Fanfic / Oyasumi Midoriya

It is highly recommended that you read the fic before reading this, as much of the story's enjoyment comes from not knowing. Major spoilers are ahead.

The one and only. (Art by Squiped_Mew.)

Midoriya: "Do you trust me?"

Bakugou: "...No."

Midoriya Izuku has a quirk. And yet, he doesn't know what it does.

All he knows is it's something bad.

Really bad.

Oyasumi Midoriya was a My Hero Academia fanfiction that ran from October 18th, 2018, to June 4th, 2020, written by Squiped_Mew. The story loosely follows the manga's plot, at least at first, with most of the changes in the story stemming from Midoriya's quirk, which he isn't quite sure of what it does. What follows is his quest to find out what exactly the true depths of his power are, and finding out some sinister secrets about his classmates along the way.

Sound straightforward enough? Yeah, right.

Oyasumi Midoriya is somewhat known for being both an incredibly confusing work, as well as a frightening one. Much of its horror comes from how much of what exactly is going on is unknown. The other half of the horror comes from the fact that in this fic there is No Fourth Wall, and it is most certainly Played For Horror. Tread lightly, as it does contain quite a bit of disturbing content.

For another work by the same author, see the RWBY fanfic The Tales of Team OMEN.

Due to the nature of the work, all spoilers are unmarked. Be warned!

• Abusive Parents:
  • Just like in canon, Endeavor is still horrible to his son. He ends up getting what's coming to him.
  • Momo's parents are also awful, being emotionally abusive, hitting her, and locking her in a cellar that, unbeknownst to them, is filled with dragonflies (although it is implied that they might know, and simply don't care enough.)
  • Special shoutout to Inko, of all people, being dismissive of her son at best, and outright abandoning him when he gets in legal trouble. It's later shown that Momo's parents hired her to oversee him.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: The lower layers that Three takes Bakugou into. They're implied to be SO strange that Bakugou can't even look at them, and has to wear a blindfold.
• Adaptational Abomination: As has become a bit common with some Hero Academia fics, Midoriya's quirk is shown to possess monstrous abilities. Taken one step further, when it's revealed that he actually is something other than human.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Bakugou, Momo, and Todoroki, the other three main characters, are all hit with this.
  • Bakugou: While he starts out the same pompous jerk that he was in the show, over time he becomes a bit kinder to those around him, probably in no small part to the sobering trip that was the USJ exercise.
  • Momo: She's still a kind honors student, but is given a much bigger role. She's later fleshed out as having known all along about Midoriya's true nature, as her parents sent her to UA to spy on him.
  • Todoroki: While he arguably changes the least out of the three, he still has some development. He goes from the stoic and aloof prodigy that is dead-set on beating Midoriya, to arguably the most emotionally stable of the three, as well as lightening up a significant amount.
• Adaptation Name Change: Izuku and Bakugou use different Hero names than in canon: Izuku uses Morning Cloak, whilst Bakugou uses Minefield.
• Alternate Reality Game: Downplayed. While it has shades of this, with both the links and the fact that the commenters have a direct effect on the events of the story, it never strays too far into our reality.
• Ambiguous Ending: Where exactly did Midoriya go in the end? Why are so many things different? Who is Mikumo? Was any of this even real? It's never explained.
• And I Must Scream: Six, being only a fragment of Midoriya, isn't technically corporeal, and therefore cannot die. Because of this, when All Might attempts to kill him and bury the evidence, Six is stuck buried six feet underground in a junkyard, for presumably months. By the time Six crawls out, he's decayed beyond recognition, being described as almost zombie-like.
  All heads turned to a rotted, blistered claw, grasping onto a rock, pulling itself up, followed by a rotting torso, sand embedded into its skin, skeletal legs, and slimy, disgusting, poisoned blood dripping onto the ground, months of rotting in hot sand apparent. The face of the thing wearing Midoriya's rotted skull smiled, eyes falling out of its skull.
  • The official pictures of him aren't any more pleasant.
• Anti Anti Christ: Despite Midoriya's status as a god/eldritch abomination, with the capability to easily shatter reality if he wanted to, he's genuinely affable and enjoys humans, so much so that he tried to become one.
• Anyone Can Die: Shigaraki, the main villain of the manga, is killed off 19 chapters in.
  • Later on, Aizawa, a prominent character in this story, is shot by accident by the police who were trying to catch Midoriya.
• Arc Symbol: Each for the four main characters. Midoriya is butterflies, Bakugou is wasps, Momo is dragonflies, and Todoroki is crickets.
• Arc Words:
  • "Are you scared of me?"
  • "I wish for..." ^note A variation of this is shown at the end of every animatic.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: What happens to Midoriya at the end.
• Bittersweet Ending: Midoriya goes back to wherever he's from, taking everyone's memories of him with him, save for Bakugou. However, it's shown that because of his non-presence, Todoroki has gotten away from his abusive father, and Momo's parents got a divorce, saving her from having to live with them and deal with their dysfunction. It's also implied that Aizawa is back as well.
• Blinded by the Light:Midoriya's eyes start spewing light during layer 57, blinding everyone around him. In response to this, he nails a sheet of iron over his eyes.
• Body Horror: All over the place.
  • To start, it's shown that at various intervals, Midoriya/One's fingers split open and start spewing some kind of gas. It's never explained.
  • How Shigaraki is killed - his head is literally blown open.
  • When Midoriya's eyes start leaking light, what's the first thing he does? Nail a sheet of iron to his face. While there is somewhat of a discretion shot, that only makes you think about what that might have looked like.
  • Muscular is tricked into backing off of a cliff, causing him to fall on a burnt tree trunk. The way it's described isn't pretty.
    He didn’t even hit the ground, stomach being pierced by the trunk of a half-burnt pine tree, burned branches having sharpened it to a point. Acrid stomach fluid mixed with blood spilled out, painting the tree red and yellow, tubers twisting and punctuating with sickening splats, Muscular crying and screaming all the while.
    After a long time, or no time at all, he stilled, all life bled out of him.
  • And of course, Six in general. While he looked fairly normal during the first few chapters he appeared after All-Might accidentally blew a hole in his stomach. ^note  Although it's implied that Six goaded him into it for his own sick amusement. He's then stuck buried in a junkyard for what is almost six months. It's not pretty when he finally shows up again.
• Brain/Computer Interface: Midoriya/One attempts this, being shown to have holed himself up in his room after Inko abandons him, tangled in wires. He only relents when Aizawa comes to get him.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Six seems to sport this at all times.
• Childish Pillow Fight: Three and Bakugou get into one during layer 21.
• Clone Angst: Midoriya, slowly coming to realize that there are more of them out there, starts to have a decay of his own identity and existence, so much so that he starts going barefoot in order to ground himself in reality. Two doesn't seem too happy about being a clone either.
• Cooldown Hug: Midoriya/One gives one to Bakugou after he finally confronts the former about his plans.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Most certainly fits the category, with the mystery surrounding Midoriya, and the sinister things that unfold around him.
  • Leans into Surreal Horror quite a bit, especially in the animatics.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Virtually the premise of the entire fic.
• Earthy Barefoot Character: Midoriya/One prefers going barefoot whenever possible. It helps keep him grounded.
• Evil Twin: More like evil septuplets. Although some are more benevolent than others, such as Four, who is the most helpful out of the seven.
• Eye Motifs: Very prevalent in the antimatics, as real-life eyes show up rather frequently, especially in Six's.
• Fake Memories: Midoriya/One of his 'childhood.'
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: It starts with simple encoded links at the end of each chapter, but slowly and surely your own presence as a reader is taken into account, as the fic starts encoding links directly into the words of the chapter itself, switching to first person to directly address the reader, as well as addressing the fictional reality of it all.
• Friendship Denial: Bakugou, for much of the story, denies that he has any positive feelings towards Midoriya whatsoever, to the point where Momo has to punch him in order to get him to accept it.
• Gainax Ending: Midoriya vanishes, after splitting back apart to give one final farewell, and suddenly everything is back to normal, but not quite. It's never explained what exactly even happened. The author has stated that it's up to the reader to interpret the ending however they want.
• Hacker Cave: After Inko leaves, Midoriya/One's room turns into this.
• Hate Sink: Nedzu. Subverted when it's shown that he was trying to protect Midoriya from Momo's family.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: As an explicit nod to Serial Experiments Lain, most chapters are called layers.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Implied to be the motive behind why Midoriya tried to become human.
• Inspired by…: "Inspired By Serial Experiments Lain" is one of the fic's tags.
• Literal Split Personality: Big time. One is the cornerstone, Two is emotion (not sympathy, keep that in mind), Three is desire, Four is empathy, Five is intellect, Six is Anger, and Seven is fear.
• Madness Mantra:
  • Layer 8's endnote is an encoded phrase repeated 24 times. Decoded, it reads "brain matter all over the floor", foreshadowing Shigaraki's death at the USJ.
  • Layer 53's endnote, when decrypted, is the word "why" repeated 520 times, followed by the phrase "i feel bad".
• Mind Screw: Oh, so much.
  • Midoriya's very existence is a mind screw in itself. He seems to break every convention of both his world and the world of the fic itself.
  • The scenes in the fic often change and warp dramatically to a disorienting degree.
  • At the end of every chapter, there is often an encoded link to something, usually story-related, that comes from all corners of the internet. The interactivity of that in itself can get pretty screwy when there start being links inserted into the text itself. Spooky stuff.
• Mirror Scare: Midoriya is startled by another version of himself that he sees in the mirror, so much so that he breaks the mirror.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Despite 80 chapters, we never do find out what exactly Midoriya is.
• The Only One I Trust: Three to Bakugou.
• Ret-Gone: What happens to Midoriya at the end of the story.
• Sanity Slippage: One could argue that the very fic itself is going through this. The writing becomes more and more frantic as the story goes on, with some scenes bleeding into each other, chapter titles repeating before glitching out, and the narrator's seeming moments of lucidity.
• Shout-Out: Plenty, though there are three main ones:
  • To start, the whole fanfiction is inspired pretty heavily by Serial Experiments Lain, which also deals with themes of identity through the lens of technology and fiction.
  • Angel's Egg is also referenced, having links to it in the notes, and referring to some of the same questions that it asks about God.
  • Near the end, Penguindrum is also referenced quite a bit, the fate of Midoriya almost paralleling the ending of the show.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Bakugou shuts Three down when he tries to convince Bakugou that Midoriya/One is just like him.
  • The Midoriyas give All for One one of these before they fight.
• The Soulless: Midoriya/One, due to his powers causing his soul to fracture into pieces.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Invoked, subverted, and discussed all at once. It becomes such a blur of those three that sometimes you're not sure which is which.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: While Bakugou and Momo bicker quite a bit, they are still shown to care a lot about each other.

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