Tati

Went off on a tangent 🧌

“the difference between inspiration and propaganda.”

The most we’d gone into propaganda at school had been for world war 2 and that was about how America viewed those in the Main Axis (?)/ Japanese and Germans, convincing people into helping war efforts, Hitler rising to power in Germany with an entire party and the people of Nazi Germany on his side (his book, propaganda, speech charisma, ability to appeal to the peoples wants/needs), how he turned said Nazi Germany away from Jews and other minority groups (religious, ethnic, races, physical/mentally different, political/social, etc).

Propaganda in My Hero Academia’s Hero society? Whewwww. Centuries worth of building heroes up onto this pedestal. Pounding into the minds of newborns toddlers teens adults kids around the world that their worth as a hero, or rather as a human being would be defined by the strength (or existence) of a quirk. A special ability. An abnormality. What is basically a mutation. Disregarding basic human rights when suddenly there is a different meaning to being ‘human’ when a lot of people don’t even look human anymore. Although they may not explicitly state it in their hero sponsored ad commercials and limited addition posters that those without quirks are ‘less than’, the lack of their representation in media, the amount of importance and meaning people attach to quirks, and the way quirkless people had continued to be treated for so long—it spoke for itself.

And the fact that no one has done anything. Maybe because there was a time when humans had persecuted and experimented on those who had quirks, when they’d first appeared. But how does that make it fair for people like that (quirkless), 2-3 centuries later, to have to suffer silently, their confidence and hope for a brighter future crushed in their younger years, before they can even build strength to keep themselves up against a world that holds no favor for them.

How can someone who has gone through the same struggle, only to suddenly gain a quirk (what seems like the ‘only way’ to become a hero is) and become a symbol of Peace and Hope, be the one to tell someone going through what he did that they cannot become a hero or anything of the sort? The audacity that a single, withering man might have to leave a heartbroken, hurting, bullied, suicide baited (not even (?) an hour earlier) CHILD on a rooftop. Your time was already up, and sure a swamp creature was somewhere wreaking havoc on a city and explosive, ignorant, unkind child, but it doesn’t take much to come to the conclusion that anyone quirkless in this world that is in the state Izuku was should not be left alone on a roof after clearly having their dreams crushed.

What kind of idiot old senile man do you have to already be to do that? You know what the quirkless go through. You WERE quirkless. Where is your empathy? The least you could’ve done is evade the question and say he’d have to do way more training and build on muscle/skill before he considered it because DUH it’s more than just quirk that makes up a hero. Otherwise people like Eraserhead and Sir Nighteye or fudgin idk all kinds of people that were probably around him. EVEN NEDZU, one of probably the smartest characters in the series, doesn’t have a combative quirk but a mental one. With Izuku’s analysis skills he could make it in a more discreet manner of heroism.

Then, an hour or less later, the same deteriorating skeleton is back in front of Izuku suddenly taking back his words and saying the opposite like he has any right to just throw them around given the position he had in the world. What is wrong with him?
Does he not understand subtlety?
Is he brain dead?
He said that to a fudgin child and left him on the rooftop, not even caring to escort him down even though it wouldn’t hurt him since he’d already revealed his stupid smaller form.
How could he just say that. Treating a single quirk like it’s the most world changing thing in the world. Like mf, all your past mentors died with it, move tf on.
I almost wish Izuku would’ve…just to feel the guilt radiate off those two bastards through the screen. But Izuku deserves more than that. Toshinori…I don’t even know what he was like as a kid. All I know is how he feels about Izuku, AFTER he already decided he’d have his quirk. Like the kid would be completely useless as a human being if he didn’t use that ‘heart of gold/a hero’ for being the Ninth Holder. I only know how he treats those that he knows have quirks.
What a loser. Sure he cares that the world doesn’t get destroyed as a whole (or maybe he just wants to avenge nana in which case I rly couldn’t care less abt his character) but on individual cases, like his own students, it seems he doesn’t actually care too much. Except for his successor.

Yes, I know it’s great that Izuku has even more power on top of his fudging mega mind and growing physical strength/capabilities. I’m just well aware that the society he’s in might only appreciate and worship him for the ‘awesome quirk(s)’ he has and not for all the other things that make him a better hero than even Toshinori (EMPATHY-).

-izuku. 10 years ? Mental fortitude.
-discrimination due to people of similar status in the past

And Izuku does deserve better. This kid has come so fudging far from the trembling 13-14 year old who scrambled across a street to save a suicide baiting bully who might as well have drowned in that sewage gunk-
After what must’ve been around a decade of bullying and isolation and shaming from the people around him, he’d still managed to keep his head above water, hope still alive, somehow. And you have to think, if Bakugo had suicide baited once, who’s to say he hadn’t done it again before. Sure midoriya’s reaction of shock made it seem like it was new. But the kids reactions aren’t exactly non-repetitive (reference all crying scenes ever). For Midoriya to not have turned his back on heroes entirely when they did nothing to help the quirkless population who faced discrimination even as mere children, for him to have been able to build confidence off of self esteem that should have crumbled under the feet of ruthless children, for him to be able to smile at others from the bravery and kindness in his heart and reassure that he’d save them when no one had saved him from years of people physically trying to ‘put him in his place’—

It says a lot.

I say all of that to say, propaganda probably does- has done a number on everyone in that world already. I once heard it called a dystopia and with the way things are (and Midoriya not actually wanting to change things fro quirkless people though it’s what he once was), I can see it heading in that direction. Everyone is a victim, future victim, and wrongdoer. No one will be able to avoid what’s coming, probably.