The Parents Of Class 1-A, And Their Favourite Kids

The parents of class 1-A, and their favourite kids

Parenting is hard: Trying to keep their stupid impulsive kids from getting themselves killed.

Let's be real, while I can see parents usually loving all of their children equally, most don't like their children equally.

Iida and Yaoyorozu’s mutual favourite child is without question, Asui. She’s the kid who helps out with the other children the most, courtesy of being an older sister within her own family. Iida also listens to Tsu-chan-kun, whenever she tells/signals him smt like: ~Dad, it’s okay. The others aren’t toddlers anymore, they should do/know/learn it by themselves. ~

And Yaoyorozu always worries about her, whenever the weather turns cold - the memory of Asui collapsing in that frozen room during the license exam, remains fresh in her mind.

Parenting is hard: Both are parents, who would be tearing up themselves, when they see one of their kids being in pain.

Iida has another favorite child: Tokoyami-kun.

Class Dad went from telling his goth son off for sitting on, instead of at, the latter's school desk, to being in awe of him, telling him how he's "so wise" (ty, Michael J. Tatum for the awesome line delivery).

A couple of outings with Class Dad.

Not to mention, Class Dad internally praising Fumikage for being the only one out of his boys, who has proper sleeping manners. The light novels have a few stories in which Iida and Tokoyami are hanging out, and mainly interacting with each other within smaller groups (I think Iida might have been vocal with his praise, when Tokoyami “saved” a little girl from getting lost in the amusement park).

I don’t think there are many kids in 1-A (I can only think of two. Guess who?) who wouldn’t be able to hold some kind of at least semi-enjoyable conversation with any of their classmates, at any given time. However, I wouldn’t have expected Iida and Tokoyami to spent a noticeable amount of their very limited leisure time with each other. I found that dynamic to be a sweet little surprise.

Parenting is hard: ... but Iida definitely enjoys his role to a certain extent.

Yaoyorozu also has another favourite child. Although I picture it more as a favourite younger brother: Kaminari-san.

I might expand on this some other time.

Parenting is hard: The class reps totally deserve a vacation away from their children... but then they wouldn't be able to relax, because they would be away from them.

Sometimes, at the end of a long day, choke-full of classes, hero training, and whatever trouble 1-A members have managed to get themselves into, Yaoyorozu makes a large pot of tea to bring over Iida, who has already spread out markers and sheets of paper over the large table in the dorm's common room.

Class rep positions may not mean much in a lot of places in our real-life world, but UA is not a normal environment. Since moving into the dorms, Iida and Yaoyorozu’s (admittedly, many of them self-imposed) responsibilities have only been increasing.

Thankfully, there is a lot of trust and appreciation for each other between 1-A's co-parents class reps.

Which makes it easy to sit down and work out an elaborate plan of action for illnesses in their home, together.

Because having this many kids in such close living quarters, means being guaranteed an in-house germ factory when flu season inevitably arrives.

...

Where are the class 1-A during COVID quarantine fics? Gimme pls.

Katsuki and Izuku are not best friends, part 1

I have seen people refer to Bakugou and Deku as best friends, especially after Bakugou took the hit from Shigaraki for Deku.

I disagree. They are not best friends.

It’s all but explicitly stated, that within class 1-A, Kirishima is Bakugou’s closest bestie, while Iida is Deku’s.

For the majority of the time that they knew each other, Deku and Bakugou were not even on friendly terms. I'd say they would barely qualify as friends - not to mention “best friends” - even now (latest chapters at the time of writing this post).

It has been jarring (and heartbreaking at times) to listen to Deku call a person a friend, while he still had been actively fearful of them. My reading of that is, that Deku mainly refers to Bakugou as a childhood friend, because he has no idea how to describe his relationship to the latter otherwise. The fact that Deku didn't had a single real friend until entering UA might also factor into this.

Even during their childhood "friendship" stage, Bakugou used to treat Deku like a lackey, at best. But never like a true friend, because enjoying to make someone feel miserable, just to feel better about oneself, is not the same as enjoying their company as a friend.

A more charitable interpretation of their early “friendship” instead of leader and lackey, is that of siblings. Bakugou is the older, and Deku the younger brother: His whole life, Deku has looked up to Bakugou. On the other side, for most of his life, to Bakugou, Deku used to be that scary annoying thing that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much he tried to scare it off.

With not much age difference between them, the stage got set for the development of rivalry.

...

Oftentimes, siblings with this type of dynamic end up drifting apart and being rather distant - either for an extended period of time (in many cases until they reach adulthood), or even forever.

As Bakugou and Deku ended up in the same class at UA, the new environment shifted their dynamic instead:

Deku formed connections with other people. While Bakugou and All Might remain the biggest influences on his life, he gained the physical and psychological strength to stand up to Bakugou during key moments and high-stakes situations.

The "From now on, Deku will be the name of a hero!" - moment of awesome, where Deku announced himself unwilling to be Bakugou's shoe mat any longer, was basically the start of his emancipation from the latter

To Bakugou, this declaration from "loser Deku", their new classmates’ warm reception of Deku, and their cool reception of himself - the opposite of what Bakugou had been used to up until this point - made it apparent to him, how up until then, he had been swimming in a very small pond.

Bakugou reacted to his own feelings of inadequacy and the disillusionment that threatened his self-image, like the mature, self-reflecting person that he was:

With more misdirected resentment, and more violence. Alternating between distancing himself from Deku and seeking him out.

Like the mature, self-reflecting person that he was, Bakugou also didn't talk to anyone about those inner turmoils.

Instead, he let them boil over; culminating in him forcing Deku into a nighttime rumble to sort through his own emotional baggage.

The positives that came out of it, were that they reached some sort of a mutual understanding, and Deku gained his own secret keeper. If I had to pinpoint a starting point of their "friendly" terms era, it would be that scene.

But that alteration didn't make them best friends. Neither did other significant "BakuDeku"- moments that followed.

Shouto and Fumikage: Cold Hams of 1-A

Tokoyami and Todoroki chillin' in the middle of rubble.

In one OVA Todoroki indirectly refers to the relationship between himself and Tokoyami as “friends”.  It may not mean anything deeper than them being classmates, who care about each other’s well-being, but I like to headcanon that they do spend time with each other outside of class - be it in smaller than class-sized gatherings, or even one-on-one hangouts.

A closer look at this dynamic would have been great, because these two angsty drama kings have solid comedic potential together.

They would just repeat one sentence to each other over and over again. No one knows why they're doing this. It drives the rest of 1-A crazy.

Remember Tokoyami’s overdramatic declaration of leaving it in Todoroki's hands to make-up for Tokoyami's own loss against class B? And Todoroki’s confused, almost annoyed, “Why are you telling ME this?”

In the gag comics, Dark Shadow also takes on the form of a little girl. Apparently, on Dark Shadow's "list of likes", Todoroki ranks only second to Tokoyami himself, and she ends up "stalking" Todoroki for a bit. Todoroki doesn't mind this, and even seems to enjoy her company.

In short: We needed more interaction between Todoroki and Tokoyami.

I headcanon, that their comedy duo stage name would be "Cold Hams" - courtesy of Kaminari.

Otherwise Tokoyami would have named them "The Laughing Mad." Which would've still been better than Todoroki's suggestion: "TodoToko."

Shouto and his adoptive sisters, part 2

Would have loved to see an actual team-up between these two: The guy who thought his quirk works best without teammates around him, and the girl known for being one of the most versatile battle comrades you can have.

Asui is the older sister to two younger siblings. I headcanon that she talks to Todoroki like how she talks to them: Encouragingly and patiently, without any condescencion.

They got closer after Asui cried in front of him and the other kids, who sneaked away to Kamino. Todoroki was reeeally sleepy, but he still felt bad about having partly caused her distress, so he tried to talk to her more afterwards.

When the weather turns cold, Todoroki and Asui often end up sitting close to each other: First on the school bus, then anywhere else. Todoroki gets some comfort out of seeing how his fire side, which he had rejected for so long, can be helpful to others even outside of combat - be it to keep Dark Shadow obedient to Tokoyami, or to keep Asui from involuntary hibernation.

Headcanon: Todoroki intentionally chose the spot in front of Asui and Uraraka. He wanted Deku and Iida to join them but before they could, Aoyama and the other girls placed themselves around 1-A's pretty boy.

I saw a fan comic once, in which Asui brought Todoroki a cup of tea and he accidently refers to her as “nee-san”.  I headcanon that this has happened more than once. Todoroki’s cheeks turned rosy the first couple of times. Then Asui asked that he call her “Tsu-chan”, and he felt even more embarrassed by that.  

As such, Asui remains “Asui” when they are with others. She doesn't correct him, because when she’s alone with Todoroki-chan, she gets to hear “Tsu-nee-san.” Todoroki ends up calling her that nonchalantly. They also ignor that he's actually a month older than her. Considering how he doesn’t use honorifics with any of his other classmates, Asui feels rather special.

Todoroki really does emit youngest child vibes sometimes.

It seems like, barring Deku and Bakugou, most of Todoroki’s classmates didn't know anything about his family drama, until Dabi broadcasted it to the whole nation.

For example, I’m don't think Iida ever picked up on anything prior to Dabi’s dance. He's probably Todoroki’s closest friend (alongside Deku), and he cares a lot. But Iida also tends to be blind to emotional undercurrents. In one of the light novels, he accidentally pisses Todoroki off by telling him off for how he refers to his father. When he visited Todoroki in his room on Troy, he also made a well-meaning but misplaced comparison between their families.

However, a few of them did take notice of Todoroki’s complicated family life, e.g. Kirishima (Todoroki didn't hide much in BNHA's supplementary works). I headcanon that Uraraka and Asui were also among those, who at least picked up on the fact that Todoroki had grown up in a very strict environment. Thus, they tried extra hard to include him in their conversations and activities. This might have contributed to Todoroki warming up to the rest of the class much faster than he might have done otherwise.

Kyouka: Friendzoned and friendzoning

So. Jirou seems to be the female classmate who the majority of 1-A's guys are most comfortable with.

However, contrary to my headcanon about the most popular 1-A guys, I feel like most of them aren't romantically interested in her.

It might sound a bit sad, but I headcanon that her miffedness about Mineta not naming her among those female classmateds that he wanted to perv on, is not entirely unwarranted... although, having Mineta salivating over you, is probably not something that anyone with self-respect should desire.

I can see her having gained some male admirers outside of the hero students, after the cultural festival.

At first sight, it might seem that Hagakure and Ashido are the most romance-focused girls in 1-A. However, supplemental and canon materials have depicted the tomboyish Jirou as being conscious about the male gender, the most:

During 1-A's practice match against Togata, she was the only girl who completely freaked out over his nudity.

In one of the drama CD stories, she made a big deal inside her head about holding onto the hem of Tokoyami's uniform, when they visited a haunted house together.

In one of the gag comics, she thought that Bakugou was self-conscious about holding her a girl's hands, when he wasn't actually. She basically just self-projected onto him.

In several of the gag comics, Jirou has been depicted as being self-conscious around Kirishima: One example has her perving on him in his costume. Another one, that retold 1-A's trip to the mall before Deku got accosted by Shigaraki, has Jirou imagining being on a date with Kirishima, when the kids paired up to look for Deku... and be pissed, when Kirishima dropped her at the first sight of Bakugou.

Ironically enough, she displays none of that awareness around guys who were hinted as having some interest in her: Kaminari (and I think, I've read something somewhere about Kouda liking her since their practical exams?)

Oh Jirou. You're definitely among those 1-A kids, who have the most growing up to do in the romantic department.

...

I just noticed that, except for Togata, all of the examples above include guys with whom Kaminari is explicitly friends with.

And now I headcanon poor Kaminari getting friendzoned by Jirou until at least until graduation.

The irony of 1-A’s resident flirt being canonically the first one out of all of 1-A’s boys who recognizes that he had fallen for someone: The girl, who just goes through successively crushing on all of his close friends... Now who's the flighty one, huh?

Yes, I imagine the unrequited love switcheroo trope, where Jirou won’t be able to recognize and acknowledge her own feelings for Kaminari for a while. She starts to consciously takes notice of him as a romantic prospect - juuust right when he's about to move on from his own feelings for her.

Drama ensues.

Deku kept the empty mochi bag after he finished its content

You know he did.

It's wiped clean and everything.

He thought about laminating it, but that would've changed its structural integrity. Instead, the bag has been put in a document sleeve and stuff, for safe keeping.

Deku's a collector.

He's also a damn nerd, who has received his first gift from his cru dear friend.

Uraraka finds out about this, someday.