Title: Hero Class Civil Warfare
Author: RogueDruid (Icarius 51)
Rating: T+
Status: Complete
Fandom: My Hero Academia
Pairings: None
Summary: Hero's lead by Bakugo. Villains lead by Midoriya. Seven days prep time. Three days for Izuku Midoriya to show why they should be glad he's not a real villain.
Link: AO3

I haven' been part of the My Hero Academia fandom very long but I've read through a decent amount of fics since getting into it. Hands down this ranks number one for me. It's a Villain!Deku story and oh boy does it deliver. Unlike most villain izuku fics where he's forced into being a pawn for the League of Villains or he becomes one after his encounter with All Might, this one shows Deku being a very capable and very frightening villain with plans among plans among plans. This Villain!Deku fits into the role of magnificent bastard like he was born for it.

The biggest plus in this story is how much emphasis is put on Izuku's intelligence and his tactical prowess. It isn't his quirk that gives the villains an advantage over the heroes, in fact he only has two real instances of using it, but his innate talent of analysis and strategics. This fic turns his obsession with heroes and his need to analyze them into him embracing his role as a villain and doing everything he can to not only act like a villain but think like one too.

Another plus for me is that every character feels like they get plenty of screen-time, even the class 1-B characters (some of which we know hardly anything about) are given what I feel like is just as much importance as the class 1-A characters. The author also has some freedom with developing these characters because of how little canon has developed them so far - a few of the 1-B quirks are educated guesses based on their designs as well as their characters as a whole. There are also two, easily guessable, fan favorite characters on the villain side that are an added bonus. The character interactions are also superb.

There is also the tagged body horror scene which is probably my favorite scene in the entire fic. There is also a planned series of this with the ending having a very ominous vibe around it.

The writing itself is nothing special with a few grammar issues and typos. Some scenes also tended to blend together a few times, having to go back and re-read those scenes, but the second time I read it this was lessened. An easy 5/5 from me.

 

So once I started I had a very hard time putting this down. This is a very good story in my opinion but like Assassian4life I am new to the fandom so anything that isn't 100% slash and hurt comfort is okay by me.

I really liked the tactical aspect that this story chose to highlight instead of rehashing fights that are in most MHA fics (Sports Festival, Stain etc.) Where it did get involved in fighting it kept it light and avoided getting bogged down in moves and counter moves and kept up the overall tone of the villains staying a few steps ahead of the heroes. Grammatically, overall pretty good, didn't spot anything that pulled me out of my reading.

On the negative side, this story while fun broke in the villains favor heavily, personally I took it at face value but the overall success of the villains depends on a heavy dose of idiot stick on the hero side. Not to say this couldn't happen given the hero leader but I felt that the rest of the hero ensemble cast was sort of just there as cardboard cutouts and didn't show us their character, which had the heroes for the most part went along passively with the plan.

Overall 4/5 for me.

 

I'm beyond thankful this wasn't slash.

Deku wasn't a crybaby. Kacchan was surprisingly in character.

The writing switched between present tense and past tense at times, but those seemed more like editing mistakes than deliberate.

The cursing was unnessacary in most instances and blatantly OOC, but I let it slide with the caveat that they were getting into thier villian personas. I understood why it was actually happening (Author speech patterns being written in instead of the characters) but it didnt bother me to too much.

4/5 Definitely reccomended. Author has a very nice voice for Deku and I was very pleased at the Nedzu (The rat principal) portrayal. That was a great bit of character development and showed why, exactly, he is the head of the number 1 hero academy in the country

Can't wait for the sequel.

 

Sequel is out!

I read this about a week or two back, in a single day. Absolutely loved it.

However, at that point my only exposure to MHA was through the first three episodes, Lamarckian, and wikiwalking. As such, I didn't think I could properly rate or review it, because it's not a re-treading of canon. This actually caused me to properly watch the series (now up to S3e09).

I've also read a lot of other MHA fics. This one is almost unique:
- Not a canon retread with new and exciting powers
- Not an SI
- Not hurt/comfort
- No 'dissociative disorders'

I hadn't realised how rare that seemed to be.

Full review yet to come after a re-read, but this is easily a 4 at the least.

 

Is it too much to ask for the summary to not like contain 3 grammatical errors in 4 lines??

 

Okay, so.

Re-read complete.

The writing can be a bit bad in places - I noticed multiple minor typos, line breaks not being where they should, and awkward grammar. It didn't seem to be consistent, and probably only once or twice a chapter, but it was definitely noticeable. That's a bad thing.

Secondly, the author does something I usually hate seeing - deliberately obfuscating plots and ideas, and being smug about it. Things are referred to obliquely, and you only catch on when it happens. Normally, this isn't an issue, because most writers don't use it often. But in a story about convoluted plans within plans, it is kind of a necessity. It could have been much worse, but it felt like it was straying into overuse.

On the plus side, it felt like a lot of the characters mattered - nobody (on the villain team, at least) seems to have been relegated to "and also, Neville was there". Their quirks, and interactions between them, matter, as do their personalities. This is probably self-enforcing, as the author would have mostly chosen to write about characters whose powers they liked, and focused scenes on them because of it. As the author was able to pick whoever they wanted, and have a reason for everyone else to be elsewhere, this actually worked really well.

However, from that, it really feels like the author's just crammed their favourite characters into the villain team, and has every excuse to fuck up the plans for their less well-liked characters. I get the Izuku's supposed to be brilliant, but it's not even close. Which kind of lowers the tension.

I mean, I get that Katsuki is a dick, and that basically everyone seems to hate him, in universe, but accept that he knows what he's doing. But I find it hard to believe that all the other characters just roll over, and go with his plans despite them never seeming to work/exist.

Further, this isn't just a canon retread. I know I previously mentioned it, but the MHA fandom really does seem to be full of rubbish. Lots of new powers, or Mary SIs, or hurt/comfort snuggle-fests. Out of everything I've read, this stands tall against basically everything else. Maybe it wouldn't be quite so outstanding in a larger fandom, but definitely recommended. There's issues, but they're generally forgivable.

5/5

 

Read through this last night and I have mixed feelings. From a technical perspective, the author is mediocre at best, with prolific misspellings, formatting fuckups, and various other mechanical errors. The writing is not particularly impressive at all.

Similarly, the author has a poor grasp of the characters, or at the least lets their biases taint the characters. The whole story is very clearly "these are the people I like and the designated heroes who will succeed, while everyone else is a blithering idiot", with basically no one being entirely true to their canon characterization. This is most obvious with Bakugo, as instead of the uncouth-yet-bizarrely-charismatic kid who, while arrogant, has the talent, skill, and intellect to back it up, and as a result has literally never lost a fight, we get a blithering idiot who charges headlong into trap after trap, and even falls for the same shit Deku pulled in canon, even though in that same episode Deku tried to pull it a second time and Bakugo turned it around on him.

All in all, this is a mediocre fic with an author who is hellbent on breaking canon over their knee to favor their preferred characters, and in a healthy fandom would rate a 3/5 at absolute best.

It's good for the author that they're writing for MHA though, as in that wasteland, this shines, to the point where I was up until 2:30 reading through it and the one chapter of the sequel. For the fandom, I give it 4.5/5.

 

When I first started this fic before it had finished, I thought it was a breath of fresh air. There's about one good For Want of a Nail and one good H/C fic in the entire fandom, and the rest just re-tread the story, so this definitely stood out immediately.

The author obviously favors the villain characters over others, especially since the Sports Festival might've shown that while Iida and Uraraka want to distinguish themselves from Deku, I doubt they would always turn down Deku's team for everything. That seemed to be the only justification for choosing the hero side for Iida, Uraraka, and Todoroki. I know that the main perspectives aren't the Hero Team, but it's stretching for Bakugo, Todoroki, Uraraka, and Iida to all be that dense about Deku's ability to plan, and I highly doubt that Bakugo isn't aware of Deku's more manipulative side after starting U.A. It would've been a lot more entertaining for the Hero Team to respond to Deku's plotting in kind, especially with Bakugo as the leader.

I found 1-B to be pretty entertaining, though. Awase and Kaibara are hilarious when they basically joyride with a non-lethal Gatling gun. Some of the traps are really funny, too.

That said, the mechanics are underwhelming at best. I'm used to fanfiction, and therefore correct some of it in my head as I read, but it can get cumbersome. And the structure of the chronology can also get annoying. Two or three paragraphs will go by, and then then a page of flashback, and then going back to present day is just bad structure, in my opinion. That also kind of flows into what another reviewer said about the author being smug about the stuff they're obviously hiding from the audience.

Overall, a 3/5. Although I have to agree with Agayek that in the BNHA fandom it's higher, probably a 4/5.