#rivet stab

-Black Whip/Rivet Stab: You can control your whips enough to harden them to a rigid point -Arbor/Vines: You have a plant body that you grow and control. You're hair just so happens to be vines. -Larceny/Slide and Glide: You've trained your propulsion enough to be able to attract things as well. -Somnambulist/Sleep Gas: You can push your gas to new heights, but makes it far more toxic. -Transform/Meatball: You can shape your flesh, but need a genetic staple to replicate others. -Softening/Stiffening: You can make things hard or soft instead of only one or the other. -Overlock/High Spec: You're brain is so advanced that you can overload your brain to make yourself faster. -Absorb and Release/Impact Recoil: You can redirect attacks, but it's easiest to do with kinetic energy. Anything else can be dangerous.

There isn't a lot to say about "Rivet Stab". It lets the user make a series of dark tendrils that they can control over medium ranges. It can be used to stab into people, even breaking through stones, and can move the user around like a spider. However, they do seem pretty fragile with how often they get broken apart. A lot of its applications are pretty surface-level. You stab people with it. The most I think it could have going for it is how it can function outside of combat. It's something that can be removed from the user and inserted into other objects to stitch them together, like what All For One does with his mask. As for anything else that can be done with it: -Surge it through the ground to break up terrain -Stitch part of the terrain together for defense -Fire it outwards to counter a close ranged attacker -Torture someone by stabbing it into them -Break them off to fire them at people -Form them together to make large swords -Suddenly push them out to dodge someone -Trap someone by pinning them to something -Make ramshackle repairs to stuff -Augment close combat abilities with claws

Hypertrophy: Now just take everything else I talked about and crank it up to eleven. By growing out the body parts, the Nomu can just both dish out and take far more damage then normal. Just imagine a massive, spring loaded punch, covered in sharp, black spikes. That’s a lot of damage.

This one is difficult to talk about. Aside from how similar these two are, it all comes down to what you value more in a Quirk. "Rivet Stab" is more of a combat power, giving the user a quick and clean way of taking people out, while "Black Whip" has a lot more variety, being more of a jack of all trades kind of ability. However, I do think that "Black Whip" is a notably better Quirk. Yes, "Rivet Stab" is arguably a better combat Quirk given its speed and piercing power, but I think that "Black Whip" has more to offer in and out of combat thanks to its variety. Because it's so much safer to use and is far easier to manipulate, it opens up more opportunities to properly apply it. For example, Izuku placed the black whips inside his body to better protect himself from his own power and other attacks. That’s a really good defensive tool that would be hard to pull off with "Rivet Stab" because of its fragility. What's more, it can become stronger than before with the user's emotions. All the user needs to do is try and control those emotions, and they'll be fine, giving them access to greater power. It simply gives the user more options across the board, especially when compared to the far more simple and rigid "Rivet Stab", making it the superior Quirk in my eyes.

It's funny you say that because it's one of the reason I dislike the Quirk. While it could just be because I prefer Quirk combinations to be interesting compliments of powers and not just completely circumvent drawbacks, I think having it be that way kind of mess with the story. Because it actually brings up a bit of an issue: Why didn't Tomura just erase Izuku or Bakugou? He could have easily done it. If “Rivet Stab” extend the range of touch based Quirks, then he should be able to combo the Quirk with “Decay” and just delete whoever he wants. He could have easily killed any of the heroes with that combination. And don't tell he can't combine Quirks yet. One of the first things we see him do is combine "Air Cannon" and "Radio Waves". For that matter, since "All For One" is based around touch, why not just use that through "Rivet Stab"? It just ends up making more problems.

However, there is one thing I like about the Quirk, and that is how it ties into everything thematically. I commented about "Blade Tooth", but the Quirk shares more similarities with "Black Whip" by the user making black tendrils from their body, which I believe was intentional. It's to show growth of the two characters with how their reach and power is increasing, but the two go about it in different ways. "Black Whip" is far more support oriented, being more flexible and having a smoother look. Meanwhile, "Rivet Stab" is far harsher, featuring hard, jagged lines, and is more oriented towards combat with its piercing power. It's to show how the two are developing in similar ways, but are still going down different paths.

My least favorite Quirk is "Black Hole". It's a basic, overpowered ability that doesn't lend itself any sort of creative thinking on the part of the user. And unlike other abilities in the series, Thirteen isn't fleshed out enough to have the Quirk be interesting from a character or story perspective. I have similar issues with "Half Cold Half Hot" and "Rewind", especially with how they set poor examples for Quirks in the series, but at least those have a wider ranger of applications and a strong connection to the characters' stories to help make it interesting. However, I do think that "Rivet Stab" may be on this list if only because it retroactively killed what I thought was a much cooler ability. Now all we are left with is a boring version of "Blade Tooth".