Asexuals Be Like: You’re Fit But I Don’t Give A Shit

Ace flag color meanings

"the world isn't kind" ok??? Much more importantly are you?????

What’s your guess to the year? Keep in mind that Tiger was born on a leap year and Hawks said that quirks have been around for the past 2 centuries.

Incredibly belated answer on this, but it, uh, turned into a project. Because of course it did. Hope you find the result interesting, anon!

To get started, the Tiger thing is easy to look up, which I did, but does anyone have a citation for this Hawks line?  I feel sure I would have remembered it; it’s exactly the kind of worldbuilding detail my HeroAca chat would have jumped all over.  On the other hand, we might not have heard about it if it was in e.g. the World Heroes’ Mission movie or TUM or something.  (To be clear, if that is the case, I’m probably going to disregard it.  Vigilantes is the only spin-off in my heart, and I certainly value it above the material the anime sees fit to thoughtlessly tack on.)

That aside, I did actually hammer out a timeline for myself back in 2020, in which I set BNHA’s current action (designated as Deku starting UA) as kicking off in 2180, with the glowing baby born somewhere around 1980.  I peppered the time between with significant births, deaths and events, generally giving myself an unofficial “these dates rounded to the nearest five years” sort of leeway.

Back in 2020, however, we hadn’t yet had that Oji Atsuhiro reveal, nor the tidbit about Shinomori being, at eighteen years, the second-longest bearer of One For All.  I’ve been needing to revise for a while now, being something of a pedant about my MLA timeline, so this ask was a good opportunity to revisit it.

Hit the jump to join me on a ~magical number-crunching adventure~!

Note that this is a cleaned-up and formatted version of what started life as me brainstorming and hypothesizing until I arrived at my conclusion.  It has a few detours and cul-de-sacs because I was working it out as I went.  If you just want the TLDR, it’s as follows: 

Having considered all the new evidence, I would put the glowing baby’s birth circa 1985 and Deku’s freshman year in 2139.

    Front-End Dating

Let’s look at the beginning of the timeline first, as it’s the one that involves somewhat more guesswork.  There are a few reference points in looking at the timeframe for the glowing baby, if you’re willing to get unbelievably anal about worldbuilding details Horikoshi may or may not have even thought about.  I am absolutely willing to be that person, so when I first started ironing this all out, there were two hard dates I went looking for right off the bat: the invention of the taser, and the first Japanese publication of Marvel comics.

Point 1: Tasers

The existence of tasers is mentioned in a stray comment during Deku’s dream flashback to All For One and Yoichi: the quirkless man who gains a spike quirk from AFO is mentioned as carrying one for self-defense.  Tasers were invented in 1993, ergo, that scene must have taken place sometime after 1993.

It’s possible—even probable—that the scene could take place significantly after 1993, for two reasons.  First, we don’t know how long it took quirks and the chaos they brought with them to become widespread.  If it took decades for the world to realize what it was dealing with, the taser could have existed for years before the scene in question.  There’s also the matter of the technological crash brought on by quirks.  If said crash took place over an extended period of time during which tasers were still in development, it’s possible that they wouldn’t have been completed until sometime after 1993, taking even longer to reach civilian/black market availability.

Could the advent of quirks have sped up the development of the taser, answering the suddenly widespread demand for a self-defense/less lethal police weapon?  I could see it, but it would be a departure from what we’re told about other technological developments in that period.  it’s also worth noting that the very first taser available for sale, circa 1976, used gunpowder as its propellant, leading to it being classified as a firearm.  It’s therefore unlikely that Japan, with its extremely stringent gun laws, would have had much access to it at all that far back.  The 1993 date refers to the modern, non-firearm electric taser.  1976 is an interesting date, though, as I’ll discuss in the next section.

The taser gives us a starting point.  Assuming that its development wasn’t an aberration in a time of collapsing norms, the OFA scene post-dating it must be likewise post-1993.    

Point 2:  Japanese Publication of Marvel Characters

If you look at the narration about the origin of quirks in Chapter 1, you find a handful of silhouettes, fictional characters who represent the “fantasy” that became “reality.”  Since the narration is delivered by Midoriya, not an omniscient narrator, we can assume that those media properties did exist in-universe and, further, that all of them were viewed as fantastical prior to the advent of quirks.  Therefore, even the newest of those characters must have first publication dates that predate the Advent.

Of the lot of them, the Marvel characters are the newest.(1)  Spider-Man’s first appearance was in 1962; Wolverine’s (if the figure with the sideburns and claws is intended to be Wolverine) in 1974.  Marvel comics were even being localized and published in Japan by the early 70s, which would have begun familiarizing at least some people with those particular “fantasy” characters by that time.  Ergo, quirks must not have come about before the mid-1970s.

Knowing that also helps shore up the taser point by keeping the historical timeline on track up at least through its initial 1976 creation.    

Heretofore Unnumbered Point 3: The Technology Crash

My last consideration when I was originally running the numbers was the developmental crash brought about by the Advent.  Specifically, the world of My Hero Academia generally reflects a modern-ish Japan, so I default to wanting modern technology—and modern social reforms—to still feel modern to the characters.  Thus, the point at which society stopped developing needed to predate the full flush of the Digital Revolution, which really began to hit its stride in the mid-to-late-80s.  It could perhaps be the case that some developments were brand new and subsequently lost along the way, or simply never reached their full potential due to the spreading chaos of mysterious superpowers, but modern digital technology needed to not exist in any widespread form prior to the bottom falling out.

That’s my working window for the start: The glowing baby should be born no earlier than the late 1970s, the world should be recognizing the danger and starting to turn its attention towards the new problem by the late 1980s, slowing the development of other technology, but with total collapse not yet having come about by the early 1990s.

That’s the front end.  Before I get to the back end, let’s look at the middle: How long after the glowing baby’s birth was All For One’s?    

Bridging the Gap

The Shigaraki Brothers & Captain Hero

All For One provides an immediately accessible reference point for the timeline at large.  He’s over a century old, so quirks must be so as well.  However, we can assume that he isn’t past or closing in on two centuries, else that’s how Gran Torino, in talking about him, would have described him.  Whatever AFO’s age is, it needs to be something that’s in keeping with that estimation.

One thing to emphasize here is that we don’t know how long it took quirks to become a widespread, fully acknowledged issue.  If they started appearing all over the world in large numbers within a matter of months, that makes my calculations different than if it took years for enough quirks to surface in enough countries for them to become the subject of widespread panic.

Another thing that’s unclear is whether the brothers are themselves in the first generation—and therefore that they grew up watching the world spiral out of control—or whether quirks had already existed for quite some time before they were born, and they never knew anything but that widespread chaos.

One thing that gives us a lens on those issues is Yoichi’s beloved Captain Hero comic.  While the Captain could be from any number of periods in which that image of an American-style superhero exists, the Demon Lord is a bit more specific.

Particularly in Japanese media, that fantasy Demon Lord (Ma-oh/Maou) archetype was basically invented wholecloth by Dragon Quest, especially Dragon Quest III and its villain Zoma.  DQ3 came out in 1988 and had manga tie-ins in print that same year, therefore we can assume that comics inspired by this type of villain have to post-date 1988.

The Captain Hero comics are also another example of a piece of media described by a character (AFO) as “fantasy” that is now being reflected in “reality.”  Because of that fantasy/reality proviso, we can further assume that heroes as a job class didn’t exist at the time of the manga’s publication—which would make sense, since AFO in the dream flashback highlighted that the world was totally without order, whereas heroes being codified were a sign of the chaos beginning to settle somewhat, so obviously they wouldn’t have existed at the time of the flashback.

This gives us a somewhat limited window.  If the comics can’t predate 1988, but I still want to stick to my guns on the, “Panic about quirks superceded the nascent Digital Revolution,” qualifier, it pretty much dictates that the world was in full-tilt collapse by the end of the 90s.  This also lets me scrape by on my taser window of 1993.

In any case, seeing as Captain Hero depicts a pre-quirk vision of popular J-fantasy, to say the least, the comic’s fairly retro by the time the brothers are talking about it as adults.  I might even go so far as to say that they probably weren’t new-new when the brothers were reading them as kids.  They have the feel of something old, like maybe a collection the brothers’ father owned, or that they bought on the cheap somewhere just to have some meager entertainment in their lives.

Where does all that leave us, then?  I would probably call the Captain Hero comics something that came out in the late 80s/early 90s, some publisher’s attempt to capitalize on Dragon Quest’s popularity and those American superhero comics that had been floating around the edges of the zeitgeist for a decade or so.  They were probably published right in that nebulous period when the glowing baby had been born, and there was growing unease with the mysterious powers popping up around the world, but since there wasn’t yet a mass panic, entertainment companies were still trafficking in a lot of their usual fare; elsewhere, the taser reached mass market readiness.

Then, the bottom dropped out.  Media pivoted to be about what meta-abilities were and what they meant; old-fashioned things like Hero vs. Demon Lord comics plummeted in popularity and wound up in bargain bins(2) or put into storage.  In this fashion, some of them eventually find their way into Yoichi’s hands.  If he or his big brother actually bought them, they’re probably no more than a few years old—say maybe 3-5, which would put Yoichi reading them in the mid-to-late 90s.  If they’re something of Yoichi’s parents’, and AFO and Yoichi were born quite some time after the glowing baby, that could make the comics older, anywhere from a decade (if Dad was still around collecting when the brothers were very young) to closer to 30 or 40 years, if Dad bought them in his own childhood and just held onto them).

For myself, I prefer a read that the collapse was pretty fresh when the brothers were growing up, and some math further down the line in this analysis has led me to the conclusion that AFO and Yoichi were pretty early in the history of quirks, meaning that the collapse had to be pretty rapid in order for both of those things to be true.(3)  That being the case, let’s go with the more conservative read and say those comics were less than a decade old when the brothers picked them up.  That, then, leads to the next part of this analysis: How old are the brothers?    

Back-End Dating

I’d peg AFO as being in his early 30s during the flashback, and Yoichi in his late 20s; I assume that at that point, both of them were still appearing as their natural age,(4) which gives us AFO as 30-something during the events of dream sequence when he forces the quirk on his younger brother—the genesis of One For All.    

One For All’s Age

I’m going to jump around somewhat here, broadly working backwards, but circling around as necessary and tallying as I go.

Bearer 9, Deku

Easy-peasy.  Deku has carried OFA for a year and change—he received it in late February and the manga is currently in late spring/early summer of the following year.

Running tally for age of OFA: 1 year.    

Bearer 8, All Might

All Might has carried OFA for 40-ish years—possibly a few more, but not so many that Yoichi, talking about this in Chapter 304, would be better suited to say, “For over 40 years, Yagi maintained his grip on One For All,” instead of simply, “For 40 years, (...).”  All Might’s in his mid-to-late 50s now; he was still in school when he got it from Nana.  He was possibly in middle school when they first met, judging by his uniform, but presumably he wouldn't have been able to go to UA without it, so he must have had it by the time he started there at 15.  He was clearly seeing himself in Deku, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was exactly 14 when he met Nana, and 15 when he got OFA just in time for entrance exams.

Running tally for age of OFA: 41 years.    

Bearer 7, Nana

Nana carried it for at least a few years, but we've never been explicitly told which she got first, OFA or her husband and kid.  You can make a good guess if you do the math, though, so here's some math+guessing:

The mothers in the series whose ages we know (the mothers of Deku, Bakugou, Tsuyu and Jirou) all had their first child in their early-to-mid-20s.(5)  Let's assume Nana was the same and put her at, say, 24 when Kotarou was born.  He then died at 32 (having turned so only recently), meaning that, had she survived, she would have been around 56 at the time of his death.  Tacking on the time since the Shimura Massacre using Shigaraki's age, that would put Nana at 72 today.    

All Might, again, got the quirk ~40 years ago; if he was echoing his own experience in the way he raised Deku, he would have been 15 at the time.  That would have made Nana 32—and Kotarou 8—at the time she gave Toshinori OFA.  She was killed when he was 18, his senior year.

Kotarou looks noticeably younger than 8 when we see him as a kid being given up.  He looks much closer to Tenko's ago, or his obvious parallel Kouta's, those ages being 5 and 6 respectively.  So I think we can assume Nana gave up Kotarou at least a few years before giving Toshinori OFA, which would certainly explain her surety, in the letter, that the fight would be the death of her.  If Kotarou was, say, 6, that’d make Nana 30 at the time she gave him up.    

We don't have any further idea how long Nana was carrying OFA herself before the transfer, only that it was less time than Shinomori, and not long enough to start taking a heavy toll on her(6) despite her being several iterations down the line from him.  I would guess it was fewer than 10 years, as 10 would put her at only 22 when receiving it, and I would tend to think that she wouldn't have had a kid if she'd known the full extent of what she was dealing with—she obviously saw the state En was in when he passed it on, after all.    

So, let's assume she'd already been a hero, trained and licensed, and already married with a young son when she came across En and didn't realize the extent of what she was getting herself into.  Some time between Kotarou's birth and turning let's-call-it-6, she takes the quirk, gets the world’s worst wake-up call when her husband is killed, and gives Kotarou up to the state.

Let's say it takes a year or two to realize the full extent of excrement you've stepped in with AFO.  Two years with a mysterious new quirk she got off a dying stranger before the mess led her to give up her son (at 30) would put her at getting the quirk at 28, when Kotarou was 4ish.  If she gave Toshinori the quirk around 32, that means she would have carried OFA around 4 years.

Running tally for age of OFA: 45 years.    

Bearers 6+5, En and Banjou (Take One)

En and Banjo are big question marks.  We have no idea how long they each carried OFA, other than, again, "for less time than Shinomori."  So to start narrowing down a timeframe for them, let me look to something else: heroism in general.

We know that Banjo, two bearers previously to Nana, was a professional hero—Lariat.  Heroism, then, must have existed in his era.    

We don't know specifically how long Pro Heroes have been established in Japan, but we can make at least one educated guess: Harima Oji was active when, quote, "the present system was just beginning to settle into place."  Thus, heroism has been around for the generations following him, as well as some years prior to his own vantage point.  That factoid gives us four generations (his child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and finally his great-great-grandchild, Sako Atsuhiro) plus however many of Harima’s own years heroes have existed for.  

A generation is usually considered around 25 years, which tracks with the known parental ages in the series.  So if the stretch of time between Harima's child's birth to Sako's birth can be estimated to 75 years, plus Mr. Compress's age of 32, that means it's been at least 108 years since Harima's child was born.  We don't know when said child was born relative to his criminal activity—maybe Harima had already become a father by the time he was thieving; maybe the family came later.  Let's just round it to 110 years that we can say with relative confidence included heroes in them.    

Heroes have existed for at least/around 110 years.  Our estimate of OFA's lifespan, meanwhile, currently stands at 45 years.  As noted earlier, it seems pretty apparent that heroes did not exist at the time One For All was first created; AFO’s climb to the top happened in those early chaotic years before the legislation of heroism.  So that leaves us at least 65 years we need to fill between Nana getting OFA and the very first licensed hero, and then an uncertain number of years between that first licensing and OFA’s creation.

Keep that 65-year figure in mind; we’ll be using it going forward.  For now, let's put a pin in En and Banjo and move on.    

Bearer 4, Shinomori

Shinomori is easy.  He carried OFA for 18 years, and says his own times were awful—he must, then, have been much closer to those chaotic years (which would track with Shinomori’s direct successor Banjo saying that the Japan Deku’s sojourning in post-Jakku reminds him of his own time).  18 years off our remaining 65 leaves us with 47 years OFA must have existed such that it at least parallels (and ideally predates) the Hero Institution.

Running tally for age of OFA: 63 years.    

Bearers 2+1, [?] and Yoichi

Skipping Bearer 3, another big mystery, for a moment, if AFO would rather his brother be dead than free, and if AFO wanted to both take back that power and take some really horrible revenge for stealing his brother away, I'd be shocked if Yoichi and Strawberry Bakugou made it as much as a decade between them.  Let's call it a decade for ease of rounding, though, and add 10 years to our tally.

Running tally for age of OFA:  73 years.    

This brings us down to the three bearers we have the least information on: #3, Banjo and En.  We still have 37 years to account for to get us in the ballpark of that Year 1 of Heroism, and more would, again, be welcome, as I assume the first hero didn’t get sworn in on the very eve of OFA’s creation.  (It might be thematic, but it runs you square into Destro and the original MLA, and evidence I’ll go over later would put them later in the timeline.)

Moving on, let’s take a brief aside to consider the vestiges’ appearances.  It might seem likely that none of the early bearers carried OFA for very long, given that they all look the same in the OFA mindscape as they do in the scene where 2nd and 3rd kick down the vault door hiding Yoichi, suggesting they died without having the chance to get significantly, obviously older than they were in that moment.

On the other hand, we don’t know enough about quirk metaphysics to say that the appearance of the vestiges would match their living appearances.  Given that we know there's a certain amount of connection between All Might and his vestige, it could be that the vestiges mirror their living selves' appearances until the end.  We can't really call Vestige Might definitive, though, because he's the only one that isn't a quirk vestige, but rather just an impression of All Might's (literal) personality.

Perhaps, then, the others’ appearances are imprinted when they're first incorporated into One For All and then they just stick that way?  Or is it more about their self-image, the age they tend to think of themselves as being?  Or is it the age that marked the most important part of their lives with OFA?  The lines beneath Nana’s eyes kind of come and go, but they’ve never been consistent enough that I’d call them a definitive sign that the vestiges’ appearances are fluid.

Deku’s fluctuating appearance—both how much he’s covered in mist and even his age, as shown when he talks about how he wants to save the little boy he felt inside Tomura’s rage—would seem to point towards a fluid manifestation, but Deku also can’t be considered definitive because he, like All Might, is both still alive and not appearing in the mindscape via his quirk, because he doesn’t natively have one.

So comparing the bearers’ appearances in flashbacks versus their mindscape selves is a dead-end.  What else do we have?    

Bearer 5, Banjo (Take Two)

I might guess that since All For One seems to have largely lost track of the bearers during Shinomori's time—seeing as he died of "old age," rather than at AFO's hand—it's possible that Banjo had a very good run before AFO caught up to him.  OFA was weaker back then, so the effect it had on Banjo's power levels might not have been so noticeable in a sea of heroes that it jumped out right away, especially with Yoichi's "voice" still being ill-formed.  Banjo's also by far the oldest looking of the lot, give or take Shinomori's difficult-to-measure signs of age.  That being the case, let's give Banjo 15 years—fewer than Shinomori, but long enough to take a good chunk out of our remaining span.

Running tally for age of OFA: 88 years.    

Bearers 6+3, En and [?] (Take Two+A Tweak to Nana’s Numbers)

That takes us down to 22 years to split between En and Mr. Fa Jin to get us to the bare minimum point where heroism would be brand new circa OFA's creation.  It's pretty much a toss-up, how one imagines that going.  My last point of evidence to consider, then, is Banjo’s statement that AFO tried to steal OFA from both him and En, and it didn't work.  They clearly survived to pass on the power, however, and not to anyone under AFO's direct control.  So, is it possible that, by this point, AFO was coming to understand that he couldn't just neatly steal OFA?  That he needed to adjust factors somehow?

That being the case, while I expect he would have tried to keep Banjo and En around (the better to have them available to test out new methods on!), he might not have been in full search-and-destroy mode, because he didn't have a solution yet, so it didn’t really hurt him to let OFA's bearers run about for a while, meaning En could have had a pretty good stretch of time with the power.  Heck, that might even have had an effect on the amount of time Nana had as well!  I estimated two years between getting the power and realizing the extent of her danger, but if AFO was in full cat-playing-with-its-food mode by then, it might well have been longer.

On the other hand, if AFO lost track of Fa Jin-san such that he was able to pass OFA to Shinomori without being detected, it would seem he slipped AFO's net as well, so he could also have had a pretty solid run.

Twenty-two years left, but En—if his appearance is even remotely relevant—is the clear youngest outside of Izuku, and I don’t see him and Banjou having a senpai/kohai relationship if En was a literal child at the time.  So to avoid having to hang too much time on him, let's wick a year or two back to Nana, reflecting that perhaps AFO’s danger was not quite so immediately apparent as I first supposed, and make her OFA run 6 years instead of 4.

Running tally for age of OFA: 90 years.    

That gives us 20 years remaining between En and 3rd that we know need to exist to get them back to even Harima Oji's time.

Let’s go ahead and assume that En was at least 18 when he got the power from Banjou—while we can imagine situations outside of official, professional relationships, Banjou was a hero, and En called him senpai, so the Occam’s Razor explanation is that En was also a licensed hero when they were forming that relationship.  If En was a licensed hero, he’d need to be old enough to be issued that license.  Even if he didn’t go to a hero school—that many years in the past, did hero schools even exist?—I have to think he’d need to be at least 18.  And we see how old he looked at the time of his death: exactly the same way he does in the mindscape.  I’d guess he’s around the same age as e.g. the twenty-somethings in the League, so at best I’d call him 25 at the time of his death, giving him a maximum possible run of 7 years.

That leaves Fa Jin-san 13 years with OFA to meet my scaffolded-out-into-thin-air bare minimum.

Running tally for age of OFA: 110 years.    

So, OFA has to be at least 110 years old to even get the point of its creation back to Harima Oji, and that’s reachable while staying within the bounds of what we know.  I personally still think it’s still a bit on the short side, however.  Again, the OFA dream very much gave the impression that AFO was running around attracting the masses in the full-tilt chaos years, not the ones where the Hero System had already been adopted and was beginning to settle.  So let's bump it back 10 more years—before Harima, and anywhere between that same 10 years to only a few years prior to Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army, depending on how contemporaneous Harima and Destro were.  We can scratch those 10 years together from, for example, stretches of months (like Deku’s three months on top of his base year) that the above analysis is too broad-strokes to cover, as well as granting an extra year or two here and there to bearers whose numbers we can only guess at.

FINAL TALLY FOR AGE OF ONE FOR ALL: 120 years.    

Shigaraki Yoichi and AFO’s Ages (Interim Answer)

Recall that I estimated Yoichi at the time of the dream as being in his late 20s.  Tack that onto our age of OFA, and we get just a bit shy of 150 years from the time of Yoichi's birth to Izuku entering UA.  This would make AFO a few years over 150—over 100, but not so close to 200 that you’d expect Gran Torino to say that instead.    

Putting It Together

I estimated the Captain Hero comics as being from late 80s/early 90s and supposed that they were less than a decade old when Yoichi and AFO first picked them up.  Chapter 333 gives us a quick flashback from AFO to Yoichi reading them; Yoichi in that panel looks less than 10 years old himself.  So let’s ballpark the comic and Yoichi as being around the same age and put their publication and Yoichi’s birth in 1990.  Adding on the previous ballpark of “a bit shy of 150 years” to get from Yoichi’s birth to today, that puts us at “a bit shy of 2140”—or of 2141 for the manga’s current events!

Now we can use Tiger’s age+birthday to settle on a final number.  Tiger’s birthday is, as stated, February 29th—he’s already had his birthday for the year and is currently 32.  If 2141 were exactly correct, that’d put him being born in 2109—not a leap year.  Luckily, the estimation is “a bit shy of 2141,” so let’s bump that birth year back by one to have him being born in the nearest leap year of 2108.  32 years later, he and we find ourselves in…

|| The current year is 2140, with Deku’s first year at UA being 2139. ||    

Going back to the beginning, then, to try and backdate the glowing baby, my suppositions are as follows: 

 •   AFO and Yoichi are from relatively early in the Advent period, within the group of people deemed the first generation.      •   “A generation” can be ballparked to 25 years.      •   Yoichi was born in 1990.  Being of the same generation as the glowing baby means his birth needs to be within 25 years of the baby’s birth.  25 years back from Yoichi’s birth would put us in 1965, which is much too early, so it must be a narrower window.        o We also know All For One is younger than the growing baby, if possibly by very little.  If AFO is 3-5 years older than Yoichi (again, early 30s versus late 20s in the flashback dream), that’d put him being born sometime in 1985 to 1987.        o I don’t want to push the baby’s birth any further than 1985—the collapse being rapid means I need to keep it as close as I can to my taser datum in 1993—but let’s aim for a middle way and call AFO 4 years older than Yoichi, born in 1986.  That puts us with a final analysis of…

|| The glowing baby was born in 1985.  Quirks are 155 years old. ||    

Checking My Math With Doc Ujiko

If AFO is currently 154, then even assuming Ujiko’s Life Force quirk had a retroactive effect, AFO should look in his mid-70s, which he clearly doesn’t.  However, I’ve long figured that AFO had to have been running on a life-extension quirk of some kind even before he met Ujiko.  Even just working with what’s explicit in the manga, he looked more or less the same when he fought All Might as he did when he fought Nana 40 years prior, and more or less the same as that when he created One For All far longer prior still!  A simple “2 years lived=1 year aged quirk” wouldn’t explain that continuity of appearance, and AFO certainly doesn’t seem to suffer from Ujiko’s reduced vitality.

Also, Ujiko is, per Mic, over 120 (thus presumably under 130).  He presented his Paranormal Singularity Theory to the world 70 years ago, during a time when the world was “struggling to end the turmoil and reclaim peace.”  Assuming my numbers are right, 70 years ago would put AFO at 84 years old.  One For All would have been created 50 years prior.  This makes AFO around 30 years older than Ujiko.(7)    

A (New) Finalized Rough Timeline

Note: Years are estimated, favoring five-year increments for ease of calculation.  Most events could be tweaked earlier or later by a year or two.  It does not include the One For All bearers; recall that I wedged in an extra decade to their time, to be distributed in chunks of months or more generous year allotments than my first pass.  Not having specifically divvied out those years, they’re not represented below.

1985:  The glowing baby is born

1986:  The child who will become All For One is born.

1990:  Shigaraki Yoichi is born.

~2015:  The child who will later call himself Garaki Kyudai is born.

2020: One For All is created.

~2032:  Harima Oji’s child is born.

2070:  Soon-to-Be-Garaki Kyudai presents his Paranormal Singularity Theory.

~~~generations pass~~~

2139:  Midoriya Izuku receives One For All; begins first year at UA.

2140:  Manga current events.

...Et voilà!

P.S. If the Hawks line turns out to be in the main canon, I will cry. And then I will do my best to adjust this accordingly.

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1:  Of the ones I could identify, at least.  Others include Superman, Ultra Man, Devilman, Kikkaider, etc.

2:  Entertainingly enough, this would offer a parallel between Yoichi clinging to his reduced-price comics and young Takami Keigo with his clearance-bin Endeavor plush.  Sometimes, it’s not what a thing is, it’s what the thing represents that makes all the difference.

3:  Specifically, I’d initially wanted AFO and Yoichi to be at least in the second full generation, with the collapse happening gradually over the course of the first generation and accelerating into full meltdown as the second generation began to appear.  I would later roughly define a generation as being 25 years, however, and a 25-year gap between the glowing baby and AFO proved to be flatly irreconcilable with the math that came out of backdating One For All and the history of professional heroism.

4:  Since Yoichi was never under the effects of an anti-aging quirk, if AFO already had one back then and Yoichi didn’t, Yoichi would have appeared to be the elder of the two.  That Yoichi still looked younger suggests that, if there was an anti-aging quirk on the table at that time, it was still very new.  More likely, though, AFO simply hadn’t found one yet.

5: In order: 26, 22, 26, and 21.

6:  At worst, she looks to have just started developing lines beneath her eyes, visible in some of the scenes of her towards the very end of her life and not present in her younger days.

7: Ujiko would have been in the vicinity of 55 at the time, and thus physically appearing merely in his upper 20s.  About the same age Yoichi was, way back when…

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

saw a video that was like “everybody comment what you did today so we can see how everyone experienced something different” and the comments have me tearing up on this train. what the fuckkkk. the human experience

the thing is that childhood doesn't just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it's going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it's going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you've suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself

Three... Guards?

Summary: Tifa finds Cloud at the train station in Sector Seven. It’s the first time she’s seen him in seven years. But he’s not alone. Three silver haired boys protected him. Three silver haired boys that triggered memories of her hometown. Of steel through her chest. Of SOLDIER First Class.

Of Him.

Inspired by this prompt by @im-totally-not-an-alien .  

Please Enjoy!

…

Chapter 1: Punishment

This wasn’t part of the plan. This was one hundred thousand percent not part of the plan. They were supposed to use Mother’s cells and become Him. It was that simple. Basic. Elementary. And they almost had it. How did everything go wrong? Why was it so complicated? 

If that stupid president didn’t make that shot. If Mother's box stayed intact. If they took a different turn and avoided the decommissioned mako reactor. If they didn’t slip off the ledge. If that black sheep of a big brother didn't gain the upper hand. If he managed to save them from falling into the remaining Lifestream. If that brother was successful. 

If.

If.

If.

These scenarios wouldn’t help them now. They couldn’t waste time thinking about ‘possibilities’ when reality screamed in front of them. 

Big Brother needed help. After submersion in the Lifestream, the three of them found themselves spit out somewhere in the wasteland surrounding Midgar. The entire city stood proudly, Shinra Tower and the Sector Seven plate unified and composed and supported. Like the city itself was reborn along the horizon. Whatever it was, it would be a long walk back. And was it just them, or did everything seem… bigger? Even the few cliffs and rogue plants in the ruined land seemed larger than before. They turned to each other for explanation and…

…What?

What?! 

They looked like children, short and small! As old as the children they healed! What did the Lifestream do to them?! They understood some kind of retaliation was coming but why this. 

Great. The oldest was about to cry again, completely panicked and losing his very loose grip on his emotions. The middle was far too calm, but even that facade started to crack when he noticed none of them had any weapons. The youngest, in all honesty, was ready to strangle every living thing, but that would have to come later, when they eventually made their way into the city. Making it across this worthless plain would be a lot harder as pint sized packages with no vehicles, but they didn’t find any other options. Was the Planet trying to ‘walk’ them to death?

Well, no. They quickly stumbled across a body, skin a soft green and birds picking at the rotting flesh. It must’ve been dead for at least a day. The man had black hair, a SOLDIER uniform, dozens of dried bullet wounds that vultures took full advantage of, and a solid blade of the sword Big Brother fought with. The same one they found, and kicked to the ground, when pursuing him. The eldest grew curious. Approaching without hesitation, he broke the grip of the corpse and lifted the blade, though holding it to attention forced his body to shake in struggle. 

“Put it down,” The youngest spat. The older one dropped the sword immediately in surprise, the hunk of metal clattering and ringing as it fell. The birds scattered, flying nearby for the moment these children left. 

“Don’t scare me like that!” 

The youngest rolled his eyes and stayed silent, knowing that if he said a single word back, they'd all have to deal with his tears. They didn’t have time for that.

“Hey, Kadaj…?”

“What now?” The boy immediately turned to the other brother, annoyed and tired of all the weird stuff that kept happening today. A strong part increasingly frustrated at his failure to carry out Mother’s plan before suddenly appearing outside Midgar.

“Is that… Big Brother…?” 

Kadaj’s face soured with confusion and he moved to observe the being. But his breath hitched the moment blonde spikey hair came into view. At the silent response, the eldest followed, eyes wide and completely lost upon seeing the man.

It was. It was him, his body leaning against the rocks and his head low. Like them, he wasn’t the same either. He was younger and clearly weaker to start. His skin was dangerously dry, his lips peeling around rapid shallow breaths, his eyes sunken and darkened. The middle child moved his arm and lifted his head in analysis. 

“He seems dehydrated…” He stated simply, his voice naturally quiet and lulling as it had been before. “He might die out here…”

Kadaj stared at the unconscious body. All his questions about this punishment snapped into place, completing the puzzle with a single realization. Too much had already changed. They couldn’t risk any greater ‘butterfly effect’ without risking wherever Mother was. “Loz, pick him up. We’re taking him to Midgar.”

The eldest acted immediately. “I got it.”

“Do you think he knows where Mother is…?”

“No. But I think he’s our best chance at finding her. He always seems to be around- what are you doing?”

Loz managed to lift Big Brother’s arm over his shoulder, but the other half practically dragged through the dirt. 

Kadaj glanced at the middle sibling. “Yazoo.”

He nodded, already adjusting to help.

“No, I got it,” Loz grumbled, turning the body just out of reach.

“You do not got it. Everything’s a mess.” He countered with a snip in his voice, approaching the blade. “I’ll grab his sword. Let’s go.”

Yazoo aided as much as he could with his slightly shorter height than his brother, balancing the blonde between them. Kadaj picked up the hilt, dragging the tip on the ground, not wasting energy trying to lift it or prevent the horrid wear on the blade itself. They needed water, food, probably gil, and any weapons they could get their hands on, if they wanted a chance at saving Big Brother.

It was a long way to Midgar.

* * * 

The smell of garbage and rot under the plate always filled the air, smog skewing the natural light from the gaps within the structure. The dirt roads and barely functioning homes were just a part of life here. A roof was almost a luxury. Afterall, it wasn’t like they got any rain or snow here. Monsters within the dumps were usually problems, but communities set up watches and hunting sessions to protect the normal civilian life.Life was, to an extent, peaceful. 

Besides the resistance the black haired woman housed under her bar, a bar she currently needed to stock. 

Upper plate always had the best product anyway. This was routine by now. Every Monday and Thursday, she made her way to the train station, took it to Sector Zero, collected what she needed, and headed back. An ever mundane task compared to the actual looting of Shinra facilities her friends conducted at night, and housed spoils beneath her workplace. 

Today, this simple life flipped on its head. 

She dropped the empty box in her arms. There was no mistaking it. He changed. He grew, but he still kept his blonde hair spiky as a palm tree. He was taller, stronger by the shape of his muscles, clothed head to toe in SOLDIER fatigues, just as he promised all those years ago. His skin was pale, but he still had color in his face. His mako blue eyes were open but empty, lost, hollow. But it was still Cloud Strife in front of her, leaning against that platform.

But…who were the three boys with him? 

All of their hair shined with perfect mercury. They couldn’t be older than ten, shorter in stature, but stronger than they seemed at first glance. One had long hair, one only had it to his shoulders, but the last, and the bulkiest, had his cut short and pushed up. 

For a moment, she felt herself distracted from Cloud, when the smallest glared daggers directly into her eyes, mako blue inhuman needles staring straight into her soul.

He looked like Him. They all looked like Him.

They figured someone would come for Big Brother eventually, but he couldn’t be left alone. Nor would they let him be alone. Occasionally, he mumbled incomprehensibly, calling out to something or someone. They just ignored it. Yazoo acted caringly and offered bottled water directly to his chapped lips, but he always took too small a sip than he needed, if he drank any at all. Loz stayed close while surveying the people disembarking the trains, watching for someone to recognize their brother. Kadaj did the same with the crowd coming from the slums, which is how he alone found himself locked in a staring contest with one of their enemies. 

He tensed his hand, ready to whip out the pocket knife he found in the rubble and garbage. “What do you want?” 

The other two looked over immediately. 

His voice cut her like a knife, the anger, almost malice behind her catching her off guard. Dark. Cruel. Burning. “I- I…” Her heart suddenly pounded in her chest, reacting to her memories and leaking panic slowly into her mind. For now it was just anxiety, but she felt it growing. She needed to protect Cloud. She needed him before she let this show. “Is- Is that Cloud?”

They nodded, still skeptical, still defending. Loz approached as well, blocking part of her view but observing carefully. 

“H- How did you find him? Is he okay?”

“We found him unconscious in the planes beyond Midgar…” Yazoo explained, earning a soft glare from Kadaj. “It didn’t seem like he would make it, and well… we chose to bring him here…”

“I can help him,” She explained quickly as she took a step forward, but the two in front of her blocked her path. “I live nearby. I can take him from here and make him better.”

“You are not taking Big Brother!” Loz demanded, clenching his fists and standing at the ready. 

Big Brother? Bewilderment claimed her expression. Cloud didn’t have any siblings. That didn’t make any sense. “What are you talking about?”

“Ti…fa…?”

Her breath hitched, and all of them snapped their eyes to the stirring blonde. 

“T-Tifa…?” Cloud pushed himself to his feet too quickly, stumbling forward from the unbalanced blood rush. Yazoo grabbed his arm to stabilize him. Once on his feet, he didn't react to the boy at all. His blue eyes instantly glued to the black haired woman. 

The two guarding boys parted and let Tifa run to Cloud. 

“Cloud, it’s really you!” She was so happy she almost jumped into his arms, but he was a bit wobbly on his feet, his mind still partially dull with weak vertigo from his time in the wasteland. 

His body nearly collapsed on her, and she found her arms wrapped around him in support rather than a hug. “S-Sorry…” His eyes blurred as he tried to lift himself back to his feet. 

Did he really just apologize for fainting?

“I’m glad you’re okay…”

Tifa squeezed him softly before adjusting him over her shoulder. “Don’t be sorry. Come on. We’re going to my place, okay? I’ll patch you up there…”

He gave a reluctant, embarrassed nod. But he lost consciousness immediately after, the moment Tifa took her first step away from the track.

Now, all three boys blocked her path in a single impenetrable wall. A shaky and unnerved sigh that left her breath. She didn’t like them. She didn’t like the feeling in her gut or the memories they brought. But, they did save Cloud, and they clearly protected him from anything they could. Maybe that ‘big brother’ statement was just a story they fabricated to stay with him, especially since they look nothing like him. Maybe, since they brought him all the way to Midgar, they wanted to confirm that he was okay. She hoped they’d leave after that. She prayed.

“You guys too. Come on.”

All three remnants surrounded her and Cloud, the smaller two in front and the largest behind. They still acted like guards. But at least the long haired one picked up the box she completely forgot about as they headed for the bar in the Sector Seven slums.

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Thanks for reading!

To be continued…

Author's note: It's my first time writing the remnants! I've been wanting to for a while but I never knew how to apply their personalities to most situations. I also have a very nostalgic attachment to Advent Children (music, fight scenes, some of the voice acting) so I wanted to do this right, not just a joke and not where I need to fill in most of the world, at least to start. Thus: another adapted time travel AU. 

This won't be too many chapters (I think) but I hope it's a good time. Thanks for reading!

you know the end before it starts

wolf in white van, john darnielle / the secret history, donna tart / gone girl, dir david fincher / the illiad, homer / seven pounds, did gabriele muchino / oresteia, robert ickle / the raven boys, maggie stiefvater / they both die at the end, adam silvera / romeo and juliet, william shakespeare / war of the foxes, richard siken

What is or isn’t a slur can be highly contextual, y'all.

“Jonny Sims bummed a fag off my ma” doesn’t contain a slur, but “What are you, some kind of fag?” does.

“Queer studies”, “the queer community” and “I’m queer”? Not a slur. Some bigot calling you a “dirty queer”? Slur.

“Be gay, do crimes” and “He’s gay” ≠ slur, but “Ew, that’s so gay” = slur.

In conclusion, stop buying into this fucking “q slur” bullshit. Queer people talking about the queer community aren’t using it as a slur any more than a gay man calling himself gay is using that term as a slur.

Every single odd number has an “e” in it.