Ask The Tropers

Bumping because they're still at it.

I can say that Hypocrite shouldn't be added unless it's intentional for the work. Lots of people use it to stealth-complain.

(Edit: Posts after this one contain unmarked spoilers for My Hero Academia's manga so proceed with caution).

Toga is certainly a Hypocrite and I do believe it is intentional on the mangaka's end. Toga complains about Heroes not letting her live a "peaceful" "normal" life in which she goes around killing people and is part of a group whose express purpose is to destroy cities and society, killing even more and ending the peaceful, normal lives of everyone else. She always notes wrongdoings towards the League yet doesn't care about how she and the League wrong and hurt everyone else. I guess whether she's a Hypocrite depends on if it has to be in-universe for her to apply for the trope. I'm pretty sure Uraraka calls her out on her hypocrisy during their confrontation but I don't recall her exact wording.

Sent ~vidkid a notifier for their most recent edit on Characters.My Hero Academia Class 1 A, which turns Arch-Enemy into a Zero-Context Example by deleting a huge swath of the text. Also left them the URL to this thread.

Edit: Got a reply thanking me for the message. I offered a bit more context that the issue seemed to be whitewashing / Leather pantsing the League, and directed them here for any further discussion.

Hi guys,

First of all, I would like to apologise.

It was not my intention to do any DIL Ping though I can see how it would come across that way.

A lot of the stuff on the League of Villain page The reason why I deleted or altered much of the stuff on the League of Villain page was not to downplay "negative" aspects of these character but rather because much of those tropes and phrasings genuinely seemed YMMV.

The reason put these under "Alternative Character Interpretation" was that - based on the contents of that section prior to Rebel Falcon's edit (which also included numerous other entries prior to mine) - I mistakenly thought it belonged in that section.

In regards to the hypocrite entry, the reason why I initially deleted the entry was that at the time (as mentioned by mightymewtron) it was a stealth-complaint. I have since then changed my stance on this (though I believe that Moral Myopia would be a more accurate description).

The way I figured it, in light of how Base Breaking the events of this latest arc have been, I thought that it would be a good idea to have things stick to what has been explicitly stated or strongly implied in-story.

Again I would like to sincerely apologise for any contention I may have caused and hope that this response goes some way towards addressing that.

Kind Regards, Vidkid

Thank you for stopping by to discuss this, vidkid.

I understand where you are coming from about the recent arc being divisive but to be rather blunt, many of the things you deleted were explicitly stated or heavily implied. Perhaps some entries could do to be reworded but they are not YMMV, and (again, to be blunt), the interpretation that the League is filled with Well Intentioned Extremists is Fanon. Remember: the League are the antagonists for a reason. They may have Freudian Excuses for what they do, particularly Shigaraki and Toga, but they still do terrible things and are/can be, quite frankly, terrible people. They have negative qualities and have wronged and killed many people without remorse. You can sympathize with them, but please do not whitewash them, take a hacksaw to their entries by removing huge chunks of "negativity", or delete parts of other people's Moments entries because they put the League in a negative light.

In the future, if you think an entry is YMMV or complain-y and should be deleted or edited, you might want to consider talking about it on the discussion page first. This will allow others to give their input and can lessen the number of delete, added by another person who thinks the trope applies, delete situations.

ATT can also be good to get feedback, as Discussion pages aren't always checked.

Hi Emerald Sky,

Thank you very much for your response.

I can see where you are coming from in terms of wanting to prevent whitewashing. I can imagine that it is something that must crop up on a regular basis and be very frustrating to deal with.

Thank you very much for your advice regarding possible YMMV, I will be sure to do that going forward.

Regarding the subject at hand, you make an exceptionally strong case for your perspective. However please may beseech you to consider the possibility that you may be mistaken in a few key areas.

In contrast to series in which the central conflict between the protagonists and antagonists have been overall portrayed in terms of Black-and-White Morality or Black-and-Gray Morality (Manga/Naruto and Manga/Hellsing spring foremost to mind respectively, as well as the numerous DC Comics and Marvel Comics franchises), I would argue that BNHA seems to be taking a similar route akin to Attack on Titan where the conflict is initially portrayed in terms of black and white but gradually transitions into more of a Morality Kitchen Sink by the end.

I acknowledge the possibility that I could be wrong in this judgement, however based on previous precedent within the series it seems unlikely at this stage.

For general evidence I submit the following to the honorable members of the jury:

The frequency with which Horikoshi has either touched on morally complex subject matter or placed his characters in morally complex situations has increased over time (The fact that the majority of the decisive moments in the series seem to be predominantly based on in-story ethics).

In contrast to how the series initially began, Horikoshi has increasingly gone to great lengths to humanize his primary antagonists and the thought process behind their actions (Compare how the villains have been portrayed in-story pre-USJ Arc versus post-Internship Arc)

To conclude, it would appear that Horikoshi's intent is to increasingly add moral nuance to the series as it continues to progress.

My reasoning for “whitewashing” the LoV page is that each of the edits which were deleted seemed to be based more on the respective editor’s personal opinion on the character’s morality rather than how that morality has been presented in-story thus far.

I would like to emphasize that I could be mistaken about all this and am more than happy to concede should I prove to be wrong.

Thank you very much for putting up with this incredibly wordy response. Hopefully it doesn’t come across as too garbled.

I look forward to your response.

Kind Regards, vidkid

Regarding some of the miscellaneous edits mentioned:

• Using the Well-Intentioned Extremist trope in Shigaraki's page was mistake on my part based on inaccurate understanding of what the trope entailed. For this I apologise.

• As mentioned previously I believe that Moral Myopia is a more accurate trope to use on Toga's character page than Hypocrite as the trope implies moral insincerity rather than situational bias - the latter of which seeming more in line with her character as well as the general Individualism vs. Collectivism themes of the series

• Regarding the edit to the 288, the reason for this was that it was widely speculated that Toga had killed Camie Utsushimie in order to use her blood during the Provisional License Exam Arc before later turning out to not be the case. With the only evidence we have to go off in this case being Uraraka's assumption (which is granted a reasonable one) it seems to me more of a Fridge Horror situation unless/until we get further confirmation

And it just hit me now that I essentially just wrote a short essay about My Hero Academia

My god... I really have become a fanboy...

(One of us. One of us.)

Thank you for your response. It was an interesting read.

As always, I am going to be blunt: I think you're giving the League a bit too much credit. Despite Horikoshi's "humanizing" of the League, at the end of the day, the League is still selfishly motivated and destructive. They are not fighting to right the wrongs of their society; They are lashing out and hurting any people in their way because they (the League) were hurt. Even Shigaraki, with his new "revelations" about Hero Society, is still motivated by selfishness and a desire to hurt and destroy because of his own past. It's all about him and his hurt. It's the classic "I was wronged so I'm going to take it out on everyone else, even people who had nothing to do with it. Oh, you Heroes hurt your families? I'm going to hurt even more families. Look what you made me do, Heroes. This is your fault and society's, not mine. You brought this on yourselves." Nuance or not, flawed Hero Society or not, the League are still selfishly-motivated antagonists who only care for their own and have now killed thousands of people without an ounce of remorse. That may change as the series progresses but, for now, saying Horikoshi intends to add more moral nuance to them is speculation.

With that being said, many of those edits were not based on personal opinions in my eyes, though some of them could do to be reworded.

• I went to the page for Hypocrite and Moral Myopia is actually a subtrope so you may be correct that Toga applies for it rather than Hypocrite overall.

• Regardless of whether Toga killed her or not, Uraraka and the reader believe that she did at this point. While Uraraka may be incorrect, her word and Toga's previous actions are enough of an implication for it to be Nightmare Fuel. In other words, to remove that aspect removes part of the Nightmare Fuel of the scene: Uraraka believes a serial killer killed someone just to talk with her.

Hi Emerald Sky,

Thank you very much for your considered response. The internet isn't exactly the best of places for having these kinds of discussions (at least without becoming more toxic than an athlete's armpit), so I really appreciate it.

You make a solid point in regards to the Nightmare Fuel page. A major part of what makes that scene so tense is the possibility that it did indeed take place. Perhaps a good middle ground may be to frame it as Nothing Is Scarier or in terms of Uraraka's perspective (from which we witness the event from)? What are your thoughts?

In regards to the League of Villains overall, I think there may have been a miscommunication in regards to the point I was trying to make.

Due to the heavy themes of Individualism vs. Collectivism within the story and Horikoshi's previous history of deliberately divisive plot points, it is not unreasonable to believe that whether or not Shigaraki and his compatriots (barring Dabi of course) are Well-Intentioned or Not So Well-Intentioned extremists has been likewise been set up as a Broken Base - with the fact that the fanbase has been decidedly split over this point lending credence to that idea.

Personally, I agree with you that the League seem to lean more towards the Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist end of the spectrum (though more for reasons of myopic individualism than pure selfishness as it seems more in line with the themes of the series). But that is our opinion on their morals and motivations, and there are just as many people who vocally hold differing opinions on the matter.

Regardless of which side ends up being correct in the future (if at all), scenarios like these seem to me to be exactly what YMMV was created for. Which was the primary motivation for the edits I made.

With all that said, outright deleting those entries was not the wisest course of action in hindsight, as it gave the appearance of whitewashing the page, which was emphatically not my intention.

Rewording those entries like you said would indeed be a much better means of approach.

Once again I look forward to your response in the hopes that we can come to an amicable resolution.

Kind Regards,

vidkid

Ugh, the fact that this response is barely shorter than my previous one is starting to make me question my poor life choices

(One of us. One of us. One of us--)

Phrasing the Uraraka and Toga scene with some Nothing Is Scarier may be the way to go. If the woman's death is confirmed the entry can be adjusted to reflect that and if it turns out she's alive, the Nightmare Fuel aspect of the scene still remains.

We should probably head over to the My Hero Academia - Tomura Shigaraki and My Hero Academia - League of Villains pages to discuss the individual entries and their possible re-addition and/or rewording. That way discussion notifications will show up in Following for others to see and add their own thoughts. (Plus we don't want the discussion here to get too long). I'm not that active on this site on weekends so I'll most likely be back Monday or Tuesday to discuss this further.

Genuinely, thank you for being civil. The internet is a flamey place.

Giving a thumbs-up just because I'm glad to see something like this worked out in civil and reasonable fashion.

(So much fire)

Awesome, just made new entries in each of their respective discussion pages.

Due to real-life obligations I'm usually just a casual troper at best (except when something catches my attention), but I will contribute whenever I can.