* / KING OF CURSES VESSEL

Okay so I’ve been having SO MANY FEELINGS? about Izuku since this arc freaking started. Honestly, it’s really easy to see Deku’s complete and utter spiral into how he’s behaving now since the freaking Nighteye Agency Arc. After everything that happened with Chisaki, everything that happened to Eri, to Mirio, to Sir Nighteye - there’s absolutely no surprise in him behaving how he is now. Izuku is isolating himself in an attempt to further protect those around him. Ever since he’s been able to talk to the previous holders of OFA, he’s had responsibility after responsibility dumped on his shoulders -- hell, even All Might has been putting a ton of responsibility on him. So with all this World Saving Heroic Idealisms and Responsibility dumped on his shoulders day after day, followed, then, by the people around him - attempting to help him - getting hurt in irreparable ways?

Nighteye died. Mirio lost his quirk. And while they managed to save Eri - it took so long to actually be able to save her from Chisaki’s shadow, from the horrid things he put her through. These are all severely traumatic things that happened because they decided to believe and help Izuku in this fight.

They, of course, were not wrong about this, about their belief in him and his ability to save as many people as he sets his mind to. But Izuku, a being built on the idea that everything is inherently on your shoulders, you must save the world, is, of course, going to internalize the pain others are going through in his proximity. Because what kind of hero could he be, if he cannot even save the people around him??

Flash, then, to Bakugou in the war arc. When he hit Izuku out of the way in order to save him and ended up injured in just the very same way All Might was all those years ago that now make it so that AM can’t even fully function as a person - who knows the repercussions of that that Bakugou is going to have to face. And, in that moment, the one who had always wanted to WIN was now the one who was doing the SAVING, yknow the part that Izuku had always prioritized in terms of being a hero.

So now, Izuku is isolating, pushing anyone and everyone away in hopes of actually saving them. He has not, in any way, forgotten how important his friends and loved ones are. His family and friends are the most important thing to him, and Izuku has come to realize that if it’s obvious that they’re important to him, then their lives are just going to be used in the game against him. And he cannot handle that. 

Izuku is, intrinsically, just like his mother - soft-hearted. He cannot handle losing his loved ones, losing the people he cares about. Every single person in 1-A, All Might, his mom, any other Pro he has worked with in proximity, like Endeavor. They are people he wants, desperately, to protect and if he can separate himself from them then they have a much bigger chance at survival than they would if they were closer to him. 

Izuku’s descent into what he, essentially, is now, started years ago, I’m not sure on the exact chapter, but it’s when he decides that he’s no longer going to cry. Crying is just a release of emotions - does not have to be sadness, doesn’t even have to be anger, it can be elation (when he was crying and thanking AM on the beach, asking if he was blessed to be given OFA). Any extreme emotion that needs a sudden release can be released by crying. So when Izuku finally decides to stop crying? That’s when he stopped being so forward about how he was feeling, when he started to put a six-foot wall between himself and how others would perceive how he’s feeling. Just because he stopped outwardly crying, doesn’t mean that he stopped feeling any emotion he ever felt less intensely. It just means he stopped expressing it in the same way. 

I expected Izuku to descent into this version of himself. The isolationist, the one who wants so desperately to protect everyone that he possibly can that he’ll do so at the expense of himself and his own wellbeing. Izuku doesn’t, and hasn’t ever, prioritized himself - thus why he was always so okay with being the one who got hurt. He used his own body as a battering ram in order to get through to Todoroki during the Sports Festival and then used the knowledge that Todoroki wasn’t actually the one who hurt him to push him even further. He looked worse than Todoroki did, but that doesn’t mean that Todoroki was winning. (He did win the fight, obviously, but in the battle of wills? Izuku won out. And that’s the whole reason why Todoroki can use his fire now without all the anger behind it.)