intro/headcanons.
hiro has always been a curious kid. he distinctly recalls wandering around his new home and taking apart anything electronic that he can get his hands on. he’d start small, tv remotes, clocks, radios. then one day aunt cass found this little six year old surrounded by the tv’s circuit boards and panels. aunt cass started buying him electronics from secondhand stores that hiro could take apart.
he wishes he had some sort of explanation as to why he’s such a troublemaker, but he kind of doesn’t. one would argue that he’s got such a rebellious anti-authority streak because his pre-set authority figures were absent from his life by the time he started to form full sentences. he loves his aunt cass with all his heart and him harboring all that grief and resentment for his situation doesn’t diminish what she means to him and how grateful he is for her. but the only way someone could come to that conclusion would be if he went to a specialist about his mental health, and that’s not happening. so for now, his rebellious nature is solely because he’s just wired that way.
speaking of aunt cass, hiro doesn’t know a better woman. honestly. when he was younger he just thought she was this loveable ball of energy that loves cats and food, it never occurred to him that she sacrificed so much for him and his brother. when he’d get in trouble and she’d express her disappointment he sometimes wasn’t the best at listening to her. his only response would often be an attitude and storming off to his room before an argument broke out. it took a long talk with tadashi for him to realize that she was dealing with her own grief over their parents’ death and took them in out of the kindness of her heart. it didn’t really click for him that she only ever meant well and was honestly just trying her best until tadashi died. now he understands that she was unprepared for the change of raising the boys, and he’s definitely a lot more understanding. he just wishes he could go back in time and take all those days where he was being bratty back.
hiro always had difficulty making friends. a lot of kids his own age found it hard to relate to him and were often intimidated by his “genius status”, and since he skipped a lot of grades he was always surrounded by people much older than him. but hiro was only thirteen while his classmates were seventeen and struggling with relationships and the usual teenage angst; he couldn’t relate to them either. often times hiro would find himself excluded by everyone and soon enough his only friends were tadashi, aunt cass and mochi.
hiro needs to be challenged and stimulated always. because of his advanced learning track he’s always found himself easily bored by things. it’s how he gets into bot fighting. most one player video games failed to really challenge him, and tadashi was always so busy with school they hardly had time to do things together anymore. bot fighting gave him the risks and challenges everything else failed to have.
tadashi was hiro’s everything. where he had trouble listening to aunt cass’ advice because she was an obvious authority figure, he would always listen to every word tadashi had to say. he still wouldn’t really take tadashi’s advice, because there was no way someone else could tell hiro what was best for hiro, but he’d at least listen.
hiro thought tadashi was the coolest person in the world. he was incredibly smart and everywhere they went people seemed to know and love tadashi. hiro wanted to one day feel like he could easily fit in the way his brother seemed to. to walk into a room and have friends that were excited to see you? could you imagine? hiro sure couldn’t ever see that life for himself because no matter what he’d be the freaky genius kid. but he sure did aspire to be just as loved and well adjusted as his brother was.
a lot of the things he’s into he only knows about because of tadashi. they shared a room so there wasn’t a lot of privacy for either of them, so whatever music tadashi listened to hiro listened to. whatever shows he was into hiro was into. anything hiro knows about life and relationships in general, he learned about from his brother. he didn’t really have anyone else to talk to, so hiro just accepted that a lot of his identity would forever be tied to his brother.
hiro has some emotional awareness issues. he’s not the best at dealing with his own feelings, yet alone someone else’s. so tadashi would point out when aunt cass was feeling down and hiro, no matter how deep in his tween angst he was, would try to find a way to cheer her up. one day, when the cafe’s closed and they’re cleaning up, he turns on he stereo and blasts all of aunt cass’ favorite songs. hiro and tadashi would dance around goofily to lighten the mood, and would try to at least get a cheap smile and laugh of aunt cass. hiro to this day still can’t talk about his or anyone else’s feelings, but he will always try his best to heal the wound with fun and laughter.
meeting tadashi’s nerd gang was the best day of hiro’s life, honestly. it was the first time he’d met a group of people that didn’t purposely try to shut out the younger kid, or treat him any differently than they did his brother. sure, they were all a little eccentric, but they were brilliant and they accepted him. that was enough for him.
losing tadashi was a harder blow than losing his parents. it wasn’t a matter of ‘what would our relationship had been like’ this time, it was knowing full and well what he’d be missing. hiro spent a lot of time in their room reflecting on the person he was and all the time he wasted being a hard headed nuisance. every memory was tainted with the sting of ‘had i known, i would have done this differently’. it drove him crazy to think of all the times he could have disappointed tadashi, the fights he couldn’t apologize for, the advice he ignored. grief hit him hard this time, and there was no running away from it this time. it was this that made him change his relationship with aunt cass. he wasn’t going to waste another second disappointing his loved ones, not when he might not get a chance to fix things tomorrow.
hiro is hardly ever spotted without baymax with him. he knows it’s a little weird and kind of off putting to people that don’t know him, but baymax is his emotional support robot. sometimes, it feels like having baymax around is kind of like having tadashi around in some way.
he’s very protective when it comes to tadashi’s legacy and memory, and his biggest fear in life is letting his rebellious ways somehow destroy all of that. tadashi had always just wanted to help people, and while that wasn’t hiro’s primary interest before, it is now. there’s so much good he could do, so much his brother wanted to accomplish and now hiro feels like it falls on his shoulders to carry that out. he just has to figure out how.
maybe it’s the grief, maybe he misses his brother more than he cares to admit, or maybe he’s spending too much time with fred but creating super hero suits to help the island seems like a really good idea to him right now. after classes, if he’s not hanging out with his friends, or woking a shift at the cafe he’s holed up in his lab (his garage) working on his top secret project.
hiro spent some of his bot fighting winnings on get a little glass paperweight inscribed with something his brother would say to him. the “look for a new angle” paperweight is always on his workbench at school. he doesn’t like to talk about how sappy it is of him, but he looks at it whenever he’s stuck on something. It helps to remember that tadashi always believed in him no matter what. one day he wants to get “look for a new angle” tattoo’d on his chest next to his heart...if aunt cass lets him.
