a word for 'bad miracle'
is an ongoing My Hero Academia fanfic by shingekicorn
. Eight years after the events of the series, Midoriya Izuku's deadbeat father Hisashi is killed in a car crash alongside his second wife, leaving behind an eleven-year-old daughter. The story has been published on Archive of Our Own since October 2024.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Affair? Blame the Bastard: Defied by Izuku and Inko, as made clear when Izuku stands up for Hinata during the meeting to discuss her custody and Inko praises him for it outside: "What they were doing to that little girl was cruel. I'm glad you didn't stand for it." Unfortunately
, since most of her family didn't see it that way given how the tabloids likely would have blamed her for Hisashi's actions, Hinata herself isn't clear on this regarding Inko at present, leaving her terrified of causing conflict between the three of them. - Asshole Victim: No one has a good word to say about Hisashi after his history of Parental Abandonment is exposed, with even Hinata recognising the disgusting extent of his web of lies and continually struggling to reconcile this with the father she thought she knew.
- Athletically Challenged: The kids at Hinata's school, Sukaiu Oka, definitely qualify. Hinata mentions how in gym class she tried to kick a soccer ball and the girl she was partnered with screamed and ran off, and that she wouldn't trust them with a game of skeeball.
- Amicable Exes: Izuku and Ochako.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Izuku/Deku has a reputation as an All-Loving Hero, but he gets scary when his anger at the Umino family's treatment of his mother and his sister boils over. The narration mentions that this causes a smell of ozone in the air.
- Big Fish in a Bigger Ocean: Michiko notes that this applies to most of her classmates, who are clearly struggling with not being the smartest person in the room anymore.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Izuku asks his sidekicks if any of them had a good time in Middle School. Hoverfly and Yuki-onna answer "No" without going into detail. Damian casually reveals that he was offered blow in the bathroom once. When the others stare at him, he defensively adds, "I didn't take it!"
- Broad Strokes: The premise was conceived some time before the ending of the manga and isn't completely compliant to the final chapters: while Izuku did lose One For All at the end of the war, he did not have a long stint as a teacher after graduating before returning to the field, and has been running his own agency for some time when the story starts.
- Brutal Honesty: Tsuyu is typically blunt about how Izuku is getting in over his head by taking in Hinata, even while reassuring him that he's objectively doing the right thing.Tsuyu: Your heart's always in the right place. You're a little idiot for jumping the gun the way you did, but knowing you, you'll do your best to not make a total mess of things. That's why I'm here. I don't really want to see you fail. You're doing the right thing, for stupid reasons. Just accept it. Trying to act like you aren't won't do anyone any favors.
- Bystander Syndrome: The majority of Amane's family, including her brother and his wife, are all too willing to dodge any responsibility for Hinata because of the scandal that Hisashi's actions could attach to her, with said brother even proposing giving her up to the foster system. The few exceptions include Amane's mother Miori and her sister Yuzuki, both of whom openly want to take Hinata but accurately believe they can't give her what she needs right now.There's a child suffering in their midst but it isn't their problem. It isn't their concern. There's a potential social consequence to holding a hand out to her, so they won't take it. There's no consequence at all to washing their hands of the entire situation and claiming it can’t be helped.
- Charm Person: Hinata's classmate Takashima has a Quirk that makes everyone pay attention to him when he's talking. Not agree with him or enjoy listening, mind you, though he can still be interrupted.
- Child Prodigy: Hinata, who's managed to get into one of the best middle schools for STEM subjects in the country, even scoring fifth in her year on the entrance exam. She's notably far less arrogant about it than most of her classmates, as she's never particularly liked adults treating her differently from her friends.
- Clark Kenting: Izuku demonstrates to a disbelieving Aoba that no one ever recognises him as Deku when he's in civilian clothing, though if he's in the presence of another Hero someone will usually make the connection. He compares it to Tony Hawk Syndrome, explaining that no one knew he was if he didn't have a skateboard. This ultimately proves to be Tempting Fate when Izuku is recognised by one of Hinata's classmates, apparently because of his backpack.
- Entertainingly Wrong: When Izuku calls up his sidekick Damian for help in burying the story about his father and sister, he initially explains himself so badly that Damian thinks he had an ex-girlfriend dump a baby on him.
- Entertainment Above Their Age: Hinata has been keeping secret stashes of horror movies and explicit music CDs all over her room against her mother's wishes. Izuku, recognising the futility of taking them away now, promises to make space for them in his apartment.
- Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: One of the main reasons Izuku struggles to help Hinata with her grief: "For all that he's infamous for his empathy and understanding, he just can't carve out any power in his body to have anything but loathing and apathy for someone that his sister probably does miss in some capacity."
- Famous, Famous, Fictional: Hinata's horror movie collection contains a mix of actual horror franchises - Alien, Saw, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - and fictional ones, some made in the post-Quirk era.
- First Day of School Episode: Chapter 4 focuses on Hinata's first few days at middle school and her struggle to get through them without missing too much due to dissociation.
- Forgot Their Own Birthday: Hinata is shocked when Izuku prepares a birthday surprise for her, having forgotten her birthday was coming up at all. This leads her to break down in tears in front of him, having managed to keep her grief to herself since she moved in.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Mineta, as usual. While he's apparently found some success as a pro-hero, he's not shown to be part of the Class 1A group-chat, and he's still enough of a creep that when Izuku contemplates the possibility of him meeting his middle-school-aged sister, he shreds his contact details (which he only even had for work reasons) without another thought.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: When Izuku brings home an Ikea shark, a gift from one of his sidekicks, it cheers Hinata up quite a bit (despite how poorly stuffed it actually is, which she plans to fix). She calls it Bruce.
- Gyaru Girl: Asano Michiko. The author's note describes her as "Elle Woods as a gyaru with a degree in molecular chemistry."
- Hypocrite: All over the place in the scene where Amane's family discuss Hinata's custody: as much as they condemn Hisashi's abandonment of his first family, Amane's brother and his wife's first and only suggestion is to do the same by giving Hinata up to a childcare facility. While one of the others objects to this - "Think of the shame of leaving her there to rot! What will the neighbors think?" - she's very clearly not willing to do any more for her. Likewise, when Izuku first offers to take Hinata, one of the unspecified relatives steps forward and objects to him involving himself, despite obviously having no desire to do better. Izuku calls them out on it: "Two seconds ago, you seemed perfectly fine with leaving her in a facility to rot with the rest of this country's orphans. Now you want to complain because I want to help her? You either want her away from your family or you don't."
- Innocently Insensitive: After word gets out about Hinata and Deku being related, most of her classmates display a complete lack of tact in asking her about it, even after a press release from his agency reveals that she was taken in by him after losing her parents.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Unsympathetic as they are, the family members who focus on Hinata being undeservedly impacted by Hisashi's scandal, even potentially being blamed for being born, aren't entirely wrong, a point tacitly acknowledged by Izuku when he takes steps to bury the story immediately after making the decision to take her in (albeit for her sake rather than his own).
- Last Disrespects: Once the truth about Hisashi's past is revealed, the funeral quickly turns into a gossip session, with most of Amane's extended family blaming Inko for it coming out, calling her and Izuku "disrespectful" for attending. Amane's mother Miori is among the exceptions, defending Inko's right to be there and shaming the family for their conduct. For Izuku's part, while he has no respect to pay for the father who abandoned him, he takes time to burn incense for Amane and expresses nothing but sympathy for her nicer relatives, only snapping back at the gossips when one of them accuses Inko of wanting to bleed the family dry of compensation money: "We don't need a deadbeat's money."
- Lethal Harmless Powers: One of Izuku's favourite horror films, Akuma no Ikebana, features a killer whose quirk could only summon flower petals. Izuku loves it specifically because it went against a trend of slasher villains being Quirkless.
- Little Miss Snarker: Hinata has her moments, in particular when Izuku walks into the apartment with an exasperated expression after a phone call to Rody.Hinata: Did something happen?
Izuku: No. My friends are just really, really annoying. Do you wanna get some fresh air and walk to the conbini?
Hinata: Are your friends bad enough you need a drink to recover?
God, where are they teaching kids comebacks these days? - Locked Out of the Loop: Katsuki mutes the Class 1A group chat (out of irritation with Kaminari's memeposting) right before Izuku starts updating them on the Hinata situation and somehow never finds out about her from Eijiro (likely due to not paying attention, since Eijiro did say that "Midoriya can bring'er home" at one point), only learning that she exists after he invites himself into Izuku's apartment with beer bottles the night she moves in with him.
- Misery Poker: A variant when Shouto and Tenya try to reassure Izuku about the job he's doing, with the former making the obvious comparison to his own upbringing:Tenya: I commend your dedication, though! You're taking to the challenge without hesitation!
Izuku: That's less me being a stellar human being and more me knowing if I drop the ball too much I'm probably going to screw a kid up for life.
Shouto: Still better than a lot of other parents.
Izuku: Stop using your terrible childhood to leverage arguments.
Shouto: No. - Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Downplayed by Izuku, who assures Aoba that he's not going to smack talk his father in front of Hinata, and sticks to it after she moves in, at least until she herself brings up the lengths that he went to to keep his secrets. Otherwise subverted, by Izuku and pretty much all of Amane's family.
- Nice Girl: Makino and Michiko stand out as this among Hinata's classmates, in different ways, being the only ones to have much empathy for what she has to deal with. Kimberly also makes a decent first impression when she asks for advice about camping near her hometown.
- Not Helping Your Case: When Izuku explains to Shouto why he's refusing to make him one of Hinata's emergency contacts:Izuku: Shouto, you are one of the worst enablers I have ever met in my life.
Shouto: I'm not an enabler!
Izuku: If you got a call saying Hinata got into a fight at school, what would you do?
Shouto: Well, did she win? [There's a long Beat where no one answers him, and he looks between them both before he realizes exactly what he just asked.] …oh. - Only Sane Employee: Yukimoto Yuri stands out as this among Deku's sidekicks, most of whom come across as some flavour of Bunny-Ears Lawyer. Izuku himself treats her as The Dreaded when he returns to the agency and learns that she's upset about him taking leave without adequately explaining himself.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Umino Miori, who not only has to deal with her daughter's untimely death but her son-in-law's dirty laundry being aired in the middle of their joint funeral.
- Paparazzi: Given Izuku's status as a pro hero, he has to deal with them on occasion, like when he goes out to get some hot pot with his friends and Hinata.
- Parents as People: Hinata always had a tense relationship with Amane compared to Hisashi, due to having few shared interests and resenting her mother's efforts to turn her into a Proper Lady. Even so, it's acknowledged by Hinata and others that she never would have stood for Hisashi's cruelty if she'd known about it.
- Precision F-Strike: From Izuku, when he fills in his sidekicks on Hinata's situation and how determined he is to keep it from becoming a scandal: "I'm stressing to you all how much you need to keep your fucking mouths shut about this."
- Promotion to Parent: Once it becomes apparent that Hinata's family are either genuinely unable to take care of her in the long term or unwilling to even try for selfish reasons, Izuku steps up and promotes himself, making a good case despite having only met her today.Izuku: I'm an adult. I have a well-paying job. I have a high security home. I have a support network that can help me—Hinata starts middle school soon anyway, right? She's self-sufficient for daily tasks. By all means, this is the perfect solution for all of you. Especially if you're just so concerned about scandals; wouldn't it be better for the tabloids to camp outside my door while you all get to run away like cowards, without admitting you're involved? [Beat] I'm willing to take her. I have the means to do it. If things were fair and just, we would have known each other already, but we don't, and that's not great, but do any of you have a better solution or are you just going to keep dodging any responsibility in looking after the child who needs help?
- Required Secondary Powers: Discussed heavily in Chapter 5 by Hinata's new doctor, who explains how people's bodies start to mutate long before their quirks actually come in.
- Riddle for the Ages: The question of how Hisashi managed to marry another woman without formally divorcing Inko and keep either of them from finding out for twelve years is described this way. As is the question of why he kept Inko's contact details at all.
- Secretly Selfish: Izuku recalls that Inko only picked up on this side of Hisashi after he'd left, in particular his subtle tendency toward backhanded compliments: "When it all came down to it, the only way he could ever uplift another person was by complimenting what it is they do for him."
- Serious Business:
- When Izuku phones up Sato asking for advice on baking an opera cake for Hinata's birthday, he immediately and loudly orders Izuku out of the kitchen ("I'm not in my kitchen!") and insists on taking over cake duties, convinced that Izuku will burn his building down if he attempts it.
- School Clubs Are Serious Business, and Sukaiu Oka Academy is no exception to this. Hinata admits that, despite knowing which club she wants to join, she doesn't feel ready to commit to it given what she's going through.
- Shared Family Quirks: Just like Izuku, Hinata has a tendency to mutter when there's a subject she's interested in, even putting her thumb to her chin.
- A Shared Suffering: Izuku draws a parallel between his abandonment by Hisashi, as well as how he was treated for being quirkless, and how Hinata will feel about her family pushing her away because of Hisashi's actions.Hinata isn't him. She isn't him by a long shot—she seems to have grown up not having any of the problems he did. A completely different childhood for a completely different child.
But he knows exactly what the heartbreak of being abandoned feels like, and he knows it will hurt her just as much.
He remembers being twelve and alone. He remembers how crushing it was. How alienating. How much he'd wanted it all to end, even if it just meant getting scraps from the uncaring universe. He can't help but imagine that feeling will be so much worse for someone who hasn't grown up used to it. - Shout-Out:
- As confirmed by the author, the title is a double one of these, referencing both a lyric from Fall Out Boy's "Heartbreak Feels So Good" and a line from the film Nope.
- Like the manga, the fic has a fair bit of Star Wars Theme Naming, including Naberi Park (Naberrie was Padme's surname before she was elected Queen) and Sukaiu Oka Academy (Skywalker).
- Izuku and his sidekicks talk about their earliest experiences of learning to cook at around Hinata's age, in what appears to be a reference to the memetic "You guys are getting paid?" scene from We're the Millers. (Specifically, Party Animal is shocked that the other three's parents taught them how to cook at all.)
- A flashback in chapter 7 has Hinata and her friend Seigo making the Smurf Eggs argument from The Venture Bros..
- Smash Cut: Played for drama in Chapter 4, which reveals that Hinata has been losing large chunks of the day, even getting all the way from her school to Izuku's apartment with no memory of the trip.
- Sticky Fingers: Aoba brings up the possibility of someone stealing from Amane's vinyl record collection and mentions a distant cousin who both figuratively and literally has a quirk called Sticky Fingers. Izuku calls this the worst Self-Fulfilling Prophecy he's ever heard.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Hinata feels this way about her fellow classmates at Sukaiu Oka, once they decided to hound her with questions about Deku. A sentiment shared by Asano Michiko, who feels that what they asked her was either not cool or absolutely braindead.
- Tall Poppy Syndrome: Many of Hinata's classmates at Sukaiu Oka show signs of this when they learn that she just studied at home instead of going to cram school to place fifth in the entrance exam, acting like she's lying because they can't imagine her beating so many other kids otherwise.
- There Are No Therapists: Defied Trope. As a result of the war, especially everything that came out about the Todoroki family, pro-heroes who reach the top 100 or who deal with certain types of cases while working underground are required to attend therapy or risk losing their licenses, and Izuku himself is no exception. Indeed, he has a generally positive relationship with his therapist Dr Aruhara, valuing her advice even when it verges on Brutal Honesty regarding his self-sacrificing nature and the possibility that taking in Hinata may set back the progress he's made. But much like in real world Japan, there is still a stigma against therapy which Izuku and most of his class had to grow past when they were younger and which Hinata exhibits when Izuku brings up the idea of taking her to grief counselling.
- This Explains So Much: Hinata tells Izuku that her best friend Seigo is a big fan of him, having shown her videos of Deku's fights for years. She then reveals that Hisashi hated Seigo talking about Deku in the house, making the connection that he already knew the son he abandoned was a national hero and was scared of his lies being exposed.Hinata: He always hated hearing about heroes. Banned us from talking about them. Mom and I thought he was just messed up from the war and didn't trust you guys anymore, but that wasn't it at all, was it?
- Trauma Button: While convincing her to try grief counselling, Izuku opens up to Hinata about his struggles with PTSD, including how he was once sent into a panic attack triggered by Katsuki locking a door behind him.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Hinata, when she breaks down crying on the floor in Izuku's apartment at the end of chapter 4.
- Valley Girl: Asano Michiko talks and acts like this (with frequent use of Like Is, Like, a Comma in her dialogue and the third-person narration when she's around), though subverts the stereotype by scoring the highest on her school's Entrance Exam. She's not especially well-liked as a result.
- You Are Not Alone: When Hinata breaks down in tears upon realising that she forgot her birthday, Izuku does his best to reassure her.Hinata: What's wrong with me?! How could I forget something like that?!
Izuku: [kneels down to her level] Hey. Hey, Peanut, look at me. It's okay.
Hinata: It's not okay!
Izuku: Yes, it is! You know why it's okay? Because I told you, remember? I'm here. I'm here to handle the rest for you. It's okay. I'll remember as many times as you need until you're okay again. You're not okay right now. And it's awful. I know it's awful. But I'm here to take care of the hardest parts for you, so you can keep on being not okay while you figure things out. That's what I'm here for. That's what I promised your grandmother I'd do. I'm not going anywhere. So it's okay. Be as messy as you want, cry as much as you need. I'll take care of it. - You Never Did That for Me: Somewhat downplayed when Izuku looks over the Midoriya/Umino family photos while helping to pack up the house. While Izuku does feel anger that Hisashi had it in him to actually be a good family man but didn't consider Izuku or Inko worth his time, he never shows any resentment of Hinata or Amane for it, if anything feeling considerably more anger that Hisashi kept him and Hinata apart for so long. In any event, there have also been several hints that Hisashi didn't improve that much with Hinata.
