I tried to make it funny but can you feel the scream from the bottom of my Mariana trench soul?
Disclaimer 1: I haven't read the manga since about summer, 2020, but this is the impression I got from all the spoilers that, well... flooded my dashboards. I also felt physically ill about the thing in the middle panel and felt it all over again while drawing it ngl.
Disclaimer 2: Hawks is both drowning Deku and Dabi, but with an added layer of "why are you even here" bc has he ever actually... DONE anything to prove his character development (apart from not fighting Toga) that no one else could have done, or was it all say, no show?
(ps I know these don't apply to class 1A for the most part, instead it's about... basically everybody else)
Reading articles about MrBeast's dominance of YouTube is fucking bizarre because, from my perspective, the dude isn't even on YouTube. I've never watched one of his videos. YouTube has, to the best of my knowledge, never recommended one of his videos to me. Every thumbnail screenshot of his looks like something you could tell me was a photoshopped parody of YouTube culture, and I'd believe you. No one I follow on YouTube ever mentions him, even negatively or in passing. The first time I ever heard his name was in regards to the quality of his ghost kitchens. The only way I know he isn't a mass, shared hallucination is that I've witnessed the thoroughly mid-looking chocolate bars he sells at Walmart for some reason
rei todoroki is such a difficult character to talk about because I think people have legitimate reasons to be…some level of uncomfortable with her, but at the same time most people who bring that up don’t do so with anywhere near enough nuance or empathy for a woman with an abusive husband, and lots of them outright victim blame her (as I posted about before, people straight up blame her for being raped) and don’t see the way horikoshi is treating her lately as a problem.
watching the responses to her these last few chapters…………the misogyny and people’s inability to care about a battered woman made my stomach churn. people have become so quick to jump on her before questioning the writing at all.
I wish she was written with more care and actual thoughtful, complex characterization–I think her relationship with shouto sorely needs to have actual work put into writing it because what she did to him was pretty awful and traumatizing even if there were obviously extenuating circumstances. shouto doesn’t blame her, but with ten years of distance between them after the incident to stew in their feelings and suffer alone there’s a lot to explore when they reunite. and I think healing from trauma your mother caused because of your mutual abuser is much more worth exploring than putting all kinds of screentime into forcing him to build a better relationship with his dad, but a lot of what seems like obvious baggage he carries from his relationship with his mother has never been unpacked.
same goes for her relationship with touya. I’d be interested in exploring his anger towards her more but we’re probably not going to get that, because these days she’s only relevant when she can be used to make endeavor look better (and before that as an accessory to shouto’s character). the way touya reacted to both his parents was very different despite resentment that built towards both(desire to please endeavor mixed with resentment over being tossed aside vs. what seems like complete dismissal of his mother), and I think that’s worth looking at. also I think, with what you can extrapolate from her relationship with her parents and then the way endeavor abused her, her inability to help touya is partially learned helplessness(on top of the fact that…there’s only so much she could do when she was being abused the way she was).
AND I get that they’re not major characters the way shouto and now touya are but it’d be nice to get more on what natsuo and fuyumi think of her, too, especially since they’re the only ones who visited her for ten whole years! they saw a stage of her life everyone else missed entirely, have maintained a closeness with her no one else has.
BNHA is obviously set in Japan, but many villain fans speculate if any LOV members speak English as well. Here are my thoughts about it as an English as a Second Language teacher.
Shigaraki– Based on his upbringing, I'd say he probably has a damn good grasp on reading and writing in English, possibly even listening comprehension, but he has no conversational ability whatsoever. As someone who intended to take over the whole world, AFO would've wanted his heir to know English. However, Tomura's extremely secluded childhood meant that he probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to converse in the language or work on his pronunciation.
Dabi- Little to no ability. His education stopped at early middle school a decade previously. He might still be able to say "Hello. My name is Touya. I am from Japan. Do you speak Japanese?" if he'd had those stock phrases beaten into his head during his education.
Toga: See Dabi. She might have a few more phrases memorized since she's more recently out of school than Dabi is. "My favorite color is red. I am 14 years old."
Twice: No ability. Like Dabi and Toga, he also dropped out in middle school. He's older than they are, though, so he's had more time to forget anything he'd learned at school.
Spinner: Shockingly, I think he's the most likely member to be decently fluent in English. If I remember correctly, he finished high school and therefore had at least 3 more years of formal English education than the rest of them did. He's also a young guy who plays video games, which in my experience is a demographic that rapidly gains English skills from playing online with Americans. Shigaraki is explicitly said to have only played solo, but Spinner could've played online. His English conversation skills are probably really good and he's learned every curse word and slur that there is, plus a bunch of idioms. He might not be great at reading and writing in English unless he joined Discord or Tumblr or something.
Compress: Unknown. He's been out of school for a long time, but it seems like a random skill that he'd have.
It’s interesting that Hk chose a women to directly criticize the heroes’ attempts at easing the public.
Despite having multiple men in the audience, Hk uses a female reporter to question Endeavor’s atonement and integrity. She brings up valid concerns, but she’s portrayed as emotional and almost irrational, which is in contrast not only to the heroes, but also her male colleagues (who are shown behind her, obviously uneasy with her outburst).
Once again, although the men in the story are primarily at fault for the current disaster, Hk created a woman to represent the sector that are working against heroes and their attempt to save society. This wouldn’t be an issue if it was an isolated event, but it’s disappointing considering Horikoshi’s tendency to use women to portray toxic and regressive mindsets while refusing to give his female characters actual development.