rinne

the intimacy between them is overwhelmingly beautiful

This is what I’ve been saying about Dabi. Underneath all that anger and mystery and hate is a deeply hurt child who desperately wanted to be loved and accepted unconditionally. Those childhood wounds don’t heal once you become an adult. Ever since Touya was born, even before he was a twinkle in his mother’s eye, he was told by his father that he’d become the #1 hero. He’s a child who interpreted his father’s attention and training sessions as love and bonding. Have y’all ever been around little kids? They think the world is magical and love looking up to someone cool. If Hawks admired Endeavor so much and had only ever seen him on television, can you imagine how much more Touya admired him? His own dad, who was the #2 hero? Touya probably thought he was so lucky and wanted to be a hero just like him. 

And then it just - changed. Touya’s quirk started hurting him. Even his hair started to change. Touya could no longer see himself like his dad, who he thought the world of. The loss of red in his hair symbolized that he couldn’t be a hero like his dad. And not only that, but he was tossed to the side. Endeavor, in Touya’s eyes, went from hot to cold so fast, like that Katy Perry song. 

In Touya’s mind, he went from being loved/worthy enough to being punished (read: deprived of what he considered affection) for something he couldn’t control. It wasn’t Touya’s fault his quirk hurt him, he wasn’t doing it on purpose, so why did his dad’s attitude toward him change? So to speak, it’s not that Dabi is mad Touya got a toy taken from him (becoming a hero) but that his dad didn’t want to play with him anymore once that toy broke. So, let’s not blame a victim for wanting to be loved and being angry they weren’t treated correctly. Touya didn’t understand that his father’s attention wasn’t because of who he was as a person, that it was driven by an ulterior motive. He couldn’t have understood that. He was a child.

I think that’s what is so tragic and frustrating about Endeavor’s failure as a father. He had fans out there like Hawks and Can’t-You-See-kun, but his #1 fan was his own son Touya. Endeavor didn’t have to be #1 to earn his children’s love. He didn’t have to be #1 at all, but it was a personal goal of his that blinded him to what it really meant to be a hero: to be a symbol of strength for someone, anyone, even if it was one person. That could have been Touya. That could have been his own family. Something along the lines of, “You may not be #1 on the billboards, but you’re #1 in our hearts.” The Todoroki family is so loving. 

But he chose to hurt them irreparably. He did this, all of this. He could have still chosen to teach his children his fighting techniques without forcing his will on them, dehumanizing them, or verbally abusing them. He didn’t have to drive his wife to a mental breakdown, didn’t have to make Touya feel unlovable, didn’t have to ignore Natsuo, didn’t have to make Fuyumi grow up too fast, didn’t have to beat training into Shouto. But he did, and this is all his fault because he started this domino effect. 

Touya is like Keigo, who looked up to Endeavor and was also abused by his father. Touya is like Tenko, who wondered why his father hated him and everything about him. Touya is like Tenko’s father Kotaro, who learned to interpret that all heroes hurt their families. Touya is like Shouto, who used to burn his body out of pure hatred. 

So, now that Dabi has come out as Touya and the Todorokis know that he’s alive, I wanted to put my thoughts out there about where the family’s arc is headed. What I think Horikoshi has planned (or what I think would make sense) for the family’s healing and to crystalize Shouto’s understanding that his fire quirk is his own and not an extension of Endeavor’s, is for Shouto to save Touya. How do I think Shouto will accomplish that? 

Redeeming the fire quirk that both brothers inherited from Endeavor. See, I think there’s a distinction between Endeavor the person and his quirk. Out of both, I don’t think Endeavor is the one that will receive redemption.

Why do I think that?

The definition of the word: 

(noun:) 1.the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.

This panel:

And this panel:

And this panel:

I’ll discuss my thoughts about how the Todorokis’ view Endeavor’s flames and how Shouto will save his brother under this read-more cut, with specific mentions of Endeavor, Rei, and Natsuo:

For the purposes of this list I’m only including individual scenes as opposed to entire events/schemes. These are in no particular order, I just listed as they popped into my head.  Quotes are taken from the Silmarillion and LotR.

- Laughing his ass off before Númenor sinks with him on it And Sauron, sitting in his black seat in the midst of the Temple, had laughed when he heard the trumpets of Ar-Pharazôn sounding for battle; and again he had laughed when he heard the thunder of the storm; and a third time, even as he laughed at his own thought, thinking what he would do now in the world, being rid of the Edain for ever, he was taken in the midst of his mirth, and his seat and his temple fell into the abyss.  I genuinely find this image hilarious. Like, he’s just sitting there, on his own, in the middle of the temple, thinking “Those idiots! I’m finally free of them! Think of all the shit I can get up to now!” and he’s just giggling away to himself like a giddy school child, completely ignoring the storm brewing outside (in fact, he laughs at it??) and then he just gets wiped out! Like, by the sounds of it, he literally only noticed that something was up when he finally was slapped in the face by a wave. All that plotting and it backfires so spectacularly. I’d say that smug grin was wiped off his face pretty quickly.

- Sees Lúthien, first thing he thinks is of Melkor and what he can get out of him The fame of the beauty of Lúthien and the wonder of her song had long gone forth from Doriath; and he thought to make her captive and hand her over to the power of Morgoth, for his reward would be great. I just love that, normally, when people see Lúthien they fall for her, or they get caught up in her beauty. Our buddy Mairon, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to personally register her beauty, it’s just a thing he’s heard about and, though I’m not even really sure why, I am greatly amused that the first thing he thinks of instead is getting something nice off of Melkor. It might be because he’s normally quite a distant character but I just think the “Oooo, I could get a head pat out of this!” reaction is funny. (Also in terms of head canon and shipping I always look at this scene and think that this Maia really couldn’t be any more gay and in love with his boss if he tried XD) 

- Revealing that he tricked that guy into thinking his wife was alive Then Sauron laughed; and he mocked Gorlim, and revealed to him that he had seen only a phantom devised by wizardry to entrap him; for Eilinel was dead. “Nonetheless I will grant thy prayer,” said Sauron; “and thou shalt go to Eilinel, and be set free of my service.” Then he put him cruelly to death. Look, I am a sucker for scenes where characters pull an Obi Wan ‘Well, I was telling the truth, from a certain point of view’. This moment really shows us how tricky he is, how he likes to get into people’s heads and mess with them and what kinds of things he uses his mastery of illusions for. The fact that he laughs tells us that he takes pleasure in doing these kinds of things. He’s not just doing whatever he thinks will allow him to achieve his goal most efficiently, he gets a kick out of doing things this way. You just know he was a smug git when he was like ‘don’t worry, you’ll get what you were promised’. It’s a classic villain move and I love it.

- Thinking he was the greatest wolf prophesied to kill Huan Now Sauron knew well, as did all in that land, the fate that was decreed for the hound of Valinor, and it came into his thought that he himself would accomplish it. Honestly, do I really need to explain this one? The sheer arrogance! He literally stood there and thought ‘it might be me!’ I love this fool.

Dualism, is a common theme in Jujutsu Kaisen. There’s a difference between binary opposites and a completementary pair. Binary opposites supposes that two ideas are complete opposites of eachother, they are enemies and therefore cannot coexist. Death is the opposite of life. However, ideas like the concept of yin and yang suggest that these pairs are not opposites, or even enemies, they just exist alongside one another. The feminine yin contains a single dot of the masculine yang energy inside of it and vice versa. 

This pattern repeats itself with both Geto and Yuji. Two characters who seem like they are complete opposites, enemies, hero and villain and yet have far more in common with one another than one might thing. Each of them represented by a wolf, Yuji the white wolf, and Geto the black. 

I finished!!!

No tag list cause it’s a spoiler