🔮Queen🪄

HUFFLEPUFF HOUSE

If you have to ask,

you will never know.

If you know,

So apropos of this post here (wherein I try to offer some recs for Realistic Hannigram, with some caveats) I stand by all those as entirely worth reading and based on strong understanding of the characters.  (And as I said there, De Profundis is squarely in my Actually Realistic pile.)

As a note, though - I think it’s worth saying (and I’m sure I’ll say it in more detail in the essay I feel coming on soon, haha) that there’s a lot of brilliant stuff out there that I wouldn’t classify as “realistic” because of how close-to-canon I necessarily define that term (and this fandom is very fond of creative AUs!), but that demonstrates deep understanding of the characters nonetheless.  

—

Anyway: more Realistic Recs.  If we expand out and include fics that don’t necessarily have smut….

Crossing Caïna, by feverdreambloodopera - canon compliant, post-fall.  A bit angstier than my usual fare, but I recall it as being very on-point and believable, as well as incorporating some particularly clever symbolism.

When the Devil Smiles Back, by GoldenUsagi / @fancybedelia - Starts with a Silence of the Lambs send-up that is show-canon compliant, from Clarice Starling’s PoV.  Is the singular reason I bothered to watch Silence of the Lambs.  This author writes spectacular outsider-perspective Hannigram in general (she has other fics you should definitely check out if you like this), but I particularly love this series.

this might turn and wind up just the way we’d dreamed, by softhan / @strongwillgraham - I’ve def rec’d under the “realistic” column before, but bears repeating.  Season 1 AU in which Abigail is a young kid and Hannibal actually adopts her and things go from there.  (His other published fics for the show are short but also very on-point in terms of matching characterization.)

The Here Trilogy, by Petronia - canon complaint, post-fall.  Didn’t go into the last rec post because “long” and “slow-burn” had been requested, but these feel authentic to me after most of really thorny issues have been worked out.

1x02 || 2x10 || 3x13

In particular, people don’t see anything wrong with the “he is my mentor and made me stronger” part. And they’re right - there is nothing inherently bad with saying that someone had a positive influence on you, regardless of what kind of person they are to anyone else.

But we’re talking about saying that to someone who has been severly hurt by the person in question. I’m not sure if the people who are defending this line have never been in a situation like that, so I’m just going to share a personal anecdote in the hopes that this will put things into perspective a little bit.

A few years ago, during my apprenticeship, I was in a department for two months that I was terrified of before even starting because the apprentices who had already been in said department talked about how shitty the people working there are, especially one of the female ones. Apparently, she either loved you or hated you - for absolutely no reason - and there was nothing you could do about it. I had the big fortune of being one of those she did not like. 

Those two months were absolute hell for me. I got the cold shoulder from her every shift we had together, while she would happily talk to everyone else; whenever she talked to me she kept it short and in a harsh tone. I remember one time in particular, someone made a small mistake (nothing major at all) and she first asked me whether I had made that mistake. I said no because it hadn’t been me. She asked the two other apprentices who were there that shift, who also both said it hadn’t been them. She then turned around to me again and said that it had to be me then, since it wasn’t the others, despite the fact I had already told her it hadn’t been me. Needless to say, she didn’t believe me.

I spent my breaks in the changing room trying not to cry; I had a mini-breakdown before almost every shift. It was simply awful.

Fast forward to after I had finished my apprenticeship and I continued working for that company, but in a different department.

At some point, this person came up in conversation. I told my colleagues about my past with her and how I did not like her whatsoever because of it. Their response? “Oh, but I always got along really well with her!” …Okay, and?

I’m not saying just because this person made me feel awful that she couldn’t be nice to anyone else. Again, I was there when she was nice to everyone else. The point is, though, that she wasn’t like that to me.

So what exactly am I supposed to do with that fact? Say “Oh, she was nice to you, then nevermind my experiences with her” - It simply doesn’t add anything. We are aware that people who have hurt us can be kind to others. But when we speak out about how they treated us, we seek validation. So when you can’t even for a second acknowledge that a certain person has hurt us and instead make it about how they weren’t like that to you? In that moment you simply invalidate someone’s very valid feelings.

This doesn’t mean you have to pretend like this person hasn’t been good to you, but you also don’t need to bring it up. Think about how some women think sexism doesn’t exist anymore, just because they haven’t experienced it or because they don’t recognize it. It’s great if you have never been discriminated against or haven’t been made uncomfortable by someone else, but that doesn’t mean that other people’s experiences aren’t real and in that moment of them talking about those very real experiences of theirs, your lack of those experiences has no place in that discussion because those discussions are there to bring awareness to the victims and their feelings. 

It’s also similar to when one person is grieving and talking about said grief and then another person chimes in to talk about their grief. You are allowed to have your feelings. But when one person opens about theirs, then please, for just a moment, let this be about them and not you.

How the hero Miruko is a Blood Knight (Part 1)

The new vigilantes (which I again remind everyone is canon) gives some really interesting Miruko characterization that also really kind of fits a pattern, but one most fanon depictions of her ignore? 

She’s always been super quick to fight first, ask questions later, but the darker aspects of this were kind pushed aside as “yes! spunky hot girl! She’s kind of like Katsuki.” 

And yet I always felt this comparison was a bit.. lacking. Katsuki likes to fight, yes, and his conception of heroism has to do with victory, but there’s not there sheer need for violence for the thrill of it. And until the last vigilantes chapter we had scant characterization for Miruko that hinted it might be that for her, but nothing concrete.

That’s changed. The fact she’s being introduced in Vigilantes at the same time we see a flashback of Rappa, years ago, is pretty spot on to what now seems to be crucial to her personality. 

This is Miruko as a high school student in a trip to Osaka. She’s wearing a touristy type of hat, but it’s her. Her friends in high school apparently call her ‘Ruko’.

Anyway, notice the way she specifically says ‘scent’. It’s portrayed as animalistic, almost, her love of fighting. Which is line with how Horikoshi often makes her seem in the main manga.

In this scene Miruko, by scent, has tracked down an underground illegal fight ring simply by her quirk. Mind you, she’s still a hero student on a trip. She might have a provisional license but this is definitely something the 1A kids would have been scolded for. 

Miruko’s excitement, though, centers around the possibility of fighting. It’s fun to her, and she recognizes that through actual blood and sweat. Let’s look at the main manga for a moment; she was relieved, happy even that she could crush the noumus. That it was okay to kill since she didn’t have to hold back like she did for normal villains.

Team Up gave us a very clear repeat of this: Miruko’s praising Katsuki’s violent approach (and Deku and Ochako of course are a little perplexed by this), and her gung-ho attitude to fighting first, not asking questions. In line with her thinking that teaming up is cowardly, and that she stated her intent has always been to ‘beating up villains who scheme’, one wonders what her motivation is to be a hero.

We’ve come across lots of different heroes motivated by many different things. Some out of a need for glory and a feel that they are the best (Endeavor), some out of wanting to be a symbol to a broken society (Toshinori), some out of a need for fame (Uwabami, even Mt. Lady). We’re told glory and money are often the motivations in a conversation between Hawks and the Hunter Commission.

So, what is Miruko’s?

Let’s get back to Vigilantes. The most recent chapter as of writing this has a flashback to several years in the storyline, and given Rumi is around twenty six or twenty seven in the manga, and is also of the birth month group where she would have likely been the youngest in her class, it’s safe to say this was likely ten years ago as of the current manga storyline.

Rumi is shown on a school trip to Osaka with her classmates from a hero school in Hiroshima. 

At the same time we see Knuckleduster, still a hero and undercover, going head to head with Rappa in an illegal underground quirk ring. Rappa as everyone will recall was all about fighting. That’s his motivation; the fight itself. He wants to go head to head, he’s all about fist to fist and even gets a little put out about Knuckleduster using a knife.

He is what we call a Blood Knight character:

Fighting is everything to the Blood Knight. He lives for it. It’s not winning or losing, morality, the motives of his allies, or even the glory that drives this guy so much as it is the opportunity for a good fight. (Tv tropes)

Why does this matter? Characters are rarely introduced without some sort of narrative in mind. Vigilantes is a prequel manga that has given us the backstories of heroes before (Aizawa, Mic, and Midnight’s, or All Might’s being the main examples, or even Ingenium Sr.) so it’s clearly Miruko’s turn. And setting in a minor detail in canon (remember Rappa talks about illegal quirk fighting rings to Fat Gum) means that there needs to be a connection.

It’s too early to tell since Vigilantes has just started this arc with Miruko, but I think what’s happening is that we’re going to see just what Miruko stands for. And there’s a likelihood that she’s being pitted against Rappa (narratively for now) because she is very much like Rappa.

It's also unfortunately realistic in the ways people have been talking about.

The League are strong because of perseverance, but they make up marginalized people, and that just shows in the difference of how things affect them. I hate it, too, but like, it just shows how brave they are for the magntitude and strength of what they are fighting that they are still somewhat standing after being attacked by thousands of heroes.

Compress lost an arm. Twice was mentally ill and impoverished. Touya is traumatized and chronically ill. Tomura is traumatized and gaslit by his abuser. Toga was pretty much subjected to institutions that that told her to suppress a huge part of herself. Spinner is marginalized for his quirk status and appearance. Magne was trans.

These are not people who life has been kind to. These are not people, for the most part, who won the genetic lottery as according to quirk society. These are not meant to be strong people but they are. They are, and were, and it's awful we have to see the majority of the consequences of the 'weak' going up against the strong.

1. Compress’s words are a clear indication the family he loves are not the PLF but the League itself. We’ve had confirmations going as far back as fifty chapters that Compress was one of the people completely uninterested in playing with the PLF or learning their ideology.  Horikoshi would have not said that willy-nilly; Compress right here is giving voice, finally to how the League members see each other; an unruly bunch that don’t ask too many questions about their past and accept each other anyway. He specifies the League for a reason. Is the League itself done with the PLF? I think there’s too much assumption here that the PLF has more resources or hideouts. It seems that the Villa side might be lost completely; can the PLF really survive without its leaders? The League does not have the ideology the PLF uses, and Shigaraki has taken advantage of ‘movements’ before (Stain), but he never panders. 

The thing is, it’s unlikely there’s a future for the MLA and the League. In one ways, the alliance kind of allowed for Hawks to infiltrate much more smoothly than he would have if it was the LoV. Yes, he screwed it up (imo) by focusing on the MLA and their plans/ideology more so than the League, but it gave him an avenue to spy on their plans, and also allowed him an excuse to isolate a League member. I’m not putting blame on the PLF for this, mind you, but I am saying that the alliance hasn’t been rainbows and roses. Dabi certainly benefited, but the likes of Compress? Spinner? Twice?  I will say this is where we have to wait and see. But Compress’s words absolutely confirm that even if they use them, there’s no fucks given. At all. These are not their family.  2. And here’s where I admit I’m wrong but also deeply confused. Now, I’m not sure if Skeptic is marbled or if the cords around him are. I’ll explain - he was out of the way of Atsuhiro’s path. He would have had to run off to the side to get him and given Atsuhiro was running on sheer momentum given his fatal injuries, I’m not sure how much work he’d put into it. But! There is clearly a pop! there. However…

I lightened it a bit in photoshop. So with his metallic hand, compress is clearly not holding anything. But if you look at his palms, i circled something I couldn’t tell is a marble or not. We know Dabi’s marbled. That marble he’s holding is likely Dabi since it was his last marble. What I genuinely can’t tell is if that’s the meat of his palms that’s the rounded shape, or another marble, that he’s ???? holding with just his pinky in his hand. 

Now I just tried to do the same pose with some dice and my right hand and it doesn’t seem very uhh like that’s able to hold a marble. Compress’s thumb, index, middle, and 4th finger are holding on to the marble likely containing Dabi.  So, I looked back to see if we see his hands holding something after he presumably marbled Skeptic and before Dabi and the panel with him marbling Dabi, well, see for yourself:

Okay, so, first note. He’s not using his prosthetic. It seems broken, unable to grasp. So we can discount that. But look, that’s a panel of him catching Dabi’s marble, right? There’s clearly no other marble in that picture. So what I lightened up there? It’s not a marble. It’s just hand-lines.

So, yeah, I think he marbled *something*, whether the cords around skeptic themselves or Skeptic, but I don’t know if he’s holding him, which is fairly important here. The pop noises indicated a marble has been formed or unformed, and the pop we have after he says Dabi come here, implies Dabi was indeed marbled, and then we have a pop where Spinner and Tomura are *unmarbled*. Which then we see the image I showed up showing one obvious marble, and a hand I can’t really make sense of. Of course, he could be hiding another marble in his mouth but… Another possibility is he marbled and didn’t catch him. Kind of uhh, perhaps a little terrifying to think of, but that is a possibility that Skeptic is indeed safe in a marble, but lying on the ground somewhere, and Compress has no intention of retrieving him. And given his thoughts crossing out the PLF happened a few panels later, I think this is a very likely possibility.  Of course, Compress can, according to his wiki, just unmarble everyone without having to touch the marbles themselves. So I don’t skeptic is on the ground forever, if he’s there. Hopefully? (It’d be so cruel if he’s just indefinitely marbled until Compress dies…or. Permanently)

SPOILER WARNING FOR VIGILANTE SPINOFF.

So chapter 12 of Vigilantes just came out and it talks about the origin of the heroes and villains system. There are whole panels, but I can’t trim them because they’re all relevant:

We have the origin of the vigilantes who originally came about to protect the peace.

In America, in Rhode Island where the hero system started, there was 189 Vigilantes who stood in to protect people before the heroes and villains system was created.

Out of those 189, only 7 became government sponsored “heroes”. Every other vigilante was deemed to be a villain by the government. The hero system wasn’t about making heroes so much as it was about criminalising Quirks to control society.

Why is this relevant? History doesn’t record why those 7 were the only ones allowed to be state sponsored Quirk users.

Enter All For One and his brother. All For One is a First Generation Quirk user according to All Might and would have been around in Japan when this was happening in America:

Now if only 7 out of 189 were deemed villains then it changes the meaning of this scene:

All of a sudden, all of the evil wrongdoers All Might is complaining about might have been decent people because if only 7 of 189 were government recognised, then the same would have happened in Japan. Only 3.7% of Vigilantes were allowed to be heroes and the rest deemed “evil” and criminal.

What it means is that there’s a good chance that All For One and his brother, user of of One For All, were vigilantes prior to the law changing. If All For One was the leader of Japan’s vigilantes and they were outlawed then by default he becomes the leader of the villains.

The interpretation of All For One’s name is wrong as it’s not about him being selfish. The name comes from the saying “all for one and one for all” which means that “all members of a group act for the good of individual and all individuals act for the good of the group”. It’s about mutual benefits of people belonging to an organisation - like Vigilantes who organised to protect people!

Maybe the division with All For One’s brother started because his brother was accepted as a state sponsored hero, whereas All For One who had less controllable powers (by the government), was outlawed and deemed a villain. All For One couldn’t be controlled and was outlawed, whereas his brother went with the system and started the feud because All For One didn’t want the American system in Japan because it oppressed Quirk users like him.

The bad news is that Tsukauchi’s sister (yes, he has a younger sister!) is trying to find out what happened…

Which is gonna place her directly in All For One’s line of fire for digging around in his past.

Okay, so first of all I just have to make a quick disclaimer: this is not to discredit other Shigaraki and Spinner ships, this is just to highlight why I think these two in particular are just neat. 

Also, manga spoiler warning, as per usual. Content below the cut.

To people like Hawks, it’s just simple fact that people are different from him and that “I, as the exceptional special person”, just knows more and can do more than the average person and thus “it’s up to me to make other people’s lives better. Few people can do this job the way I can.”

He’s also very good at hiding this with other eccentricities and quirks. Like you can’t accuse him of being a manipulative and haughty person when the harmful stuff is interspersed between him being incredibly chatty or saying things that are odd, or over-gesturing, or refusing to go along with the mood. In the end, it’s so much easier to chalk it up to ‘Hey this guy is weird!’.

It’s not canon per se, but it’s a theory based on what we know about the HPSC thus far along with some other factors.

As for the HPSC, their job is basically to manage the interactions between heroes and society. In a way, they are the PR team for heroes as a whole. They are also responsible for coordinating the heroes teams with the police, high-profile cases, as well as the provisional hero license exams. We don’t know exactly how one obtains their license to be a Pro Hero but considering the HPSC hands out the provisional licenses, they most likely also take care of the real thing.

With that, they have a lot of control over everything, almost like someone playing chess, with the heroes, police, villains, and civilians being their pawns.

We got a better look at the HPSC once Hawks was introduced, specifically when we got the flashback of him being given his undercover job. There are two noteworthy points from that scene.

The first one being that the HPSC is okay with casualties, giving Hawks the permission to ignore the victims, while he befriends the villains. The HPSC places its importance on the greater good, rather than trying to save everyone.

The second part is about Hawks and his overall role for the HPSC. Though they call it a proposal, Hawks points out that he isn’t given a choice here.

Similar to Eri’s current appearance, people have different opinions on whether using children for the hero side is right or wrong, considering that Eri agreed to use her quirk on Mirio, and Hawks wanted to become a hero.

We don’t have the full picture of what this “special program” that Hawks was a part of entailed, and whether or not he was the only one in it. Although, concerning the last part, we don’t really see any heroes his age so it feels like Hawks was the only one part of this “program” and was always anticipated to be used as the HPSC’s secret weapon. Officially, he’s a hero, but in reality, the HPSC has a lot more control over him than any other hero. Part of that is also shown through his hero outfit, which features the HPSC logo on his shirt.

Keep in mind, Hawks was a kid when he got taken in by the commission. They saw a vulnerable child that happened to have a strong quirk that could be useful to them, so they took said child and turned it into the hero he is now for their own advantages.

Aside from Hawks and Eri, we also have U.A. and any other hero school. While this hasn’t really been addressed by society in the story aside from when Bakugou got kidnapped, this is a high school, which means the students are 15-18 years old. Although the story does tell us that hero students encountering actual villains is a new occurrence, they are still children who get put through very intense training. In the most recent arc, they are being put on the front lines, even though their role was just to evacuate the civilians, it’s obvious from their mindsets and their sense of duty that they are not going to leave it as just that. As mentioned at the start, the HPSC is responsible for coordinating these types of situations so it was their decision to put these kids there. Even if you don’t see an issue with hero high schools like U.A. existing, I think we can all agree that there is something very wrong about putting teenagers on the front lines against the biggest terrorist organization in the country. Funnily enough, the one person to address this is a villain, Dabi:

It makes sense for someone like Dabi, who was created and raised as a mere pawn himself instead of being allowed a normal childhood, to be able to point out that sending kids to a fight like this is not okay.

Speaking of villains, since the USJ arc, the League of Villains has been presented to us as the main antagonists of the series, specifically Shigaraki as the successor to All For One, since Deku, the protagonist, is the successor of One For All. But over time, the members of the League of Villains have been shown to us as being very layered, sympathetic people. Shigaraki has found his own reasons for doing what he does, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has always been and continues to be nothing but a vessel for All For One.

Despite the fact that All For One in his current state technically can’t do much, especially not without Shigaraki, him still being around and still saying that Shigaraki isn’t complete yet shows us that All For One is still the bigger threat and we haven’t seen the last of him. When it comes to the question of how can Shigaraki redeem himself, he would first need to realize that he is just being used by All For One. Because the main difference between him and Dabi is that the latter has recognized that he was only used and is now fighting back, whereas Shigaraki hasn’t become aware of that yet. To redeem himself, he not only has to realize this but also figure out how to break away from All For One. Unlike Dabi, he can’t just leave, since All For One can possess him from the comfort of his highly secured cell.

Speaking of Dabi, some people are also theorizing that the HPSC knew about Touya and helped cover up his death, but that this is unconfirmed so while I’m not ruling it out (according to Endeavor he did search for Touya instead of immediately accepting his death so they most likely do know about it but whether they knew the circumstances that have led to this is unknown), I wouldn’t count it as evidence for the time being.

Circling back to the students of U.A., after the USJ arc the rumors of a possible traitor came up, and after Bakugou got kidnapped, we got this meeting between the HPSC and the police, where they first mention that they will need to make some changes.

Later on, Principal Nezu tells us that, though officially the dorm system is for the students’ safety, it’s also so that they (the HPSC and police) can investigate in secret, with both the teachers and the students being possible suspects.

The story hasn’t exactly mentioned this since or explained how exactly they investigate in secret. We do know that there are robots with motion detectors/cameras on campus that report any kind of movement to the teachers, like when Bakugou and Deku had their fight outside. But what about in the dorms? Are there hidden cameras? Maybe even in the rooms? We don’t know that yet, part it’s still a fact that the HPSC even suspects the kids and puts them in dorms under false pretense when in reality it’s easier for surveillance/control reasons.