Paul: There's a line in the song [Band on the Run], "If we ever get out of here". That's a very George Harrison phrase. I can hear him saying that line in a business meeting that no one wants to be in. He had that great, droll manner, making those amusing asides - "If we ever get out of here" and "Do we have to do this?". He was a real leveller in the group, a great person to have around. He was not a sufferer of fools.
Paul McCartney, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run
so I was rewatching some clips of fantasy high S2, and I got to the iconic "it's gorgug, keep going" scene, and I'd like to focus instead on the part just before he says that. it's that intensely claustrophobic scene where gorgug drags himself through an underground tunnel of roots and dirt and skittering bugs.
maybe I'm overthinking it, but there's something here about gorgug seeing a space that's not made for him, that's too small and makes him uncomfortable, and instead of changing that space (there's a moment where Zac says gorgug briefly thinks about cutting down the trees, but decides against it) to make it more comfortable for him, he instead forces himself through it to his own detriment. kind of like how through his life, he has been moving through all these spaces that were not made for him and do not suit him and he has never asked to be accommodated for fear of being inconvenient, and instead quietly forces himself through the discomfort.
i think this is why being an artificer works so well for him. in conjuction with gaining his confidence, he is also choosing to pursue a path where builds and invents and changes the world to accommodate, because he deserves to be accomodated, rather than suffering in silence. this is why I was so insistent while s3 was coming out that porter was being an asshole not encouraging gorgug's foray into multiclassing into artificer. gorgug wasn't stubbornly making things harder for himself, him choosing to be an artificer was his way of making things better for himself, accommodating himself. being an artificer means inventing things, altering the world, and for gorgug, that meant altering this to suit himself, rather than trying to force himself into a space that didn't fit him.
I donāt know if Iāve said something along these lines before so apologies if I have or if someone else has, and also apologies if this is completely incoherent. I have a lot of feelings. There are lots of grammar mistakes. It is 2:00 AM.
THIS IS MY THEORY FOR THE ENDING OF BNHA, AND WHY I BELIEVE THAT IT WONāT BE LIKE THE TIME SKIP THE FANDOM HAS IMAGINED UP UNTIL THIS POINT. (this is long and slightly spoilery)
Part one: fandom expectations
So at the beginning of the manga, the general story is protecting the status quo versus disrupting the status quo. The villains are evil for evilās sake and the heroes are good for goodās sake. People are heroes because they think itās the right thing to do, they want to save people, they think itās cool, or they want the status symbol. All the kids want to be heroes! Itās a massively popular job with very few people actually working it, proportionately. People that donāt end up as heroes end up disappointed (or at least, thatās what I imagine. We donāt actually have a lot of examples of failed heroes in the manga, or at least none that jump out at me). Quirks are common, everybody wants a cool quirk, and people without them arenāt necessarily discriminated against but they ARE an āotherā.
People who have quirks that arenāt powerful and arenāt hero-worthy, or go against one of the other societal values of the BNHA world (which are the same as ours: we value beauty, money, power, and conventionality, generally speaking), ARE discriminated against. Take heteromorphic quirks, for example. They make people uncomfortable because the people with them arenāt conventional, so they are treated as ālesser thanā. People with quirks that affect their mental state, or people with unconventional mental states who happen to have a quirk thatās easy to vilify, (such as Toga) end up as social outcasts who are more likely to want to disrupt the society that cast them out.
The way that the society in BNHA is so quirk-focused, and the way that it glamourizes hero work, has a lot of negative effects that are shown throughout the series.
If I asked the earlier BNHA fandom to picture what a time skip would look like after the mangaās completion, the general idea, at least to my understanding, would be that the main cast would be heroes at the top, and the villains would be eradicated and the status quo protected. The kids are at hero school, why the hell wouldnāt they be heroes in the end?
Now that weāve seen the villainsā motivations, and seen the harm that the status quo causes, the manga has shifted in a direction where the heroes are also moving in a similar direction as the villains, but fighting the villains because the villains do it in a way that kills people. A lot of speculation about the way that the series is going to end is shifting.
What if I told you that I think that not only are the kids not going to end up as heroes, but there will be no heroes by the end of BNHA. In fact, I think there will be no more quirks.
Part two: the quirk singularity doomsday theory (QSDT)
For a series that happens in a relatively linear way, there's a lot of talk about the quirk singularity doomsday theory, which predicts an event that, if it were to happen, would happen decades to centuries after the events of the series. I think it's interesting how the warning signs of the QSDT becoming reality are already sort of happening: Eri and the kids at Bakugou and Todoroki's provisonal license make-up classes are there to show that quirks are already starting to mix to become too powerful for children to use them safely. While it's an interesting bit of world-building, this specific aspect of the story hasn't had a clear purpose yet.
Unless it does have a very, very clear purpose;
To show that the status quo of the BNHA world isn't just unsustainable in a social sense, but also in a physical one; that if nothing were to be done about it, the QSDT would in fact come true and doomsday would happen. I think it exists to show that even if villains weren't a problem, something needs to change or else total collapse is inevitable.
Part three: AFO and OFA
In a different (and worse) version of BNHA, the big bad villain would probably have a quirk like a crazy version of Bakugou's or something -- something big and flashy and intimidating but ultimately predictable. I find AFO interesting as a villain not because he's particularly unique as a character, but because he's unpredictable. We've never really seen the full extent of his power and he always keeps us on our toes.
According to an interview or something I saw somewhere (never quote me on anything) the original draft of BNHA had Deku as a quirkless kid for the entire thing, relying on his smarts alone to become a hero; apparently Horikoshi's editors thought this wouldn't sell very well as the protagonist needed to have some kind of flashy and marketable power, so OFA was born, alongside its mechanics and lore.
All Might, Izuku, and OFA are very direct parallels to AFO, Shigaraki, and AFO (the quirk). OFA is not only similar to AFO in the way that they were born from the same place and operate in a similar way, but also that they're both unpredictable. Horikoshi has purposefully left both the audience and the people in the story out of all of the complexities of what OFA and AFO can do as quirks, probably so that he doesn't end up breaking his own rules down the line -- but also for another reason.
Part four: what's happening in the manga??? (SPOILERS)
Right now, as of chapter 369, OFA and AFO are both going batshit insane. AFO and Shigaraki have melded together, AFO's body is regenerating and will eventually disappear, ShigAFO is mutating like crazy even under the effects of erasure, Izuku is using all of OFA and manifesting the vestiges in the physical realm, the rules of time, space, and death are being bent, shit's wild and I love it. It seems like nothing is off the table, and anything is possible at this point.
But where is it all going? What will happen once the battle is over?
My best guess is that once AFO's body disappears and Deku (and hopefully Bakugou dhjdhjd) wins the fight against Shigaraki, Shigaraki's body will like. Peel away or something and Tenko will be left. But that's like, really specific and I genuinely don't know if that's where Horikoshi is going or not.
Part four: where am I going with this?
I don't know the specifics, but either at the climax of the final battle or right after, this is what I think will happen. Either:
AFO and OFA merge, possibly when AFO tries to steal OFA. There's a consistent theme in BNHA about merging with other people, becoming other people, sharing consciousness, mind and body etc. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that if this happens, a cataclysmic event will occur (that could potentially steal every single quirk on the planet, therefore overloading AFO and destroying all of them) (It's been established that even the quirks that AFO has already are rebelling against him, so this could also kill AFO's consciousness, two birds with one stone).
Shigaraki (or Tenko) willingly works to undo the harm he's caused by removing everyone's quirk and destroying them, bringing about equality.
A third thing that combines these.
I think that an ending like this for BNHA would suit it. Not only would it subvert expectations and tie up loose ends, but it would also fit the narrative, at least in my opinion. Deku says at the very beginning that 'not all men are born equal', and throughout BNHA that philosophy has been one of if not the most important driving force in the plot. (It's why, in my opinion, the story fits so well as an allegory for disability, queerness, and the like). It would be almost poetic for everyone to end the story on equal footing. Deku and Bakugou don't have to compete for the spot of number one, because they'd both be the greatest heroes for bringing about a new age of peace.
I dunno.
anyway.
These are all just my thoughts. I'm aware that Horikoshi probably has a different plan for his series and I'm perfectly chill with that. It's just a theory. A game theory
So, like, I know youāre a frog and all, and you probably canāt understand me, and I should probably go back to my dorms to study before Andel and Cowbell come over, but I gotta get something off my chest and youāre the only one I can talk to. So, I have this friend whoās called Cowbell, which is a neat name.
On the first day of my lectures I was a bit lost and turned around, and I found Cowbell and asked how to get to the Religious Studies lecture hall. She kinda, scoffed at me? and walked away. I followed her after a bit because I figured I couldnāt do any better, and if she wasnāt going to Religious Studies I could just ask another student or the professor. I lost her after a bit, my attention was caught by something shiny on the ground and by the time I looked up she was gone.
I spent another 20 minutes circling campus before ending up where I had been before and figuring out my lecture hall was right next to the shiny thing. I was super annoyed! And Cowbell was right there, messing with her pages of notes! She couldnāt even bother to lead me to the class she was already going to!
......
I know right! Anyways, we ended up sitting next to each other, and of course because I had the worst luck at the time, this professor was one who assigned groups that you use for the rest of the year. We got paired together along with a stranger called Wren and another classmate named Andel, and Cowbell didnāt even give us a name to call her! Wren didnāt attend class after the first day, she probably dropped it or something. Ugh, Cowbell was the worst the first week, completely unbearable. We all just ended up calling her Gator, because she was so snappy and hard to get along with. Our first project, she refused to even do anything, and disappeared once the project was supposed to be turned in! I mean, who does that? You get it right?
ā¦......
Sigh, yeah. Me and Andel just trooped through it and managed to get out with an A- somehow. The next day, Cowbell didnāt even try to make an excuse for herself! On friday that week I offered to buy pizza for the group, but Cowbell just said that she had something better to do and walked off. Me and Andel figured it was for the best and there would be more pepperoni for us. But like, the next week comes and Cowbell isnāt there at all? Me and Andel thought she mightāve dropped the class like Wren mightāve done, but we got kinda annoyed. We did that weeks project and got an A, which was real nice, and did our solo essays easily enough. She wasnāt there for the next week either, and me and Andel started worrying. We did worry about her, yāsee! Donāt look at me like that! We arenāt monsters!
...
I mean, we put up missing posters and everything! They kept on disappearing or being replaced which was annoying, but we spent so much change at the library just to print out all the posters we pasted up. Iām pretty sure the library started to like us after the end of the two weeks Cowbell was gone.
....
Yeah, yeah, itās hard to believe, but I felt safer in the library. Whatever, anyways. Cowbell came back and I was wary at first, but she seemed less quiet and disgruntled and more curious and silent? I donāt know how to explain it. So by friday, I had decided she would come to our, by now routine, pizza meeting. This time she said yes and looked hopeful? It was really strange. We ended up having a good time, and thatās when Cowbell introduced herself properly.
I feel like Cowbell isnāt the same, thereās something inherently wrong about comparing her attitude before and after she went missing. Like the missing puzzle piece was Gator shaped, and Cowbell was the same shape as Gator, but the image was just slightly different. It still fit perfectly and completed the picture, but it was just, different.
Cowbell and Gator are two different people in my mind, but it doesnāt make sense that theyāre actually two different people. I like Cowbell better, I think Gator, where ever she is, is happier away from us, and weāre happier to fit Cowbell in her place.
Cowbell sometimes has these moments, though, that make me feel like her and Gator arenāt even the same entity. She stumbles over memories, when we mention Wren she kinda, cocks her head like sheās asking āWho?ā. Itās weird, but like, I like Cowbell! And I really donāt think that sheās a bad person. I donāt think sheās weird either! She has her moments, but sheās a really kind and considerate person. I feel like maybe, Gator isnātā¦ Gator doesnātā¦ exist? anymore? but she does because Cowbell is her to a certain extent.
....
Youāre right, it doesnāt sound real. Cowbell has her moments though. I swear to god I saw her eating a real goldfish, hidden inside a bag of the goldfish cheese crackers. On monday, for a single millisecond when she smiled she had razor sharp teeth!! I only saw them for a moment though, so it was probably my imagination. One time she blinked and I saw those clear film eyelids that a lizard has, but she mightāve just been blinking real fast.
Honestly I donāt particularly care if sheās not Gator, and I donāt think I really need to say anything about what I've been seeing. I mean, she hasnāt hurt anyone, and sheās honestly really dedicated to learning. Iām not gonna ruin that just cause of what I may or may not have seen. Ugh, I probably sound crazy to you little lad. What do you think?
...
Yeah, Iām totally insane. How could someone just be replace by someone exactly like them? Thatās just weird. Iām happy with Cowbell, but the itch to tell someone about my weird thoughts was getting to me. Iām just imagining things. God, iām talking to a frog, i must really be going cuckoo!
......
Oh shit, look at the time, I gotta go back to the dorms right now! Thanks for easing my thoughts, little bud, donāt get eaten by anything, good luck, safe travels and all that, Itās friday today! iāll say hello to Cowbell for you!
