Quirk Based Discrimination - Tumblr Posts

I totally get why you have issues with this only being such surface level right now, though I do have the feeling that at some point we’ll get Spinner flashbacks too, like we did for Toga, Twice, Tomura and Toya so far (only those who have at least one name starting with a T get a backstory XD) that will explore that topic more.

Because with most societal issues it was like that:

At first we have Shoto saying his father trained him too much and Stain saying that some heros are in it for the wrong reasons.

And by now we have Toyas abuse flashbacks, Hawks killing Twice and Best Jeanist supporting both Endevour and Hawks after it was made public.

At the beginning we had Tomura seeming like a boring just evil villain and his team of also just evil, crazy villains,

but by now we see them as the humans they are with their very good and bad traits alike and that they have very good reason to go against society. With Toga being told to suck it all in, Twice being left on the streets until he became mentally ill, Dabi being abused, Tomura being both abused and groomed and we can make clear assumptions about Spinner and Compress, even without having flashbacks to get the full picture.

And we have not just Spinner adressing the quirkism. Yes the Quirk-KKK were obviously a very over the top version of that,

but early on we learn from Tsuyu that she got bullied for her looks and has much more typically human features than Spinner does.

Shinso gets quirk discriminated during the entrace exam even though he has an extremly strong and useful quirk.

Eri gets told she is evil because of her quirk.

Toga gets told to just ignore her own bodyly wants and needs because blood quirks are wrong and strange instead of finding a way on how to cope with it in a healthy manner.

So it isn’t just the one villain, but it is Spinner who has the stronges heteromorph appearence in combination with a weak quirk that doesn’t make up for it in the eyes of society.

And with pro heros it seems to work just like in our world: think about the many celebreties getting bullied at school and beeing called ugly when now they are considered beautiful and even if they aren’t conventionally beautiful they are an inspiration for people.

I bet at least one kid made fun of Best Jeanist neck and he is very human looking. But then you have people with extremly strong features like Gang Orca, who is about as Orca looking as Spinner is Lizard looking, but he is a pro hero so he is cool and strong, not to mention he has a really strong quirk for fighting.

I mean we have Centipeder, Hound Dog, Selkie, Nezu is an actual mouse with a quirk but none of them face on-screen discrimination because they are the cool guys, pro heros,, respectable teachers, they are “in” and they have strong quirks.

And the fact that the League does not care that Spinner looks like a Lizard and has a weak quirk compared to all of them (he is the only C-rank villain in the executives of the PLF later) says a lot about them.

We know from his one flashback panel that he pretty much spend all day locking himself in and gaming, which is understandable if you face quirkism on a daily basis, the way he looks isn’t something he can just change and it’s nothing he should have to change in the first place.

Neither should there be any need to have a strong quirk to be respected by others. We saw quirk discrimination right at the beginning against Deku, but he gets it solved by getting a quirk and doesn’t seem to think about it anymore, which is strange considering Bakugo bullied him for years because of it any the rest of his classmated made fun of him aswell.

And we have that lovely panel of the childrens book with the terms that quirk based discrimination, especially the heteromorph kind is not ok and you should not do it.

But as Spinner sais himself: mutant is getting used more and more but not in formal settinsgs, because it is downgrading.

And the "mutant exclusionist comitee” are so far the only kills Spinner had in the manga. We especially saw Toga, Dabi, Tomura killing people on multiple occations, but Spinner specifically only when he went to kill the mutant haters, which is very telling about his position in the story is.

The Leauge is compromised of those who were let down by society to the point where they snapped and Spinner is the side of them that shows the quirkism and how harmful that is.

So I totally understand your frustration of not getting more into that topic, but from his usual way of framing in storytelling (I made a post about how that was done with the Todoroki family aswell) I would say we are just not there yet and it will come up with Spinner’s background later in the story.

Something that frustrates me is the depiction of Quirkism and the death cult that hates people with Mutant Quirk.

The death cults are a caricature of bigots and hate groups that serves as nothing more than as a plot device. For me, it comes off as Hori only skimming the surface of a systemic problem while petting himself on his back. The death cult is simply a extreme manifestation or a parody of bigotry.

When people think of hate groups, they would think of people who openly hates minorities or wear weird ass garment to signify their hatred of a marginalized group. In reality, bigotry is something that can internalized even in the "best" of us.

Not every bigot is a death cult member who wears black. It can be simple as Dabi calling Spinner a "lizard" or Shouto calling that police a "mutt" despite it appearing harmless to the audience or the characters in the story.

And for me...the most dangerous villains in Spinner's story is not the death cult. The villains are the hero society. When Spinner's feeling is dismissed...I wonder how long did he have to tolerate this injustice. The people around him who overlooked his pain or minimized his experience...

But it doesn't matter...because he's a 'villain'...