au where everything is the same but agatha is fucking ripped from assisting with the clays mechanic shop
gil falls for her when she’s sleepwalking and he’s in her way so she just. picks him up. gets what she’s after. puts him down again. goes back to work.
im not even remotely surprised he’d be into that
I’m pretty sure she already has muscles already from occasionally helping, but I mean she would definitely have much more from helping all the time.
yeah i mostly chalk up her difficulty dealing with zeethas training as zeethas training being like…crossfit from hell…and i don’t really think she’s OUT of shape but like. shredded!agatha. 👌👌👌👌
shredded!Agatha would make her beating up Martellus so much better
oh my GOD, yes
she also kicks off an exercise craze in paris. its fashionable to be as swole as agatha heterodyne.
Gil would exaggerate the Mechanicsburg statues so much. very unrealistic expectations for the poor Paris girls who are just trying to look good. (idek what Tarvek’s reaction would be to ridiculously ripped Agatha statues. he knows that it’s Gil’s kink. then again it’s also his so…..)
the thing is, you don’t get over ten years of abuse in a few months.
since the beginning of the manga, Izuku flinches whenever he’s in the same room as Bakugou. he admires Bakugou’s determination, yes, but that doesn’t make all those years of being bullied, abused, and put down any less traumatizing.
like. i love Bakugou. everyone knows i love Bakugou. i’ve probably written a short book’s length worth of meta about him and his character growth and development and where i think he’ll go in the future. but Bakugou seriously fucked up with Izuku. he emotionally and physically abused this kid for ten years–Izuku is 15. that’s over half his life.
Izuku has been abused for longer then he hasn’t.
Bakugou literally tells Izuku he should just commit suicide. and it is 100% not treated as a joke.
1) you should never joke about suicide, and 2) what the fuck. this is the kind of shit Izuku has put up with for his entire life. even the first page of the first chapter, we’re introduced to little Bakugou beating up little Izuku.
Bakugou just walks by and Izuku is scared out of his mind and shaking. Izuku even says that he’s gotten used to cowering before Bakugou. he’s been conditioned to do this.
just look at what his mental picture of Bakugou is
poor boy is terrified. and it doesn’t end there.
again, because of Bakugou, Izuku is shaking. Bakugou isn’t even in the room, but Izuku knows that Bakugou will immediately attack him.
hell, Izuku even outright admits that he hates Bakugou. he admires him, yes. but that doesn’t nullify the many, many different ways Bakugou has made Izuku feel like he’s worthless (which includes calling him the name “Deku”).
Izuku gets a little better around Bakugou after this, since Bakugou doesn’t do much to him since the Heroes vs. Villains training exam. Bakugou would rather avoid him than interact with him, which is a relief for Izuku.
but again, ten years of emotional and physical abuse doesn’t just disappear after a few months of relative peace.
hell, this one isn’t even directed at Izuku and he’s still shaking because of Bakugou’s tone of voice.
that shit stays with you. there is a reason Izuku is so shy and hesitant, and it’s largely due to Bakugou bullying him and shooting him down constantly. thanks to All Might and his time at UA tho, Izuku’s confidence is growing, but when it come to Bakugou… it’s still very complicated.
antipathy: a deep-seated feeling of dislike; aversion.
Izuku wants to beat Bakugou and is very inspired by him, but he’s still largely scared of him. and he really does hate Bakugou. it’s mentioned more than once.
the difference is that Izuku likes avoid conflict unless it’s necessary.
and god. i love Bakugou. i love him so much ok. but i refuse to ignore all the shit he did to Izuku.
Izuku is just walking by and Bakugou screams a death threat at him and Izuku tries to get the fuck outta there as fast as possible.
while i’m certain most of Bakugou’s threats are hyperbolic at best, it’s still feels incredibly horrible to have stuff like that thrown at you.
Bakugou addresses Izuku here, and first flinches. then Bakugou moves forward SLIGHTLY and Izuku BACKS AWAY. Bakugou isn’t even close to him right now, he’s all the way across the room. but Izuku still flinches and backs away.
there are several things i wanna point out here.
Izuku is stuttering. like. consistently, he is stuttering, because he’s scared of Bakugou’s reaction, even tho he knows he has to do this in order to pass the test. he has to do this, but he really, really, REALLY does not want to.
second, Izuku mentions that when dealing with Bakugou, everything he thinks is bad about himself comes back to him. his self confidence drops. again, this is directly due to all those years of abuse and bullying by Bakugou. i’m sure any time Izuku contradicted something Bakugou said, or tried to get him to do anything, he reacted with violence and jeers. which leads to…..
god, this whole scene.
Izuku isn’t even doing anything. he’s asking Bakugou to cooperate with him in order to pass the test. but he implies one thing that sets Bakugou off (that he can’t beat someone, as in, he’s not strong enough to do so) and Bakugou fucking attacks him. he HITS HIM IN THE FACE WITH HIS GRANDE THING.
i don’t care why Bakugou did this, it was totally uncalled for. that was just absolutely uncalled for. which was the point of the scene. to show just how uncalled for this action was, because Bakugou’s a goddamn bundle of emotional issues and a damn good chunk of them are centered around Izuku.
Bakugou gets better after this fight, thank goodness. he was forced to put aside his pride and work with Izuku to win. the narrative is slowly, but surely, chipping away at his pride and his negative behavior. every time Bakugou does something bad, the narrative punishes him for it, and rewards him whenever he does something good.
Bakugou is getting better. i’ve written so much meta about this that it’s ridiculous. that doesn’t excuse everything he did in the past, however. but hitting Izuku with his grenade arm thing was the worst thing he’s done since the Heroes vs. Villains exam. after this, he pretty much leaves Izuku alone.
Bakugou has a lot of complicated emotional issues that fuel a lot of his behavior, but as the series progresses, he’s gotten better with how he handles them.
this is the first time Bakugou addresses Izuku since the whole kidnapping thing. Izuku still looks a little freaked out and nervous. not as much as he would’ve been before, but it’s still there.
it’s because Bakugou hasn’t been picking on him lately, and Izuku even notes this. not since the Kamino incident, which is when Bakugou gets his first inkling of understanding about the situation between All Might and Izuku.
in fact, when it comes to that issue, Bakugou is always calm.
Bakugou is always calm whenever this issue is brought up. in fact, he’s the most calm we’ve ever seen in the series whenever this issue comes up.
(…. also i just realized the combo of pics above would make a nice graphic. but anyway)
Bakugou isn’t yelling. he isn’t raging. he doesn’t even seem particularly annoyed. no, he’s just…. calm. maybe a little pensive and contemplative. but no violently loud or angry emotions are shown anywhere, which is remarkable given the kind of person Bakugou is.
so Bakugou is getting better… he’s realizing some things about Izuku. some things about Izuku’s relationship with All Might. he’s finding out about a lot of things, and a lot has changed in his attitude because of it.
however, Izuku still flinches when Bakugou calls him in the second to last panel. again, Bakugou is calm throughout all this. yet Bakugou calling him still causes that momentary reaction.
Bakugou is growing and improving and becoming a better person, but Izuku has been abused and bullied by him for over half his life. he hates Bakugou. it’s going to take much, MUCH longer than a few months of peace and quiet for Izuku to not react with fear towards him.
it’s going to take a lot of work, and teamwork, and patience, and a damn fucking good apology from Bakugou. it’s going to take years before this conditioned behavior finally goes away, if it goes away at all.
i do think that Bakugou and Izuku could become tentative friends, over time, but…. it is going to take so much more than just a few months to get to that point. as it is, we’ve only climbed a small hill. that final moment of peace and acceptance and apology is atop a mountain, and it’s going to take the entire manga’s length of character development between these two to reach it.
I wonder how long Barry had intended to leave Agatha’s locket on for? We know that he put it on her initially because he thought that Klaus was working with Lucrezia, and it would be dangerous for her to be known as the Heterodyne, and that Adam and Lilith kept it on her because it wasn’t safe for her to be a female Spark without powerful protection, and they didn’t trust Klaus either.
I’m not excusing what either of them did – giving Agatha the locket in the first place was a shitty thing to do, and so was keeping it on when they knew what it was doing to her. But at the same time I can sort of see why they thought it would be necessary for a short period of time, at least at first, since she’s having a bad enough time of people wanting to use/kill/kidnap her now, and she’s a) now pretty much an adult, and b) Klaus doesn’t actually work for Lu (let’s ignore the wasping for now). If evil!Klaus or anyone had got their hands on kiddie Agatha after she broke through for the first time, it would have been catastrophic.
But surely he hadn’t intended to leave it on indefinitely? There was no way of him knowing for sure that it would work forever (you can tell that Agatha’s spark is easily strong enough now to not be kept in check by the locket, Barry had no way of knowing that wouldn’t happen even if she’d kept wearing it). And surely she’d have taken it off eventually? No matter how much she’d been told to wear it, there’s no guarantee that she would. Barry disappeared when Agatha was nine, right? Eleven years ago. But he was planning to come back.
Maybe he’d gone to track down some more of Lu’s machines? The only thing we know is that it had nothing to do with Klaus, because he didn’t know Barry had come back in the first place. I don’t know, I’m just hoping that he’d gone to try and make Europa safe enough for Agatha to take her locket off and be the Heterodyne. Looking at how sad he was at having to give her it in the first place, I can’t imagine he intended it to be a permanent solution.
I agree with you that it was probably a temporary solution meant to protect her when she was young. He had to leave her and the Clays for some reason, but he intended to return earlier. At some point I hope we’ll find out what happened to him? I think Punch and Judy let it on simply because they had no idea what to do once Agatha broke through. And when you consider what happened once she did break through, well… I kind of understand. Even if it was painful, life didn’t really get any easier once she knew she was a spark.
I think with all the set up we’ve had regarding Barry (him suspecting Klaus, Klaus apparently knowing why he would be suspicious, the mystery of why he went missing (I wonder if it has anything to do with the Muse of Time? Everything has to do with the Muse of Time) and Lunevka and Luzola being absolutely terrified of him) we’re probably going to meet him, or at least find out what happened to him.
And yeah, I doubt the Clays would know what to do with Agatha if she went into breakthrough. They were built by Bill and Barry post-breakthrough, so it’s not like they’ve got experience with managing it, and from what we know about breakthrough survival rates… Not to mention they were probably waiting for Barry to come back and help/tell them what to do. When Agatha loses her locket, doesn’t Judy say something about “Confound him, we’re not equipped to deal with this!” (can’t remember the exact quote)? If they’re not equipped to deal with it at 18, I doubt they could deal with it as a child.
Aw, man. I really want to do this justice, but I have no idea what to contribute – how to contribute – to Teodora headcanons. Everything we know about her life is so dark. She was forced into a marriage she was eventually driven to murder her way out of. Every hypothetical about this situation fills me with so much anxiety.
I see readers get displeased with Bill and Barry for not appreciating the Jägers, but if I were coming out of that parental situation I would be angry about everything related to it within two degrees of separation for the rest of my life. I’m not surprised they preferred to be away from home, and I am surprised they did as well for Mechanicsburg as they did. To them, the Jägerkin signed up to stand by and watch atrocities happen forever. They willingly outsourced their moral centers, to monsters. And they’re jolly and lighthearted about it, but really?
This answer is entirely digression. Sorry.
Oh, not to stand by. They were the Old Heterodynes’ hand-picked army. Everything the Heterodynes set out to do, at least outside the town, the Jägers actively helped. I can’t fathom why Bill and Barry didn’t want to take them visiting (even after they stood up for them against the rest of the town).
…I think that the general reader perception that the high value Jägers place on free choice means they’ve never really gone around raping people is probably in line with the Foglios’ intent, and I don’t blame either party for that. I don’t want to attribute that to fun characters either. But… hmm… I think it’s more a rationalized preference than a logical consequence?
That said, and to bear on the original ask… I do headcanon, myself, that Teodora was clear-eyed enough to acknowledge that the Heterodynes had the virtues of their vices, as the saying goes. That part of their exceptional awfulness was their level of success, which was founded in apparently being among the very small fraction of Sparks who grasped the concept of the carrot as well as the stick, at least for their own people. Perhaps that Saturn going to war for her hand, while a terrible thing, was simultaneously something many Sparks (or their beautiful daughters) would have found immensely flattering – and that because he honestly saw it as a courtship, she had leverage to get a few things she wanted, like the non-Castle house. That she had a very long uphill climb to teach her sons to be good men in that environment, but also that she might have a few things to work with. Certainly their approach to being good men was in some respects very, very Heterodyne.
So I think it is plausible that one of the things she found to work with was doing her level best to do her duty to the town… whatever that was considered to be… and teaching Bill and Barry that they had a responsibility to Mechanicsburg (in fact, reforming it and creating an environment where its citizens could more readily become better people might be considered part of that responsibility) as well as to protect the rest of the world from it.
I also think Mechanicsburg itself may have tended to interpret their relationship and its conflicts, up to a point, in somewhat the way the Castle interprets that one argument between Gil and Zola through its own… particular… lens, culminating in his furiously sarcastic “Then we can build a nice doomsday device and wipe out all of Europa” being summarized as “he has asked her out on a date.”
…On the other hand, I think since she killed Saturn, she’s probably got pretty much the same level of respect from Mechanicsburgers as Lucrezia currently does.
I got this ask a while ago and wasn’t sure what to say about it either – I’ve been saved the effort now.
I think, as a fandom, we do soften our Jägers a bit in highly specific ways. We’re willing to deal with them being remorseless killers, but not with them groping waitresses. We want them to be Good On Gender even though they are, at base, a bunch of angry young men who fell under the sway of a charismatic dictator who legitimated their worst impulses.
They are capable of growing up, though.
Mechanicsburg itself is a strange place because it defines itself by being monstrous in both senses of the word. It tends to deliberately set out to shock and then define itself in opposition to the people who hate it for its atrocities. Bill and Barry seem to have steered it – eventually – towards being an oddity more than a horror. It still defines itself as weird and morbid but it’s something it’s safe to look at now.
Teodora – I suspect – did untangle those definitions of “monster” and see that Mechanicsburg could be better without being remotely normal, but the Jägers are always both.
okay but what if teodora didn’t /have/ to assassinate saturn– someone managed to kill him before she did. hell, maybe he got eaten by his own train.
bill and barry aren’t left alone to fend for themselves, teodoras family and town is safe (she can go /home/), and at some point in the future, an aging mother (given the opportunity to age) gets to frown disapprovingly at her eldest sons bride.
she’s a bad one, that lucrezia.
Does this ALSO mean that Agatha gets to be raised by her stone cold badass of a grandmother
I was thinking about the nb!Gil au again and honestly I don’t know what would be funnier, Loxmi immediately declaring to Europa at large that she’s a martian princess or Loxmi immediately declaring to Europa at large that she’s Klaus’ daughter
Cheloneuniverse 