I find it both ironic and extremely fitting that the mha fandom has managed to embody a fictional form of discrimination (This sounds insane but hear me out).
Basically, within the mha verse, discrimination against heteromorphs is extremely prevalent societally. It’s systemic, and violent, and overall symbolic of real-world inequality. But, what’s especially important to my point, is that it is minimized. There are many scenes in which non-heteromorph characters make very tone deaf comments or blatantly admit to being ignorant to the existence of said discrimination entirely. To most, the brutality towards heteromorphs only existed as stories or passing news feed. It wasn’t taken seriously, it was normalized. This normalization allowed for the disparity between heteromorphs and nonheteromorphs to not only widen, but to also go unacknowledged.
Many of these trends can also be seen within the fandom itself.
Some examples:
Essentially every fic or post discussing quirkism focuses heavily on either quirklessness or villain-like quirks.
Hardly ever does anyone create content around - let alone acknowledge - heteromorph discrimination despite there being an ENTIRE ARC about it.
Majority of heteromorph characters are very unpopular and seldom included in fandom content despite having extremely interesting and well developed stories/characters (namely shoji & spinner).
The heteromorph characters that actually are popular are the ones that can be considered more ‘human looking’ or ‘sightly’, or just have more subtle mutant traits (ie, Mina & Mirko).
This implies that there is a scale to how ‘heteromorph’ they are, with the prejudice they face corresponding with the perceived degree of their mutant traits (the more traditionally human one appears = the better they are treated). I’m choosing to coin this as heteromorphism (not to be confused with heteromorphobia).
When creators (often fanfic writers) do discuss the theme of quirkism, instead of just writing about a heteromorph character and their struggles, they take those struggles and insert them into the stories of nonheteromorph characters. (For example, people writing Shinsou as being abused on account of his villainous quirk. Has this ever happened in canon? No. Do you know who HAS been abused for his quirk though? Shoji.)
The tag Quirkless Discrimination has over 5,000 fics, the tag Heteromorph Discrimination has 12.
To continue with the Shinsou and Shoji comparison, I chose these two characters as they both have similar if not equal plot significance and screen time, and are both interesting characters with backstories based around quirkism. Despite this, Shinsou’s popularity far outshines that of Shoji. Another example would be Spinner: despite being heavily significant to the plot, any other member of the LOV is far more loved by the fandom in comparison to him.
Heteromorph characters are not unpopular due to a lack of importance or screen time, because many of them have an abundance of both, they are unpopular because people do not view them within the same light as they do characters with more ‘appealing’ appearances. Similarly to canon, the fandom subconsciously minimizes heteromorphs.
