theoctopusnods

newamsterdame:

how bakugou defines and demonstrates respect are the lynchpin of his sports festival development. 

like, the pivotal moment of the bakugou-uraraka battle is when aizawa tells off the pro heroes who don’t realize why bakugou is going so hard against uraraka. he is giving her the whole of his attention, and never letting up because if he does, she could very well float him right out of bounds. in short, that fight is about how bakugou shows respect for his opponents, and how uraraka demands bakugou’s respect even if the onlookers can’t see it.

but that concept, of how bakugou shows respect, doesn’t end there. he specifically dodges against kirishima, whom he has to fight in close quarters, and waits him out until he knows kirishima’s about to crack. he adjust his fighting style– staying on the ground, slowing down his tempo– because he has thought about how to best face kirishima. the thought and effort that bakugou puts into his matches is evidence of his respect for his opponents.

and again, with tokoyami. he doesn’t know dark shadow is weak to light before the fight, but he spends the fight trying to find a weakness to exploit. he uses a special move to take on tokoyami, and acknowledges that, at a baseline, his quirk is particularly well suited to taking on tokoyami’s. again– respect, even while he’s sneering and insulting and tackling him to the ground. 

so, as a counterpoint: todoroki. he’s so well-trained, so powerful, that during his first match he steps into the arena and ends things in about ten seconds. it didn’t really matter who he was going up against, because how many people could actually get through that giant sheet of ice? this changes completely in his match with midoriya, and you can see that todoroki is much more strategic when he takes on iida. he specifically thinks about how to beat each of them. but that’s not how he always is– the very fact that he is confident about using only half his power and still winning marks how different he is from midoriya or bakugou, who pour their all into every single fight, albeit in very different ways.

and bakugou has used todoroki as a goal post since their first hero training exercises. bakugou wants todoroki to respect him in the same way he respects all of his opponents. and you know that bakugou has thought about how to beat todoroki, because we see him analyzing his earlier matches. we see bakugou say, straight up, that todoroki should look at and acknowledge bakugou as an opponent. he even tells todoroki how he’s going to beat him– that he can smother his flames from above. but todoroki never thinks about that, that we see. he’s obviously got other things on his mind, and bakugou never really penetrates his awareness. 

so bakugou does what he says he’s going to. he invents what appears to be a very difficult move, creating a vacuum that will smother todoroki’s flames. but of course, there are no flames to smother. and you know what’s really embarrassing? when you put 150% effort into something, and the person on the other side barely tries at all. so bakugou is left humiliated, and more importantly, he’s left feeling like todoroki has no respect for him whatsoever.

that’s why he freaks out at the end of the battle. because that is all he wants. he wants to be number one because he thinks that will cement him as the most respected hero-in-training. (there’s a side note, here, about people who don’t seek affection or don’t know how to, and how respect becomes a stand in. “i’d rather be feared than loved,” and all that. it’s a defense mechanism.) 

this also plays out in bakugou’s relationship with midoriya, because midoriya suddenly becomes someone who demands bakugou’s respect, which he finds inherently destabilizing to the way he views the world. but that’s another point.

obviously it’s not todoroki’s responsibility to understand these things about bakugou and act accordingly. he has his own issues to contend with, and is dealing with more direct trauma than bakugou is in that particular moment. it isn’t todoroki’s fault that he doesn’t understand why bakugou is so incensed, and even if he did understand he might not have had the capacity to react accordingly.

but others, the adults in particular, should be able to see this. but they add more humiliation to bakugou’s situation, foisting an award he doesn’t want on him and treating him like an unstable danger, and it’s no wonder that bakugou deteriorates further from this point.