Aug 17.2016 |  106

cheekyroki:

anger-eats-the-soul:

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About the nth time I think about Deku and Bakugou’s dynamics and after staring long enough at this particular exchange, I finally learnt of something. To clarify, I am curious not so much about why Deku insists on being a friend with his bully as about why this seemingly unreasonableness doesn’t rub me the wrong way. In other words, what is the justification Horikoshi gives to make it not sound like his own wishful thinking, but a quality that resonates with readers?

There is one single word that out of the blue struck me as a perfect description of Deku: over-responsible. An over-responsible person is someone who is acutely attuned to other’s adversities and devote a substantial amount of energy to ease them. It is someone who are unhesitantly willing to take on other’s jobs, and feel that failure to do so is a blow to their strength and self-cultivating identity as “the helper”. 

As for a little of context: Bakugou accused Deku of lying about being quirkless, as he saw Deku’s quirk manifest as counter-attacks to his own for the first time and during their match. The prior assumption had mistakenly led him to underestimate Deku, whilst not knowing that Deku’s obtained quirk from All Might serves as a reason for and enables the latter’s stay in U.A. The first thing Deku wants to do, after recovering, is to clarify to Bakugou that the former wasn’t intentionally deceiving the latter. Deku’s behaviour, hence, implies that to him, honesty is the tenour of friendships.  

It’s a very mature outlook on friendship, except that it has a semblance of anything but a friendship. A sensible reaction to this attitude should be: “Why the hell does it matter if you are honest with him or not? Is everything he has done to you worth your honesty?”

Of course Deku doesn’t think like that, and he is perfectly sensible. To process why a sensible person doesn’t think like that requires me to look for some explanation in his personalities, which should also be in harmony with his values and belief system. This ultimately brings me to see him as an over-responsible person (and along this train of thought I also realised what counts as “hitting an epiphany” to me are not ideas, but words that perfectly capture the idea yet so far manage to elude my attention). 

If you look up “over-responsible”, there is a high chance it is written about with implied negative connotation and a bias toward pathology. I am, however, referring to it merely as a description, not only because it’s best to stay neutral, but also because Deuku lacks some markers of when hyper-responsibility tips the scale into pathology, usually something that comes at others’ loss, such as an obsession with control. What is telling about his trait is that it is a part of his integral moral responsibilities. If he thinks friendship precludes dishonesty, he will apologises for coming across that way. He is quick to assume responsibility for his friend’s upset, even though it has more to do with a deep-seated flaw of said friend’s own making. Moving past this instance, the moral element in his hyper-responsibility is highlighted in his tendency to offer unsolicited advice (to Kouta), or show up uninvitedly to help others. As fate would have it, being a hero taps right into his moral obligation towards hyper-responsibility, which, in turn, propels him to pursue his calling. With this, Deku’s narrative comes full circle. 

It is interesting how after obtaining a quirk, Deku still stands out as much as he did when people learnt he was quirkless. Perhaps it is because what sets him apart from other heroes was decided long ago, an arbitrary result of the birth lottery. And perhaps he has actually never been quirkless, because his strong sense of heroism, and a tendency to be over-responsibility, is a quirk he was born with. 

Your response on the nature of their dynamic is the most well reasoned argument against actively pairing them either platonically or as the “wonder duo”, although it isn’t as much of an argument as it is a clear analysis. I especially like the way that you analyze their qualities and distill it to a single idea.

Bakugou’s conflicted and out of control feelings of inferiority may invoke a sense of compassion and or identification with his situation, from both the readers and Deku alike, which can discolor the point of view of the events from their actual dynamic to an idealized and imagined healthy one. Bakugou’s behavior externalizes as explosive outbursts of deep avarice and anger and the point is: from very beginning, Deku had felt over responsible for his reactions.

This over responsibility extends to others, as in passing with Shinsou’s comparison in the sports festival (heroes who had “everything” and he who had nothing), and then later Kouta’s negative and traumatic perception of heroes. Kouta’s situation though, did provide a positive foil because change did happen, he received his first “thank you” as a hero.

Why does he do this?
Deku, like All Might, feels the burden of maintaining positive relations between others. But in addition, he feels responsible for maintaining others’ moral concepts of heroes, of what it means to be a victor, of their perceptions of life.

And admittedly, in an neurotic social environment concentrated with competition and being number one, it can be difficult to not see everyone is slightly broken in their distorted view of social climbing. He stands out because the intentions and resolves he has leads to self sacrificing, the principal quality of a hero.

Bakugou is showing some signs of promise in the recent chapters with his more quiet disposition but until he is able to make amends in himself, they would not be able to move forward from the past or to the future.

With that mind: what does a mature Bakugou look like?
Is it as magnaminous as readers predict he would develop into?

Regardless of that his starting point, if he is ever to develop, is acceptance.
A descriptor for his emotional turmoils can be summed as, “the ego doesn’t realize that the hatred is a projection of the universal pain that you feel inside.” He has falsely and intensely believed that others like Deku, Todoroki, and anyone else who has the potential undercut his “success” is causing him the pain – and has yet to be connected with his deeper level of being, which is being one with himself.










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