u/howhow326

I miss her badly

Ok, at first I was being hyperbolic with the title of this post, but the more I thought about it I think I might have accidentally told the truth. The only ships I can think of that are actually worse than Bakudeku are the ones that rely on heavy sexualization of real life disturbing crimes (any abuse ship, any incest ship, any pedo ship, etc.) and crack ships between random characters that literally have nothing in common. Meanwhile Bakudeku gets close to that first thing but never really gets its feet wet, and for reasons I will elaborate on it has elements of a crack ship between people who literally don't know anything about each other.

First things first because I just know someone will start this sooner or later: no I am not Homophobic for hating (not disliking, straight up hating) Bakudeku. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I loath the ship is because Bakugo straight up has a better yaoi ship in KiriBaku, and Deku has better dynamics with Shoto/Uraraka/Tenya/Tsu/Shigaraki/moldy bread on the ground. And I know that Kyoka and Momo be like 🤞🏼🤞🏼 and the fact that she'd rather work in a seperate building than just share one with Denki basically confirms it in my book.

Point of the matter is: Bakudeku's foundations are fundamentally broken. Izuku and Katsuki started out as childhood "friends" (the fact that Bakugo went out of his way to give Izuku an insult as a nickname is a major red flag and that happened before he turned), but a mix of Bakugo's growing Superioity Complex and Izuku accidentally triggering his growing insecurites led to Bakugo bullying Izuku for most of his life.

Side note, but something I don't see pointed out is that the way these two characters are written Bakugo turning against Izuku is something that was always going to happen: even at the ripe age of 5 they have completely contradictory moral values (Bakugo values strength to a fault while Izuku is completely self-sacrificial to point of having a borderline martyr complex). Bakugo most likely would have still hated Izuku even if they met as teenagers or even adults. This isn't the reason why I think the ship sucks, just something I noticed.

Back to the point I was making. So for their early childhood Bakugo personally torments Izuku for "crimes" like lending him a hand when he trips and defending a boy that Bakugo was bullying >!(the fact that Bakugo apperantly bullies other people is dropped so fast I nearly forgot it happen, I know the writer did)!<. By the time the two are in their middle school years Bakugo is slightly less bad then he was at 5, as in he doesn't go out of his way to torment Izuku as much as he used (not like he needs to since literally everyone in his class bullys Izuku including the teacher). Although he doesn't pass up the oppertunity to torment Izuku when his friends bring it up, and his middle school years are where the infamous "Bakugo suicide baits Izuku" thing happens which is weirdly the only negative thing about Bakugo that most people take seriously.

So what is Izuku's reaction to his childhood friend betraying him, personally tormenting him for ten years including physical attacks and suicide baiting him? "Kaachan Kaachan Kaachan!" That's right, the problem with Bakudeku is actually Izuku's reaction to Bakugo and not the other way around. Again, despite literally bullying him for 10 years, Izuku still looks up to Bakugo in a way that ironically resembles the way that everyone in their Middle School class looks up to Bakugo. Of course, Bakudeku shippers take this fact and run with it, saying that Izuku acts more like a kid with a crush or Bakugo's ex lover or something, but if you take that idea to it's logical conclusion than that makes Bakudeku an abusive romance. Bakugo can do and does do whatever bad thing to Izuku, and Izuku just sits there and takes it with less reaction than a baby told the word "no" by it's mother.

And honestly? I think their dynamic almost breaks Izuku's character: we see Izuku normally reacts to people who are abrasive like Bakugo and it's a complete 180 of Bakudeku. People forget, but Izuku was matching Todoroki's hostility towards him before his breakthrough during the Sports Festival arc, and he basically said "fuck you" to his Dad after learning about his backstory. Izuku really doesn't play nice with massive jerkwads, unless their name is Bakugo, it's bizzare. A version of Izuku was more hostile towards Bakugo openly, or even more subtly hostile like talking his shit about him behind his back instead of just saying "that's bad" to the latest horrible thing he does could have worked, but alas.

In contrast to their foundations, the growth of their dynamic is a little better. It moves at an absolute snails pace and the example landmark improvements are "Bakugo said something kind of niced to me and only brushed my shoulder!", but it's there. But again, every other ship just blows Bakudeku out the water in this regard too. If Bakugo and Izuku are oh so perfect for each other, than why does Izuku come to the conclusion that it needs to be Kirishima to reach out a hand to Bakugo so they can save his life back in the Villain Hideout Raid Arc? Like if this was Straight, Bakudeku would have sunk right there.

And Izuchako just blows Bakudeku out of the water each and every time like it's not even funny. The set up to their relationship is better (Ochako saves Izuku from falling flat on his ass --> Izuku saves Ochako from the giant robot --> Ochako saves Izuku from falling to death and later trys to give him some of her points so h doesn't flunk out of the entrance exam), the growth in their relationship is better and more consistent (the ship going from Izuku mostly having a crush to Ochako gaining deeper feelings), Izuku and Ochako straight up have more in common with each other than Izuku and Bakugo (I honestly can't see Izuku and Bakugo being friends if they weren't contrived childhood "besties"), and fuck it OCHAKO'S SITUATIONSHIP GIRLFRIEND GHOST LITERALLY GAVE THE TWO HER BLESSING!!! As terrible as this sounds, I think Toga getting Ochako together with Izuku is waaay gayer than anything happening in Bakudeku.

Speaking of straight and gay, you can tell that a ship is trash when the *vast* majority of it's fandom has to mischaracterize the two characters involved. For what, like 10 years (?), every time I see Bakudeku it's always twisted into some kind of generic yaoi ship (and obviously Bakugo is always the seme and Izuku always the uke), or Izuku straight up looks like she's transitioning. I cannot count the number of fanart I've seen where Izuku looks like she's been on estrogen for six months (special mention goes to Izuku cosplaying as Jessica Rabbit and giving the UA boys a lap dance for some reason). And it goes without saying that I've never seen Force-Fem Bakugo. I think we ALL know the reason why a male character who is characterized as sensitive, gentle, and crying a lot has a small army of fujoshis turning him into a woman and shipping him with another male character who is characterized as aggresive and literally has explosive anger issues. And it's so nakedly obvious what's happening here too cuz like I never see the feminization stuff happen with literally any other gay ship in MHA, including Kiribaku and ShoDeku so like You Know it, I Know it, We All Know what is happening before our eyes >!Misogyny by proxy!<

Conclusion: Bakudeku is only marginally better than Reylo.

So Frieren is a show about a deconstruction of the "7,000 year old baby girl" trope where said baby girl truly acts like a time abyss where the concept of 50 years is short to her and we the audience see how that deeply affects her interactions with humans that she otherwise cares about coming across as cold and distant because of course a person that can just wait out decades like its nothing wouldn't understand regular humans trying to make the most of their time. Also demons are in this!

So as you can probably guess I kinda don't like how much the demon discouse devours all discussion about Frieren but I'm going to throw my hat into the ring anyway.

What sets Frieren's depiction of demons apart from other stories is that instead of being literally evil spirits or monsters from Hell, they are simply a predator of humans (and elves too I guess). Demons look like humans because it makes manipulating them easier, they have adopted the use of human language to decieve humans better, etc. etc. In other words, Demons are what a Zoologist would call an "Aggressive Mimic", a predator species that mimics its prey as a strategy to eat them, a real thing that really happens in Nature. For example, there is a real species of spiders that have evolved to mimic ants, these spiders change their shapes a bit to look more like an ant and invade ant hills where they secretly eat other ants while keeping up apperances of being an ant. I have stressed enough that this is a real thing?

In other words, Frieren demons are wild animals. Intelligent wild animals (I'd put them around like Dolphin level), but still animals that have are obligate predators of humans to the point that they kill humans even when they don't have to, like how a cat will sometimes kill mice for fun. Exhibit A: the extended flashback of the little demon girl that Frieren and Himmel's group fought. The demon girl killed her adopted sister, allegedly not out of malice or predation but because (if im remembering) her sister was crying and the demon girl didn't know how to get her to stop other than killing her. The demon girl's adopted parents are obviously pissed and want her slain, the townsfolk want her slain and so does Frieren, but Himmel refuses to out of the belief of the inherent purity of children and later the village chief adopts her. The demon girl then kills the village chief because she wants to "make it up" to her former adopted parents by giving the village chief's daughter to her parents, "replacing" the daughter she killed. Something I find interesting is that at no point did the demon girl come to the conclusion that humans don't like being killed, she didn't even bother to hide the body of the village chief. The way I see it, demon's don't (maybe even can't) think anything of killing humans, and because they lack empathy (and sympathy, and compassion) they can't even understand why it makes humans so mad. The story of the demon girl also reminds me of a Brood Parasite: an animal that pretends to be the baby of a different species in order to reap the benefits of being taken care of. A lot of the time, Brood Parasites kill the real baby so they can have all the resources to themself, which may or may not be what the demon girl was doing.

Anyway despite, well actually because, everything I just said, I do not see Frieren demons as pure evil and in fact I believe that is a very wrong interpretation of them. The simple fact is that it's not possible to be evil when you don't even understand what you're doing is wrong. I don't see the horror story Ant Spider Mimic as evil because its literally just its nature to pretend to be an ant and secretly kill them, it's the Ant Spider Mimic. I dont see Brood Parasites as evil even though some of them kill their adopted siblings and bully their parent's when they become adult, it's just what it does. And likewise, Frieren Demons are not an Always Evil Race because they are not actually evil, they are just a human predator species, as simple as that. There's no point in assigning moral concepts to beings that literally cannot have a conception of good & evil.

Anyway the closing paragraph for all thos is my rebuttal of the notion that Demons are or even resemble Racist Tropes about irl minorities being Always Chaotic Evil monsters. While it is true that irl Racist use pseudo biological science to rationalize their wrong beliefs, what is real is real is real. The idea of human races having a basis in biology has been disproven time & time again. There's also the very simple fact that no one points out... these bitches are White! The like first arc villain that's a demon is literally a blonde, blue eyed white man with a German name (to be fair, everyone has a german name but still), and even the first little demon girl has like ash blonde hair. Like, Orcs arent considered racist because of some type of debate about ontological evil races, its because Tolkien described them an "mongols" and DnD leaned heavily into stereotypes of [insert tribal group of people we hate this week]. So following this same logic, I have very bad news for the Nazi Frieren fans about which race the Demons are (🫵)

Edit: Yall beating my behind in the comments😭

I concede that the show completely contradicts itself on what tge biology of the demons is supposed to be (they are adapted to mimic a species they don't actually need to eat; they are actually bad at mimicing said species and default to brute force; etc), but I still stand by my main point that analyzing them from a Biological lens makes the most sense, as poorly written as they are.