until series start gives him an All Might sized kick into high gear.

As for on the societal level, for all I can remember, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason Re-Destro was able to build his own Meta Liberation Army was because of All For One's manipulations intended to produce a wide variety of potential recruits. I can also seriously imagine AFO sitting in his chair and going, wouldn't it be hilarious if Destro's kid actually pulled off a quirk supremacist rebellion just like his dear old man? And AFO would be waiting in the wings to take over and rebuild the world even further in his glorious image.

Ugh, I feel kinda dirty just making that theory...
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The thing is, it's probably likely. Get other people to do the work so that you can come in and sweep up the rest. Overhaul is that for Shigaraki. Hero's get rid of a rival that you can then defang in transport.
 
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