I Follow A Lot Of Asoiaf Blogs And I Was Completly Agreeing With You On Everything About Your Analysis

I follow a lot of asoiaf blogs and I was completly agreeing with you on everything about your analysis of Jon Snow and then came “ he should have eaten more brains“ and I had a small existential crisis asking myself when I overread that.

Being emotionally attached to Jon as a character is weird. On one hand, his character only works if he's flawed. How you as a listener assess the morality of his choices is a key part of the story, and trying to smooth over everything questionable would ruin a lot of what makes him so good as a protagonist.

But then there's moments where you look at how some characters in the story (and a certain percentage of the fandom) talk about him and part of you is like "actually Jon Archivist Sims has never done anything wrong in his life, I say he should have eaten more brains.'

I thought this was supposed to be the incorrect bnha villains

Toga: Apparently your social filter is controlled by your frontal lobe and that deteriorates as you get older.

Toga, looking at Dabi: You’re going to be a NIGHTMARE

So I made this into a whole analysis that also gets into the paralell with Hawks, thanks for the inspiration! And while it doesn’t go so much into quirk discrimination, it’s a bit more detailed about Tokoyami’s name and inspiration. Link is tagged if that’s something that interests you =)

I wanted to answer to your addition to my post, but for some reason, it's not working (tumblr is acting up again and a ton of things aren't working, not just with different blogs, it's a mess, so I don't know if it's because of your privacy settings [that would be fine]or because of tumblr [that would not be fine]). So here's a bit about Tokoyami: From what I know crows and ravens have a very positive background in japanese mythology. The so called Yatagarasu (eight-span-crow) s a very positive mythological creature and crows are quiet positivly regarded because they kill rodents. They are seen as cleaners after death, a sign of rebirth and heavenly.

Which is in stark contrast to a lot of western versions where crows are seen rather as a sign of death itself and not what comes after.

Considering bnha plays in Japan Tokoyami would be regarded more positivly in contrast to a western view.

And if you look at general background of the name Tokoyami, the similiarity between Marvel/DC comic characters that HK loves to draw inspiration from, you can see DarkShaddow in a non-satanic light. Venom and Raven are heroic characters with similar problems to Tokoyami and if you look into japanese Folklore and the Enerna and Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto, it seem more like a general "night Crow" interpretation.

All in all Tokoyami seems a lot more threatening by a western view than a japanese view.

I still think that Tokoyami suffered from some quirk discrimination while growing up, but because crows have a positive meaning in Japan it would be a lot less than Shoji, Gang Orca or Spinner.

@sethmacenzie Thanks a lot for your reply, that's really interesting to know. Japanese culture is really interesting and complex, it's good to know corvids in general are so positively viewed there (I like these birds a lot too). I do admit that, as a westerner, that's also how I was judging his character, where corvids are popular, but have more negative connotations. It's also true, that it looks like Horikoshi took inspiration from both Raven's and Venom's characters to create Tokoyami (we're not entirely sure of that, but it's a possibility), because their powers are kinda similar (Idk much about Raven, but some people keep comparing Tokoyami, or rather, his quirk Dark Shadow, to her powers, so I guess it must be true). As you said, it's more than probable, that Horikoshi didn't have any real villainous or negative ideas in mind for Tokoyami's character, during his conception, he just wanted a cool, edgy and powerful character, with a bird head, and that's what he did (and again, Tokos head isn't even a corvid, in one of the light novels it's described as a mynah bird). But something I'm still sure of, and it's a headcanon that no one can change my mind about, is that Tokoyami did definitely face some discrimination as a child. Not as much as Shouji and Gang Orca (because it's been canonically confirmed that these 2 were and probably still are, bullied), but Tokoyami must have gone through it too. He looks different his quirk is highly unstable, and reliant on his emotions, which just makes it even more dangerous. I realize, I made a mistake by describing it as "Satanic", because that's definitely not what Hori had in mind while creating him. Thanks for all the cool info anyways, that was really nice to know!

Feels like a good time to reblog this from nearly 2 years ago.

BNHA 266

Well spoilers duh!

Here is a theory:

with Toga being able to replicate Quirks now alswell and Twice dying a very heroic and happy (for him at least) death, I would love to see a version of sad mans parade by Toga: Happy Girls Parade.

Because Jin would want her happy!

Where she uses her Qurik to become him and then uses his Quirk endlessly.

I think that would a) be awesome to see b) be a very fitting character progeression for Toga c) be extremly dangerous, because the villains are gonna be numberd down after this by a lot and I don’t think that the story just ends there, with all the side plots still going on d) be something Jin would have loved. Also this was an absolut heroic death for a character who is a villain. He was selfless, standing up for his friends, kept going until he couldn’t anymore and well it makes sense Jin isn’t a villain in the sense that he wants to do evil things, he just wants to make it right for his friends (who happen to be villains).

I hate to see him die but I loved the way he died. (Still in denial and hoping that he might have survived somehow.)

So I don’t know if you will see this @eva-white-11, because I can’t tag you, but you inspired me to do this entire post about Tokoyami, so this is for you and everybody else who loves him. Also this ended up with me noticing some wonderful writing parallels with Tokoyami and Hawks that I had to put in here. This is neither pro nor anti Hawks, this is simply an analysis of what is given.

I talked about quirk discrimination in regards of Spinner plenty and I have called Tokoyami “non-threatening”, to which I got asked how I can think that he’d be seen like that, seeing as ravens and crows are generally regarded as a bad thing and Dark Shadow is very demonic.

While both birds are associated with a lot of positive traits, such as intelligence, adaptability, partnership, foresight and transformation they are also often regarded as something sinister in the western world. Especially in the association with the famous plague masks they tend to be seen as a sign of death.

This is in stark contrast to Japanese culture, where crows are seen as something positive. Aside from the fact that the crows are playing a huge part in keeping cities rodent free, which is notable mentioned in Tokyo the mythological creature of the Yatagarasu (eight-span-crow) has a very positive background.

The three-legged crow is a creature that appears in multiple mythologies through East Asia, the Japanese Yatagarasu is a sign of rebirth, heaven, rejuvenation and divine intervention. Seeing as they clean up after death, especially being seen on battlefields eating the dead, which not only is a sign of the battle ending and something new beginning, it has also the practical effect that the bodies of the dead are being broken down preventing potential health threats to the living.

Tokoyami’s name comes from Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto a deity with similar heavenly background, to be precise: the moon. The name Tsukuyomi having meanings as “moon bow” or “moonlit night” “looking, watching” even “reading”. Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto is the brother of Amaterasu, the sun goddess of Shinto, and to cut a long story short: he killed another goddess, his sister got angry so she moved to another part of the sky, splitting night and day. And looking at Tokoyami’s actual spelling we get “everlasting darkness”, which fits rather well with the deity and his quirk.

His first name Fumikage’s spelling also litereally means “step, to walk through shadow”, being a direct recall to both darkness and his quirk Dark Shadow.

So Tokoyami’s name is based on the darkness, the night and the moon, but in natural manner, rather than a threatening one.

If we’re looking at Dark Shadow he’s often associated with the Enerna, a monster made of smoke and darkness that can take human form that was most likely born from the imagination of Toriyama Sekien, but that generally fits Dark Shadow rather well. And Toriyama Sekien works are known to have great influence of the public view on mythological creatures, even though his works were mostly parodic.

And because HK is a huge Marvel & DC fan, I’m going to mention Raven from DC and Venom from Marvel real quick.

Raven is a young heroine from DC Comics, usually part of the Teen Titans, which has to keep control over her powers because they otherwise can get very dangerous if unleashed. Aside from the power similarity she also has a very dark, Goth appearance, can have her body taken over while she sleeps and obviously has a direct bird relation through her name.

Venom an Anti-Hero from Marvel on the other hand is a symbiont mostly partnered with Eddie Brook, although he’s had quite a few other hosts including Peter Parker and notably Flash Thompson. In both cases there is a deep emotional connection between Venom/Eddie and Dark Shadow/Tokoyami and both can be a direct life threat to other, especially if their host is attacked.

All in all I think in bnha Japan Tokoyami has a far more positive view through his appearance as if he lived in the bnha western world, seeing as in our real world crows are seen as something darker in contrast to Japan.

Tokoyami seems more like a “night crow”, something new, something from above, something better, but instead of the sun, the light he is in the dark, the night, the shadows, but that doesn’t make him bad at all.

This would be a direct contrast to Hawks, who stands for light and the Icarus tale of flying to close to the sun.

Hawks is out in daylight with his sunny demeanor, flying like a bird wanting to be free like one. But behind this is a very dark history of abuse from his parents, of the hero commission using him and of the very controlled murder of Twice.

This is a direct contrast to Tokoyami. He is more grounded because of Dark Shadow, because he has to be careful, he needs to keep control over his powers because he could accidentally hurt someone if Dark Shadow went rouge, as seen in the forest. He is the one who saves Hawks; he kept the PLF at bay and fought Re-Destro all because he kept control over Dark Shadow.

Hawks did not lose control over himself when he killed Twice, which was on purpose, he used control something that is essential to his student and savior Tokoyami to take a life, and this is just a wonderful contrast between the two of them.

Hawks took Tokoyami in as a student because “they are both birds”, but Tokoyami is the next generation of Hakws, a better version, all while being in the dark shadows in contrast to flying into the sun.

Oh and apparently he got called a Myna in the light novels, which depending on who it came from might be a huge insult or a great meta joke, because some mynas are considered talking birds, aka they can reproduce sounds, including human speech (so far only seen in captivity).

@owlsinathens Greyjoy family crib!

Hand-Carved Tentacle Crib by Artist Garrick Andrus