Justice For All Might

ON HIATUS Talk deku to me Tags to block: bde meta, bde live read, bde ignore me

[big-deku-energy]

Everyone unfollow me I’ve got ice cold boring takes only 

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

been chewing on how well you characterize izuku in pez and why it is so definitively him in a way that i think even the source material loses sight of and i think it’s bc you highlight his isolation so well. in mha he goes from being alone to having the closest friends in the world. except he doesn’t, because they don’t know him.

it’s so fascinating bc he is a character who will reach out, and the ways class a is traumatized bonds him with his classmates in a way that makes him reach out for comfort. except not when it’s his shit. he’s such a paradox of a character bc he is open and connective and friendly but he is still so very alone. and in the show proper it feels like he never stops being alone.

anyway i am spinning pdd in my mind like a rotisserie chicken i think it is very cool how he will have sleepovers with tsuyu when the shared trauma ptsd hits but when it is trauma that is wholly his own his immediate and innate instinct is to isolate himself so hard he is lost to even himself. yippeee!!!!!

This is actually the exact thing that fascinates me with Izuku’s character to begin with.

The intersection between his Quirklessness and then receiving One for All is the most fascinating thing in the world to me. Because Izuku was completely fucking alone when canon started. He had no friends. He was being bullied endlessly. He was gum at the bottom of your shoe. He is the person society shit on again and again and again and it was because he did not have the thing that society valued most, i.e., a quirk.

And then suddenly he does have a Quirk. He has the most powerful Quirk in the world even. And he has to pretend like he always had that fucking thing. His loneliness, his isolation, the universal rejection from society he was experiencing up until that point—it’s all meant to just go away overnight. He has spent his entire life at the bottom of the food chain and he was just elevated to the top. And he cannot tell anyone that he wasn’t there last week. He has to pretend this was always his life.

There’s something so lonely about that to me. And that, too, intersects fabulously with Izuku’s character because he goes out of his way to make sure no one else is ever alone. He did it to Todoroki during the sports festival arc, Iida during the hero killer arc—Izuku is defined by his empathy and compassion. He wants to help people and save people and be there for them when they need it.

And then entire time, he has to be alone. And he can’t even tell anyone that he’s alone. Because they all know him as the kid who always had a perfect Quirk. He has to keep up appearances. But he’s still Quirkless in his head. There’s something so lonely about it to me.

[vivisnefertari]

[king-manta-ray]

I have something inappropriate to say 🙋‍♀️

[6oro6oro]

Some Small Smite for @kyonarai bwehehehe [on bsky]

[cogentsummoner]

also COMPLETELY unrelated but when people talk abt stuff like quirkless vigilante izuku and whether toshi would be for or against it (generally they paint him as against it because it's usually an all might bashing dadzawa fic COUGHS who said that) i feel like people miss the obvious

girl he WAS that quirkless vigilante. anything he'd say about that would come from a place of having tried to BE that quirkless vigilante at FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. not get into ua. not get mentored. toshi's goal was to STOP CRIME with a LEAD PIPE and NO QUIRK

don't ever tell me that he'd be a big meanie who hates the quirkless and the idea of quirkless heroes/vigilantes ever again. get the fuck out of my house. if he's saying something against it thats because he doesn't want anyone else to get hurt!!! he had to get bailed out by nana!!! like!!! use your fucking brain im begging

[ohnogizm0]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BIG MAN 💛🎉

kinda liked this version with a blurry aizawa in too so hiding it here teehee 🫶

[bianxiee-arts]

I finally completed the trilogy of his main fights with All For One

[blackberreh-art]

Did a screenshot redraw of the cutest Toshi~

[gharibajameel]

mad at this cap for implying that all might is normal human being sized

[quantum-dyke]

his head would absolutely be hitting the top of the car if studio bones werent cowards

[kidrat]

he’s lying down and his feet are resting over the top of the passenger seat

[elkstyle]

Like this obviously

[homebeccer]

Lukewarm take but I'm really not happy w the BNHA ending - and yeah it's easy for me to sit back at my "corporate" nine to five and shake my head and criticize a professional author but I mean. C'mon. People are joking about "Quirk: All for What" and yeah genuinely it was all for what? Deku already had the heart and soul of a hero he just didn't have a quirk to help him compete in the superhero society that existed. At the end of episode one I thought the show was going to be Deku using his knowledge and observations about quirks to find their weaknesses and use them against the villain and fight crime like that, but then he gets a quirk. Paradigm shift. This is the reality of the narrative for the rest of the series. The majority of his journey was training his body and honing his quirk. He didn't learn any lessons about being a hero - Iida learned more about the true attitude of a hero à la Stain and maybe Deku learned about the power of friendship in the vigilante arc (or would, if any of his classmates still had characters to speak of). Deku has everything it takes to be a hero except a power. Then he gets it. Then it's taken away again in the eleventh hour. Then it's given back at 11:30. Like. For why.

Y'know whose narrative would have been made so rich by losing their quirk? Bakugo. He had the quirk of a hero and the heart of Not a Hero to start off the story. He was Deku's narrative foil, and for all the story's faults they really did a decent job with his character. For him to lose his quirk at the end of the story and resign himself to chasing after Deku (who until the events of the story had been chasing him) would have made a powerful bookend. Bakugo was coasting on his power while having a nasty personality, but now that he's grown and learned and matured it would have been a good way to really Show that growth. Have him get the super suit with gauntlets that set off explosions. He does just fine as a pro hero, just not of his own power, and he's okay with that.

I think Horikoshi is a really really really good idea guy, like Moffat or Butch Hartman or any of those other types. It's the follow through that doesn't... Well ... Follow through. There's people who will disagree and think the ending is satisfactory and that's fine, I'm glad you enjoyed it! This has just been turning around in my brain for a bit and I wanted to type it out.

[z-the-dumb]

If he had stayed as a teacher, then people could head cannon hom dealing with trauma and being burnt out after a war, or if he kept going with or without the suit immediately then it could be overcoming injury/disability, and it's still kinda both but...

Especially with both sets of powers being from almight, it just feels off

not wrong or bad just off

[homebeccer]

literally though

he had this guillotine swinging over his head of "don't use your arms too much or you'll lose use of them" at???? what, 14??? I wanna see him going on to be a pro and having to really really be considerate of using his quirk in his arms for the rest of his life. It'd even be something of a parallel to All Might - he has some part of his power he can't use unless it's absolutely necessary but it has very heavy consequences to his body if he does. Like. C'mon. you go girl give us nothing i guess

[homebeccer]

People are also mentioning something pertinent in the tags - Horikoshi is tired of this story. He doesn't have it in himself to put energy into the story as it is, let alone craft a grand ending that ties up all the loose ends he left. It's genuinely the opposite problem facing animated shows in the west - he has to keep working on it endlessly with no respite. He doesn't have time to pause, collect, plan, etc. - he's Gromit placing railroad tracks in front of the train as it's barreling along. If he had an ending planned before he bloated the story over the course of all these years, it probably wouldn't fit anymore. If he had been allowed to take a break, like even just a single year, he'd probably regain the spark he had for the story and be able to put his all into it. As upset as I am with the ending, I'm totally not upset that it's ending to begin with. It became pretty apparent he was losing steam and this is the superior alternative to him limping along more and more and potentially compromising his own health. I wish things could've gone in a different way so that the hard work he clearly put into it in the beginning could have been done justice. If he'd been allowed to keep this shorter and punchier the story as a whole could've been great.

[piedpip3rrr]

Thee kiddos

[nonbineraryitinerary]

Does anybody else have suffer from "I stopped keeping up with this media ages ago but I have an extreme affection for its characters and concept. The writing just started to suck ass"

[katako3x3]

Aizawa’s been through a lot of shit but he’s still-

-comforting others permanently. This guy is literally a comforting mashine but in all honesty, the last two panels happened AFTER he went to Tartarus…. How about *he* gets the comfort he deserves? Just look at this lost and broken man still giving hope to others and being a hero in his own way. I just hope one day he’ll be able to let it all out and get the comfort he needed all of those years.

[big-deku-energy]

Need more All Might and his disabled, put upon secretary, Yagi Toshinori, shenanigans where people have no idea they’re the same person. Why does Mr. Yagi take care of All Might’s suspected kid? Is All Might even capable of doing paperwork without his beleaguered secretary pulling long nights? How did the eternally positive symbol of peace meet this bitter, cynical, and jaded pen pusher? Have you ever noticed that they wear the same clothes?

[big-deku-energy]

I bet the only things stopping momo from making diamond shields and spears were laws against inflation and forgery. Girl can memorize any number of atomic structures, a simple carbon tetrahedron would be like memorizing how to breathe. An outside force was stopping her.

[big-deku-energy]

I think about All Might the day he met Izuku.

I think about how alone he was and how much pain he was in. How he devoted his life to keeping a peace he didn’t feel, how he couldn’t acknowledge that it was falling down around him because he couldn’t acknowledge how much pain he was in.

I think about chronic pain and how he forgot how much he’s hurting. The thing about chronic pain is that while it never goes away, you learn to deal. Sure it aches and you feel like you’re falling apart and this kind of thing would have kept you in bed for days once but... it’s normal now. It’s every day. So every day you get up and take your pain killers and meds and keep going. It’s easy to forget what it was like to not be in pain. It’s even easier for everyone else to forget that you were hurt.

I think about his grief over losing so much. How he’s probably older than Nana ever was now and never got over her, how he keeps her words at heart even now. A hero should smile and so he smiles and the smile becomes a lie. Have you ever noticed what a big theme parents are in My Hero Academia? Have you ever noticed how the adult heroes never seem to have families?

I think about “getting over it.”

I think about All Might keeping so many secrets that he forgot how to be honest. He tells Recovery Girl only four people knows the truth about One for All. It’s a secret. He doesn’t tell her about Gran Torino and Nighteye who gave up on him years ago but were there at the start. He doesn’t tell Izuku anything at all until it’s already a problem.

I think about fallen ideals and how a hero who had the highest aspirations now calculates his time. All Might wasn’t going to save Bakugou from the sludge monster. He was out of time, he was in pain, he was going to watch this kid die. And to be honest... I can understand that. He did everything he could for the day and he’s coughing up blood again and what about tomorrow? He’s already pushed to the brink, pushing anymore will only take away his ability to help in the future.

I think about when All Might lost more and more time with One for All. He knew he couldn’t push it because he was already past breaking. He should have retired years ago. He didn’t. All Might is supposed to save everyone but he can’t and now he has to weigh which lives he can save and which he can’t. Spoon theory except each spoon is a life and heroes aren’t allowed to be wrong

I think about him on the roof telling a quirkless boy that he couldn’t be a hero and I think about how so many years ago Nana looked at this quirkless boy and set him on the path to being the greatest hero of all time. What was that? What happened there? Did he forget his origins? Or did he look at this kid and think “you don’t deserve to suffer like I have been?” He shatters a kid’s dreams and it’s not fair to either of them. Isn’t he allowed to have one bad day? Can he really care for everyone?

I think about him counting down the days to Nighteye’s prediction. Knowing he’s going to die any day and not being able to care. It’ll be mercy at this point.

I think about him at the end of his rope, on an extended suicide mission, so fucking tired and hurting that he just tells this random kid a generational secret, his greatest secret. For that moment it didn’t matter to him. He’s exhausted. He’s already shown his true form and hacked up blood, no one is going to believe this kid anyway. He’s going to get up and do it the same tomorrow and the day after and every day after until the day he finally kicks it

I think about how the day Izuku met All Might it was one of the worst days of Izuku’s life. And I think about how for All Might it was just another day counting down the seconds until he stopped functioning and counting down the days until he died.

[big-deku-energy]

Adding back my own tags because it’s been over three years since I posted this and an exit from BNHA as a story as well as fandom but I’m still thinking about All Might on the day he met Izuku

[gentrychild]

I already don’t like All Might bashing but nothing annoys me more than the specific brand of All Might bashing where All Might furiously discriminates against quirkless people.

When All Might tells Izuku that he doesn’t think someone without a quirk can be a hero? Most of his answer is about himself. He is the quirkless kid who became a hero and he is now horribly alone, depressed, has PTSD, too many organs lost in action and a husk of his former self while the pressure of being the number 1 hero is grinding down on him as he is losing more and more time to use his quirk every day while being extremely aware that criminality staying as low as it is fully depends on him being the number 1 hero.

When Izuku asked him if he could be a hero, All Might probably had a magnificent flashback to his whole life and couldn’t, in good conscience, tell someone so similar to him to follow the same path because of all the hardship he went through.

Izuku being the only one to help during the second Sludge villain attack didn’t make him realize that “Even someone without a quirk has the potential to be a hero!” but it made him remember what heroism really is about.