A Collective Archive of BNHA Metas&Analysis

Spinner, the Heart of the League

In response to Spinner’s short monologue about Dabi last week, there’s been a lot of (in my opinion) mischaracterization, of these words as misunderstanding Dabi, or even as jealousy. Spinner’s low self-worth is definitely a flaw he needs to overcome, because it leads him to doing dangerous things like accepting a quirk from AFO when he’s known to blow people up for defying him, and risk it all for Shigaraki. 

However, Spinner seeing the best in other members of the league is also his greatest strength as a character. What people are missing is literally nobody before this point referred to Dabi’s determination as a good thing. Just like Toga noticing and referring to Dabi as a kind person when he burns down the home of her childhood trauma, the other members of the league are basically the only ones who see any good in Dabi’s actions or frame him in any positive light. Everyone else sees Dabi’s lifelong determination as a problem that he should just stop and give up on his goal of bringing Endeavor to justice, Spinner is the only one who recognizes that Dabi’s convictions are his strength. 

Because it reminds some of us about the harsh truth of the real world where most of the abuse/domestic violence cases are never going to the public/reported because some people will question our credibility and how we are encouraged to stay silent (to preserve our family image) and to just forgive.

A hero's duty resembles to a law enforcement officer in the real world, right? There are already so many times when we are let down by the law enforcement in real life. And even in the anime world, "the law enforcement officers" are disappointing, too? And even in the anime world, those people who hold the power (in terms of strength and authority, aka the heroes) refuse to listen to "our" story and will always "win"?

"But the villains are doing that the wrong way, they just want to cause destruction!" Sure, but the point still stands. Until now, not even one of the heroes stops and considers what the villains have said. They just brush it off and act like the villains are saying that only to 'waver the trust in the heroes'. Not really heroic for me. It seems like they don't care what causes the villains to be born in the first place, they just want to apprehend the villains. The heroes don't have even just a lil will/thought to solve the "root cause" of all this mess. And if they don't start to wonder what the root cause is, then this cycle will just happen again and again. More villains will be born and many civilians will get involved again.

I am not a fan of BJ saying that Dabi's words will cause the trust in the heroes wavering, as if that's the only thing he cares about. And I'm also not a fan of (if later confirmed in the official translation) Deku saying that he doesn't want Endeavor to hurt because he's his mentor and he makes him strong, as if it's a right thing to say to an abuse victim about their abuser. We are so agreed about Dabi should be held accountable for his crimes, but seems like from y'all words, we are keen to forget/dismiss that he is also an abuse victim.

I know I said I wouldn't write meta and I will go back to my hermitage after this post, but this is too important for me not to note.

This is Dabi making yet another meta-narrative comment directly in-story. This is Dabi telling Deku how empty his words are. How his butchered attempt at sympathizing falls short of real life, because it's based on the wrong prerequisites.

"You're not Endeavor" "haha, anybody could figure that out" ——> it's a direct callback to the "it's your power" scene. And yet. It falls on deaf ears. Because Deku's sympathy is conditional, and it requires its object to be emotionally well-adjusted to an extent. It requires the victim to be a "good" victim. Someone who still has something "worth saving" in them.

With Shouto, the words "it's your power" triggered the memory of a loving mother telling Shouto that he wasn't bound by his blood. Shouto went through hell, but for some time he had the unconditional affection of at least one parent to give him some emotional stability. He had a good idol to admire in All Might, someone who was a pro but wasn't as corrupted and cruel as his father. Deku's words had an impact on him because they awakened something that was already inside Shouto.

But Dabi is different. Touya didn't have any of that. We never saw Rei comforting him. He had to crawl in tears to Natsuo. The implication is there. There was no adult role model for him who showed him a healthier path. There was no one guiding him. No one to save him in time, and he lost his mind as a result of losing all his certainties.

Saying "it's your power" to Dabi can't have the same effect it had on Shouto, and expecting as much is incredibly naive of Deku. "You're not Endeavor". Well, duh. Of course Dabi is not. Dabi's the victim here, and yet he's not the one Deku is choosing to sympathize with. Deku's giving a second chance to an abuser, but he had to know Dabi was his son before realizing he owed some human decency to Dabi as well.

"Everyone can see that." ——> it takes more than stating the obvious to break through the walls of a victim turned perpetrator. This is Dabi's narrative challenge to Deku and to hero society as a whole. Dabi knows he's not Endeavor, but he deliberately adopted his father's methods to show hero society that those methods are inherently villainous.

Dabi wants hero society to see how he's having so little concern over his family, how he's throwing them under the bus for the sake of getting what he wants, and see that Endeavor. Did. The. Same. Exact. Thing.

"You're not Endeavor."

That's right. Cause every hero so far has been shown to be more willing to give Endeavor a second chance, but not Dabi

And that's the challenge. How is hero society going to fix this when reasoning calmly about it won't cut it? When Endeavor damaged his son's psyche so much that he lost his mind? When Dabi is not a convenient victim who will let himself be saved?

What can heroes do with their actions, and not their empty words?

I think the Todoroki family plot’s endgame eventually is some kind of healing, maybe even the picture from Endeavor’s dream. 

So I think in the end it will work out. 

But I can’t really see that Dabi was the catalyst for them to confront their issues even if he’s trying to paint it that way. They started that way before. And I kind of hate how the fandom who applauds Dabi for putting the whole family issue into the public limelight in the most sensationalist way possible, totally disregarding his siblings right to privacy and denying them all choice, at the time was screaming murder at Fuyumi for trying to sit everyone around the same dinner table. 

And yes, that first family dinner was a disaster, but it was also incredibly important for so many reasons. It was the first time Natsuo and Shouto started bonding. Natsuo was finally able to express how he was feeling, and Endeavor started to listen and reflect that he can’t just demand the right to be in his children’s life. 

And while Fuyumi, Shouto and Natsuo had three different reactions to Endeavor approaching them, they also realized that the family is not only about their father - it’s also about them - their relationship with each other, and with their mother. So despite disagreements, they were pulling in the same direction, and pushing each other out of their comfort zones, moving forward the delicate situation towards an actual solution. 

Important to note that this also applies to the rest of the league of villains. 

And with the heroes, it’s okay to admit that they might possibly be wrong and still like them. Just because someone is a hero, doesn’t mean they can do no wrong.

Not that it’s a competition, of course, they’re all hurting in their own way, but Deku is the protagonist and according to himself as narrator from the future, he tells us that this is the story of how he becomes the greatest hero. And I am hoping that he will have some development and get there eventually.

However, right now, he does what the Pro Heroes do, too - not look beyond the villain exterior. Not even for a second here can he recognize that Oh, so he’s a victim, too. The way that the heroes again and again manage to be told by villains exactly what is wrong with the hero society they live in, and how that exact society has created them; that they are villains but also victims - with Toga asking ‘Was Jin not considered a person?’ because for some reason, no matter how much the heroes know about the villains and who they were before becoming a villain - they don’t seem to see them as victims. They are villains and nothing more.

Shouto, at the very least, as obvious as it should be, asks ‘Have you lost your mind?!’ The answer is yes, clearly he has. But why has he lost it? And does it mean that he doesn’t deserve to be saved?

Yes, he has to be held accountable for his crimes. But so do those that have hurt him and the rest of the League.

Why is Shouto’s pain recognized, yet Dabi’s doesn’t matter? Are heroes able to sleep soundly at night with the thoughts of having saved everyone when they have simply dehumanized those they have failed to save?

Compassion has always been what separates heroes and villains in the past, but with what I’ve seen in BNHA thus far, that seems to be the entire point being made.  When we were first introduced to the league, namely Shigaraki, everything about his portrayal was meant to be dehumanizing. At first, we were supposed to be frightened and against the villains. We were seeing everything from Midoriya’s perspective. Seeing how this is the story of how he becomes the greatest hero, it’s not surprising. 

When I started questioning the hero society, it was a mixture of three things: 1- when Gran Torino stated that Shigaraki doesn’t deserve to be treated anything better than a villainous monster. That’s when I realized the heroes were dehumanizing the villains. Saying something like that is pretty fuckin questionable and I wasn’t okay with that. So my interest in the villains, in the League began to grow. 2- The Todorokis. The Number 2 hero. Shouto’s story. A lot about that story had hit close to home for me. And it struck another cord. The guy who’s supposed to be one of Japan’s best heroes abused and neglected his own family. He’s no better than a “villain”.  3- When we started getting bits and pieces of the league’s back stories. The unfairness of what happened to Jin, with how badly Magne just wished to live on equal ground, Toga being mistreated for something outside of her control as a child by her parents, Spinner being shamed for his appearance [also outside of his control]. And now with Shigaraki’s, Dabi’s, and Kurogiri’s stories, I stand with this even more [I’d love to know Compress’s story]. As you would read constantly throughout the library, and many from Linkspooky’s metas, and as stated above and written in the canon story, the league is made up of victims of this hero society, whether directly or indirectly.

Throughout this story, we’ve been shown the humanity of the villains, and the deep corruptness of the heroes and their society. The dehumanization. Shigaraki and Toga’s deep empathy. The abuse and neglect of inside the todoroki home. Jin, a good man, being killed by a hero despite the fact that 1- it’s illegal for heroes to kill and 2- it’s stated in the story that under no circumstances will a hero ever kill. And then the heroes constantly brushing off or ignoring the villain’s traumas because they see them as irredeemable. 

One of my all time favourite quotes came from A:TLA. From the episode in season 3 where Zuko and Aang learn about Avatar Roku’s and Firelord Sozin’s past.  “If anything, their story proves anyone’s capable of great good and great evil. Everyone, even the Firelord and the Fire Nation, has to be treated like they’re worth giving a chance.” This has been a very important quote to me for years. And it’s been bugging me for awhile now with the behaviors the “heroes” have been exhibiting. 

BNHA ch 291 resembles ch 191 a lot. Both of these chapters focus on Dabi and Dabi’s relationship with Endeavor, not to mention that both chapters show Endeavor in a tight spot and Dabi having the upper hand ‘til another pro hero interferes and makes the tables turn. So, it makes sense to compare these two chapters, not only to make future predictions but also to take a look at Dabi’s growth as a villain ‘cause in ch 291, he’s kinda living his best villain life when he jumps off Gigantomachia, ready to end Endeavor and die along with him.

In ch 191, Dabi does something similar and attacks Endeavor with this wide grin on his face. Both of these situations are preceded by a moment of Dabi realizing that it’s his time to shine. In ch 190, Endeavor collapses to the ground after defeated a High-End Nomu. It wasn’t an easy win for him, even though Hawks, the current number two hero, assisted him. So, when Dabi enters the scene and greets Endeavor with the infamous “Nice to meet you, I guess” line, Endeavor is in rough shape, and this is something that Dabi notices almost immediately, which is why he activates his quirk in ch 191.

In ch 290, things seem similar ‘cause again, Endeavor is on his last leg. He’s tried to capture Shigaraki with the assistance of several other pro heroes and hero students without much success. However, Shigaraki is kinda possessed, so the heroes are feeling hopeful when all of a sudden, Gigantomachia shows up with the rest of the League, and just like that, Gigantomachia scoops Shigaraki up into safety, and the heroes have lost. This isn’t good enough for Dabi, though. He pulls a little bottle of liquid from his tiny pouch, pours it on his head, and tells Endeavor to call him Touya as the black hair dye washes out, revealing the natural white hair underneath.

In a way, Dabi has introduced himself to Endeavor two times by now. Ch 190 also reveals that the battle between Endeavor and the High-End is televised ‘cause there’s a panel where a news helicopter flies over Fukuoka, and several different characters are shown to watch the battle in horror, so pretty much everyone in Japan knows what’s going on in the city. So, it’s reasonable to assume that when Dabi makes his first move in ch 191, he’s already entertaining the idea of making his big reveal, but mere moments before his flames hit Endeavor, Miruko (the number five hero at the time) shows up to Endeavor’s aid, and Dabi just stops and contacts Ujiko, requesting a little help.

In ch 290, Dabi is better prepared, so he not only reveals his birth name in the middle of the war, but he’s also recorded a video of himself exposing Endeavor to the public, and this video starts playing on big screens all over the country once the League’s finally reached their destination. So, Dabi has achieved one of his long-term goals, and all he has to do now is to kill Endeavor. That’s why he jumps off Gigantomachia in ch 291. He pretty much burns his ticket to safety, and for a hot moment, it seems that it’s over for both him and Endeavor, but then out of nowhere, Best Jeanist shows up and catches Dabi midair.

Now, Dabi is seemingly super alone, but not all hope is lost for him. It seems that Shigaraki has an idea of what Dabi is tryna do. In ch 271, after making Hawks quirkless but narrowly missing the final blow, Dabi wonders to himself should something start early. Later on, in ch 273, Shigaraki reaches for his phone, concludes that things aren’t looking too bright for the League, but that the plan was supposed to start right after his awakening, which indicates that Shigaraki knew all along that Dabi was gonna expose Endeavor to the public.

(bnha, chapter 266)

(School Briefs, vol. 4)

During this arc, a lot of people in the fandom have claimed that heroes (specifically Hawks) are allowed to kill in certain situations. So here’s a reminder that it is stated in canon that a hero does not kill, even a bloodthirsty villain.

And while pro heroes have a license to use their quirks in public, their job is only to aid the police with taking down villains enough so that the police can then take over and arrest the villain.

Heroes are not the ones who do the arresting, let alone the ones to play judge in what punishment a villain will receive.

You can argue that Hawks was in the right, but at the end of the day a skilled hero like him should have been able to figure out a way to take down Twice without stabbing him.

Even Snipe only shot Shigaraki in non-fatal ways, when he could have shortened the entire story by a lot had he just ended him right there (not that he should have).

This a meta-ish BNHA fandom discourse post, so if you don’t wanna see stuff like that, please go ahead and skip this post. If you like Endeavor, you might wanna skip this post. This post will also talk about child abuse and neglect.

Right now, the entire manga situation seems like the final chapter in Endeavor’s redemption arc. The big reveal kinda says that you reap what you sow, and the fact is that sometimes trying to do better now isn’t good enough. Everyone needs to face the consequences of their worst mistakes sooner or later, and Endeavor has reached the point where he has to deal with the end-result of his past ignorance ‘cause Dabi is a direct result of neglect. As Dabi puts it in ch 290, he was tossed aside and forgotten, but that he didn’t forget a thing.

In the same chapter, Dabi says that the past never forgets, and all of his actions, not just words but his real-ass actions, imply that he became a villain ‘cause it was his only way to get any attention from Endeavor.

In ch 291, we get to see Endeavor’s flashbacks where he and Touya spend a lot of time together as a father and a son. Whether Endeavor is a reliable narrator here or not doesn’t matter a whole lot. The kid clearly looked up to him, and what did Endeavor do? Neglect Touya. This is something that’s confirmed by Endeavor himself in ch 252 when he tells Natsuo that he never meant to neglect any of his children.

In ch 290, Dabi mentions that every day, he’d question why he even existed and that he used to cry to Natsuo. There’s also a panel of Touya on the dojo floor, on his knees, clearly in pain.

As some have pointed out, Endeavor isn’t there, which could indicate that Touya continued to train by himself even after Endeavor had already decided that Touya wasn’t good enough. However, this doesn’t remove the fact that Endeavor was abusive towards Shouto during Shouto’s training sessions (ch 39 and ch 222), and as twisted it is, several different studies suggest that it’s common for a neglected child to feel envy towards a sibling who gets more attention, even if it comes in the form of abuse.

Also, psychologists almost universally agree that the first years of a person’s life (so, your childhood and early teens) matter the most, so it’s quite understandable that Touya became Dabi.

If you look at the flashback scenes from ch 291, you can see a boy who quite clearly used adore his father, and based on Dabi mentioning how he’d cry every night, Touya was in such a vulnerable position. Now, Dabi himself might be an unreliable narrator, but his words were confirmed by Natsuo in ch 252 when he says that Touya used to tell him everything, which is why it will be a cold day in hell when he’s willing to forgive Endeavor.

Endeavor was Touya’s father. It was his responsibility to raise him in a stable, loving environment to make sure that he would become a somewhat stable person, especially considering that Rei has been locked up in a mental hospital for years and Touya’s death happened after Rei was hospitalized, and you can check this yourself by re-reading ch 39.

So I tried to sum up every information that I could gather from the Todoroki Family story in the manga and everyone's analysis here. And I came to this conclusion:

Endeavor Didn't Love Touya (or Any of His Children) as Unconditionally as a Parent Should

Endeavor saw that Touya has a quirk more powerful than his own, thus thought Touya had a greater potential in accomplishing his ambition: surpassing All Might. Touya, being a pure child that he was, only wanted his parents' affection and making them happy, just like how a normal child is.

The TodoFam was NOT fine before Shouto's quirk manifested. The 'Todoroki Family used to be a happy family before' take is so wrong in many level. Endeavor bought his wife, -

- trained Touya to the point where his entire self worth was based around whether he could be ‘useful’ or not to his father, completely neglected Natsuo, and then when he decided the first three kids weren’t able to accomplish his ambition, he neglected the three of them and abused Shouto also Rei to the point where Rei had a severe mental breakdown. We can't forget Touya’s ‘I used to crawl to Natsu-kun every day and ask him why I existed’ or Natsuo’s ‘I had to listen to Mum and Shouto crying’ or Shouto crying on his mother’s lap terrified of becoming like Endeavor, just because of ONE panel of Touya seemed happy training with him.

We don't know the extend of Endeavor's training towards Touya yet, from the most recent manga chapter we've just reached fragments of Touya's backstory from Endeavor's persective which if I recall till now never once showed the extend of his abuse, even to Rei and Shouto before (while we know that there were physical abuses going on from Shouto's narrative but Endeavor's narrative never showed those bad parts.)

Endeavor's flashback about Shouto and Rei:

With Touya too, Endeavor flashes back to happier times, at least in his perspective. He wants to think that there was a noble motivation for any of that he has done thus rewrites the past in his own mind by not focusing on the bad stuff. It's actually kinda a very human thing even if it's wrong.

Even if latter revealed that Endeavor once loved Touya or his family (in his twisted way), it would not be relevant in the events that had happened after that. He still became an abuser later on. Just because life seemed good to Endeavor back then, his family still suffered because of him.

Also, many are blaming Touya for exposing his abuser and downplaying his pain and trauma, some even accusing him of LYING just because then revealed Best Jeanist whom he said was killed by Hawks turns out is still alive. BUT that doesn't mean he's lying, that Best Jeanist died info is from Hawks. Hawks is the one that informed him that it was Best Jeanist's corpse, so it's actually Hawks that's lying to Dabi (which is completely reasonable and smart), but NOT Dabi, Dabi is only informing what he knows and telling 'the truth that he knows'.

The only reason why the public in the BNHA universe are still doubting what Touya has said because they don't get to see what we, THE READER, have seen. They don't know about Endeavor's past abuse and Hawks lying to Dabi about Best Jeanist corpse, while WE know better and supposed to able to decide whose words should be trusted better. Really, some people act like they live in the BNHA universe while they don't.

In almost every scene he appears in during the manga, he mentions Touya, and I really want to try to imagine the sort of effect this new information will have on him.

Natsuo and Touya have a clearly established relationship as kids, and while Fuyumi says they played together a lot, in one translation of a the scene in 253 Natsuo says that Touya used to tell him everything, implying that they also talked openly about what Endeavor was doing to their family and how they felt about it.

Natsuo was entirely ignored by Endeavor as a kid to the point where his existence was hardly acknowledged, and with information from the new light novel we know that Rei hardly took care of him either after Shouto was born. Natsuo would have been about four, not nearly old enough to do things on his own and was likely raised mostly by his older siblings.

Now imagine what it was like for Natsuo when Touya died. He would have been 10 at the most, and however Touya died (and I say died because it was considered a hard fact to the Todoroki family for almost a decade) and wether or not he witnessed it does not change the fact that it has been one of the most traumatic, defining events of his life so far. Not only was he still very much a child, Touya was likely his best friend and the single person he could rely on. Touya and Natsuo helped each other through the trauma they were both experiencing, so I can’t even imagine how devastating it would have been for Natsuo to lose his sole support system so suddenly without any grief counseling in sight.

If you think about it even now, at the core Dabi and Natsuo share strikingly similar viewpoints on hero society as a whole, and they both despise Endeavor for the same reasons. They also both seem to be very emotionally driven and have internalized their feelings that show only under stressful circumstances.

I am going to attribute the different outcomes in who they are now to Natsuo still having a stable home and Fuyumi to help him cope, and whatever happened to Touya he was almost definitely homeless and alone so it was easy for him to fall in with a group of loveable societal rejects (although I very much want to know exactly what he did for the years between ‘dying’ and joining the league).

So now finally, I will try my best to predict how Natsuo might react to the information that his brother is alive, especially assuming he finds out through the same video that Rei does. Horikoshi went out of his way to establish a relationship between the two, so either way it will definitely be heartbreaking.

First off is knowing that Touya is alive. Even with that information alone and nothing about Dabi himself, it would not explicitly be joyful. A huge part of who Natsuo has become is because of how his past-e.g. losing Touya- has shaped him. A significant example being that in the new light novel we learn that he wanted to be in the medical field to help people in situations like his mother ‘whose hearts have been hurt’. I think before any sort of positive emotion this information will definitely rattle him to the core, as it has Shouto and Endeavor. This is not just about Touya being alive, but it’s about how much of Natsuo’s life has been shaped by his death. I’d imagine under normal circumstances some form of joy or excitement would set in after the initial shock, but judging by the content of the video I can’t imagine that.

And finally we get to Touya’s status as a criminal, terrorist, and his admission to murdering over 30 people. I’m going to re-iterate what I said before, that Natsuo obviously looked up to his brother, and the image of teenaged Touya that he has been imagining and hearing in his head for the past decade is so drastically different from who he is now. **Now we have no reference point for how Touya was as a kid, wether or not he exhibited early antisocial tendencies or wether he was as kind and protective as the fandom seems to think of him. My point still stands that Natsuo looked up to him as a kid and immortalized him in his memory, so the cognitive dissonance between the Touya he knew and the Touya that we see now will also be destructive.

**Another side note, I wrote this before I saw the translation that Touya considered kiling Shouto while they were kids, which is certainly chilling and adds a whole nother level to this mess, so take that as you will

I honestly have no idea how he will react based on this last point.

One one hand, Natsuo is known for his brutal honesty in expressing how he feels, and this could be no different. There is definitely the possibility that he could blame Touya for abandoning them and betraying them, along with the horror of knowing how many people he murdered.

There is also a much different response to anticipate, mainly because Natsuo is also a very sympathetic person with a particular soft spot for his older brother, and may choose to view him as more as a victim.

Horikoshi is an incredible writer and is very capable of portraying subtle and complex emotions in his characters, and he is also well known for uncanny parallels and coming full circle in his writing, so I have theorized for a while now that the sibling’s responses to Touya’s return might be opposite to their willingness to forgive Endeavor, based mostly on their relationships with both of them. I think it would be poetic if Natsuo (who again is very emotionally driven) would have an initial response of just wanting to reunite with his brother and willing to overlook his transgressions in the moment, Shouto would still walk a middle line of being very conflicted and unsure, and if Fuyumi would blame him the most, for abandoning her and inadvertently leaving her to sacrifice most of her childhood and getting a higher education to look after the house and her younger brothers, as that had been a shared responsibility previously.

If you made it this far in the post, thank you so much for reading! Most of this is just speculation, but it’s been on my mind for a while so with the final reveal out of the way I have long been prepared to rant about the significance of Touya in Natsuo’s life and how his return would affect him. I’d love if you’s be willing to share your thoughts on all this before the next chapter.

Places where anyone can use their quirks freely, and everyone helps out each other, trying to strive for a egalitarian, classless, stateless utopia. Places where quirks fate people to a strict role in a hierarchy, assigned their position at birth to better serve their society. Places chaotic with crime, more so than the average city on earth, nothing having changed since the advent of the extraordinary centuries ago.

Great geopolitical conflicts being fought somewhere in the world, and unrecognizable to us because superpowers undoubtedly changed warfare. Children trafficked for their quirks, four year olds and younger brought and sold as essential slaves, being raised in environments that are a cruel parody of UA, taught to train their quirks beyond their limits. True child soldiers, and fighting with their unique power is all they know.

Even if not war, there other tasks for other trafficked children. The perfect quirk to accompany the scion of a privileged family, say, and because you can’t have the quirk without the person, a child is bonded into servitude. Eugenics and quirk marriages still a thing in some areas, families looking to breed perfect children; families turned clans like a throwback to some feudal era where power is carefully contained to one bloodline.

On the other side of things, quirks that are still hunted down to be hounded out of existence, the users shunned and banished away at best, captured and culled at worst. Most of the time it’s the powerful, deadly ones, but sometimes it’s just the weak, bland ones? Quirks incompatible with a person, with a society; really it’s all based on what’s considered useful or not, acceptable or not, wanted or not.

there’s definitely commentary on the justice system in twice’s story. it is fiction, but fiction is not and can NEVER be divorced from reality. we create what we know. and we know our world and its power structures.

the issue is not & has never been “is x depicted” it’s HOW is x depicted. is it portrayed positively? is hawks, a cop, murdering twice, a mentally ill man who was the victim of an oppressive police state, portrayed positively? are we supposed to relate to hawks, the killer, or twice, the victim?

we are supposed to relate to twice. we are supposed to relate to the league. we are supposed to question the violence in the hero-police system. twice didn’t deserve to die. we are supposed to find hawks in the wrong. there are MULTIPLE ways that this is framed throughout the whole confrontation. Dutch angles, shading, etc. are all visual cues that are used to show that in this moment Hawks is the villain. Twice is the good guy. We’re supposed to root for dabi when he comes in. hawks’ body is brutalized. that’s in-text punishment for doing the wrong thing, making the wrong call, and killing an ‘innocent’. his punishment is losing his wings & therefore his dream of freedom. those are the two defining aspects of hawks as a character & they are taken away because what he did was wrong.

the narrative isn’t showing us that the heroes are right and the villains are wrong. it’s leaning into that grey area, where things are messy. even with the current fight between deku & shigaraki. shigaraki is a victim. deku is a victim. they’re both being actively forced to play roles they aren’t ready for, nor roles that they want to play. the man hero/villain of the story have no agency. they’re victims of literal ghosts who are controlling them. that’s society controlling them.

Toga Himiko and Uraraka Ochako embody the classic good girl slash bad girl dynamic. It’s a classic dynamic in which one girl will represent what is the traditionally held notions of what a “good girl is” ie/ pure, nice, friendly and the other girl will embody the opposite of that a “bad girl” impure, mean, slutty. Inevitably, these two girls will fight. However, the crux of the good girl bad girl dynamic is that while the girls are total opposites on the outside, inside they’re the same, cuz they’re both girls after all. 

Uraraka and Toga are written to be compared, they’re character foils, because the conclusion we’re supposed to come to isn’t one of them is good, one of them is bad, one of them is selfless, one is selfsh. Rather, they’re written so we see it’s the difference in circumstances that made them who they were. Toga became bad because bad things happened to her. Uraraka is good, because she was born into a good life. What makes a bad girl bad and what makes a good girl good? More under the cut. 

I keep thinking that this arc is not yet about saving the villains. Rather, it is about setting up those moments that allows the heroes to understand: “he/she is not that different from me.”

Deku witnessing AFO possessing Shigaraki and learning the first clues about his identity, Toga and Ochako now meeting and asking this question “am I not part of everyone?”, and of course when Dabi and Shouto face off - these can all lead to a more nuanced thinking about hero society.

I think that out of the three of them, Shouto is the best-placed to understand that “he could be me”-feeling, because of the shared experiences he and Touya must have had - and I’m really interested where the story will take these. 

Thanks for the ask, this is a real tough one! I think Dabi has goals, but do these goals count as dreams? I think we need to define both of these words before we can move on, so I’m gonna use the word ‘goal’ to refer to a desirable outcome of one’s efforts, whereas I’mma define the word ‘dream’ as something more abstract; something that you can work towards, but it also has to spark joy, okay?

So, Dabi is introduced in ch 57 where Giran shows Shigaraki a news clip about Stain’s arrest. Giran proceeds to tell Shigaraki that Stain has inspired a whole bunch of villains to step out of the shadows and reach out for the League. Now, Shigaraki was never the biggest fan of Stain, but at this point, people associate Stain with the League, thanks to Shigaraki unleashing a few Nomus when Stain was busy purging the streets of Hosu City. Given the fact that we get to see the first glimpse of Dabi during Giran’s speech, it’s reasonable to assume that Stain got Dabi inspired, one way or another.

In ch 67, Giran introduces Dabi and Toga to Shigaraki, and when (in ch 68) Shigaraki insists that Dabi should use his real name instead of a fake one, Dabi declares that he’s gonna tell his real name once the time is ripe. He also says that he’s gonna finish what Stain has started, and later on, in ch 72, he tells the newly founded Vanguard Action Squad that they’re gonna put all of those heroes in their place for the sake of a brighter future.

This sounds something like Stain himself would say, but here’s the tea; Stain is just a murder-positive All Might fanboy, and Dabi never, ever mentions All Might. In ch 74, Dabi mocks Aizawa for always worrying about others, whereas Stain seems to have mercy on every hero who’s willing to save a person even when it’s dangerous. In ch 52, Stain immobilizes Midoriya but decides to spare his life ‘cause Midoriya has the right attitude, which is such a fine example of Stain’s philosophy.

Dabi never shows mercy like this. In ch 160, he assists Compress to kill Snatch, a pro hero who was legit risking his life to protect a police officer. In fact, Dabi mocks Snatch for being so predictable. And then in ch 190, Dabi encounters Endeavor and Hawks. Both of the heroes have just saved a whole bunch of people from a Nomu attack and risked their lives in the process, but Dabi doesn’t care about their heroic efforts. In ch 191, he gleefully decides to aim for a double-kill, and the only reason why no one ends up dead is that a third pro hero shows up, and Dabi concludes that 1v3 is a bit too much.

Before Dabi leaves the crime scene, he tells Endeavor to stay alive ‘til they meet again, which implies that Dabi has plans regarding Endeavor. This gets confirmed in ch 287 where Dabi gets visibly excited after learning that Shigaraki is fighting Endeavor. He tells his comrades to get ready to tear down the fake hero society.

So, it seems that Dabi’s ultimate goal is to kill Endeavor, but would you call this goal a dream? I think it’s a matter of interpretation. Anyway, assuming that Dabi is Touya Todoroki, we know for a fact that Touya had a fire quirk that was even stronger than Endeavor’s. In ch 202, there’s a flashback scene where Endeavor tells Shouto to stop being so frail. He also says that even though Touya’s case was regrettable, Shouto is different, which could imply that Endeavor tried to make Touya his successor before concluding that Shouto was a better fit for the task.

It’s hard to tell whether Touya wanted to become a hero or nor, or did he dream about it, but when Dabi and Shouto meet during the Forest Training Camp Arc, Dabi acts almost resentful towards Shouto. They share a short dialogue in ch 82 after Compress has trapped Bakugou inside a marble but a sudden attack make poor Compress drop the thingy. Shouto tries to catch the marble midair, but Dabi is faster. He grabs the marble right in front of Shouto’s face, smirks, and says that it’s so sad for Shouto. He even uses Shouto’s full name, so it wouldn’t be too unreasonable to assume that Dabi never liked being replaced.

However, this alone doesn’t mean that Touya wanted to be a hero. In ch 252, Natsuo tells Endeavor that Touya always told him “everything”, which is vague, but Natsuo also talks about Endeavor neglecting the Todoroki siblings, so it’s reasonable to assume that Dabi’s current determination to kill Endeavor (and destroy the hero system while he’s at it) has a lot to do with the fact that Endeavor just cast him aside when a better number one hero candidate emerged.

And honestly, creating a new hero to surpass All Might was always Endeavor’s dream. In ch 31, he pretty much spells it out when he encounters All Might in a stairwell.