"Your admittance to U.A seemed like a blessing from above, but you find yourself having conflicted feelings when you discover that your soulmate is violent, cruel, and seemingly incapable of love."
—The summary.
Speak
is a My Hero Academia Self-Insert Fic written by Kikyo851 on Ao3.
The fanfic involves an abusive soulmate pairing in which the reader is paired off with Bakugou Katsuki.
Speak provides examples of:
- Adaptational Jerkass: Bakugou Katsuki gets this, natch. In canon, his abuse is mainly directed at Midoriya. Here, he actually verbally abuses the reader and eventually ends up making her cry, then abandoning her.
- Beauty Is Bad: Bakugou is noted to be both handsome and violent. Not the best combination.
- Character Development: Bakugou eventually must learn to not abuse the reader (as much as he did before).
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Bakugou engages in this constantly, which is supposed to be cute.
- Destructive Romance: One between the reader and Bakugou, obviously! It actually ends up developing into something more healthy, albeit with Bakugou's characterization completely changed to make it happen.
- Easily Forgiven: Absolutely! The reader ends up forgiving Bakugou for treating her like crap for at least half the story, if not more.
- Extreme Doormat: Downplayed, but still there. The story revolves around the reader not being able to speak to her "lover".
- Fetishized Abuser: Bakugou routinely threatens and yells at his destined lover, firing off expletives more than his canon counterpart would. He's the reader's soulmate and this behavior is portrayed as cute. Oh, and he's redeemed without the fanfic exploring the impact of his toxic behavior on the reader. You do the math.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: The reader has terrible insecurity issues, which isn't great when being paired with an abuser.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: More jerk than anything else, really. Once he overcomes that, he ends up becoming a out-of-character Nice Guy to the reader.
- Kick the Dog: The reader often tries to be nice to Bakugou, to which he promptly starts swearing at her.
- No Social Skills: Bakugou. It's most noticeable during his POV chapter during the Sports Festival, where he actually reveals he doesn't want to talk like this in his out-of-character narration.
- Properly Paranoid: Once the reader's father finds out who she's been seeing and how he's been verbally abusing her, the father acts incredibly cold to Bakugou. It's played off as a cute rivalry.
- Romanticized Abuse: Definitely, given its a romance between Bakugou and a regular girl.
- Shrinking Violet: The reader is sometimes a downplayed version of this, which infuriates Bakugou.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Bakugou is this, moreso than in canon.
- This Loser Is You: The reader, basically. She has the backbone of a wet noodle.
- Troubled, but Cute: Bakugou is meant to be seen as this and fails miserably.
