Toga’s formative bird incident! Here, the sequence of these events seems to be this:
Little Toga Himiko found a bird
She sat down on a porch to admire it (and to take a sip out of it)
Then Toga got up to find her parents to show them the little bird. (And get yelled at for it).
That last one is most important. Little Toga, age 4-ish, got up from where she was sitting, went looking for her parents, *eager* to show off her discovery, all smiles and excitement.
What she didn’t do was the opposite - hiding the bird from her parents. Toga didn’t show any feelings of guilt. Why would she? She very likely didn’t know what she was doing was wrong - she’s a small child, feeling the ‘instinct’ to drink blood as completely natural to her, plus the very specific lesson of ‘teach your child to not drink someone’s blood’ is usually not a sentence in parenting books.
In other words, it’s innocence, it’s her sharing an aspect of her world with her parents, it’s her seeking people out to have them join her in play and to have fun. That’s a great thing: that’s pro-social behavior, which is very much encouraged in children, and people of all ages in general. It’s expected behavior for kids her age.
Except her parents rejected that. Quite harshly too:
I get that they’re probably only trying to stop the blood-drinking thing, but it’s her quirk, and without explaining it, as well as tying her smile - her joy - to it, it’s easy for a young kid to associate ‘sharing things about her quirk’ with negativity. ‘Just don’t do it’, basically. This won’t be the last time either.
Had she ever felt any urges for blood or to use her quirk later on, even when it starts to become an issue, she might not have said anything, unable or unwilling to get help or advice. And so the problem grew bigger and bigger until it bursted, the size of it causing the intensity of her first crime.
Yet Toga never stopped trying to connect to people. Here is a girl who wants to reach out to others, who wants to share the things and feelings she has, who desires closeness and bonding. Toga hasn’t changed much, teenaged her is still very much the same. When the League was recruiting, she was one of the first to join. She uses everyone’s personal first names as a way to show familiarity. When she has reservations, she tells the League how she feels, maybe because she knows she’ll be listened to.
And when Toga’s curious and has a question, she not afraid to go out and ask it. Even if the person she’s trying to get an answer from is an enemy.
(That’s Toga disguised as Camie, btw.
Also: I wonder - why ask this unless one thinks it’s relevant?)
Later, she does it again.
I admit I’m still confused about the question(s). Trying to find out if her fate will be the same as Jin’s? Trying to see if other connections aside from the League are possible? ...Trying to see if ‘help’ is one of the options Uraraka would ‘do’ to her?
Because Toga lays out her problems right afterwards. She tells Uraraka about her quirk, about how she finds life hard; she even tells Uraraka about Jin, who she just lost. She doesn’t go about it straightforwardly which is a big part of the issue, but she tells it all to Uraraka. She got up, went to find Uraraka, and she’s sharing information for something that’s basically ‘life or death’-important to her.
Toga’s always been reaching out for bonding, for love, for answers. Unfortunately (though sometimes understandably) no one sees it as such, and she’s just rejected again and again. Especially this last time: isn’t she doing this right, even?
She’s got an problem, she went to a Hero about it, and now she wants to know what the Hero will do.
