JayWasLost

Don't get me wrong, I believe that if Khaenri'ah's plan involved hurting Mondstadt then Kaeya would stand behind the nation that raised him 100% without a shadow of a doubt. His hangout quest made it very very clear.

But also, I don't doubt that if he's presented with an opportunity to help Khaenri'ah at the cost of his current life, he might just take it.

It's actually insane how much weight is placed on him. Us Kaeya fans always joke about the weight of a nation on his shoulders but if he truly is their last hope, he carries an unbelievable amount.

If he abandons Khaenri'ah truly and fully, he's not just letting those who suffer the curse and/or remaining survivors die, he's letting their culture fade away. Their heritage, their history, all the advancements, he's letting go.

He's carrying the will of those who remain and the faith of those who died. That's a devastating choice to make.

Mondstadt showed him love and support that he's never experienced but not because Khaenri'ah didn't want to give it to him, it's because they quite literally can't. Everything is in ruins, cursed and gone. They couldn't hand him love if they tried. They taught him the horrors of the world not because they were cruel but because that's the only way to survive.

Not to say that they should've left a pre-teen in the storm on a cold summer night with a ridiculous mission but also, do they really have a choice? Desperation leads people to do ugly things. The tragedy with Kaeya is really highlighted by the fact that he was just born in the worst circumstances ever.

Kaeya learns the kindness of Mondstadt but he didn't have an epiphany that his nation was cruel. Instead, he realized that if he followed through with their plans for revenge, that Mondstadt would just end up as another Khaenri'ah. Torn and destroyed. And he didn't want Mondstadt to lose that kindness they still had.

The option is to trade the happiness and peace of one nation for another, and Kaeya doesn't want to have to trade anything. He wants the people of his homeland to be free of the curse and regain whatever was lost, their lullabies, their history, their home. But he also wants to keep his home. One he's chosen and built himself with sweat and tears.

Dusttale Anniversary Animation

With happy little Ds Blue!★ (TW: Child abuse, violence, P*pyrus atc...)

Dabi’s character arc is one of the clearest examples of narrative sanding‑down in the series. Early on, he’s framed as cold, calculating, and angry — but not mindlessly violent. He shows that Stain's ideology resonates with him and wants to rid the world of false heroes. His targets are heroes, institutions, and the system that failed him. But as the story gets closer to revealing him as Touya Todoroki, his behavior shifts into something flatter and more “sociopathic,” almost like the story needed to pre‑emptively villainize him so the audience wouldn’t sympathize too hard with the abused child who was burned, discarded, and left for dead. Instead of letting Touya’s rage be justified, the narrative broadens it into “he just wants to watch the world burn,” which conveniently avoids asking why he’s angry in the first place. And in that stupid episode "The Hellish Todoroki Family", he is shown as emotionally unbalanced (trauma dumping on Natsuo in what is obviously narratively portrayed to be a bad thing) sexist (his comments to Fuyumi and Rei) and sociopathic (trying to attack baby Shouto). Laying the ground for fans to say "Look he was destined for evil at the start).

This shift isn’t accidental — it’s a cushion for Endeavor’s redemption arc. If Touya’s hatred were focused squarely on Endeavor, the story would have to confront the full weight of Endeavor’s abuse, neglect, and obsession. It would have to admit that Touya wanting revenge on his abuser is understandable, even sympathetic. And that would make Endeavor’s redemption a lot harder to swallow. So instead, the story redirects Touya’s rage toward Shoto, the “good son,” which reframes Touya as irrational and petty rather than someone with a legitimate grievance. It’s narrative damage control disguised as character development.

The irony is that this actually weakens Endeavor’s arc. A redemption story only works when the harm is acknowledged honestly. But MHA keeps trying to soften Endeavor’s wrongdoing, or shift the emotional burden onto other characters. The reveal of Touya being alive should have been a moment of reckoning — a “your actions had consequences you can’t outrun” moment. Instead, the story tries to make Touya’s suffering into a plot twist rather than a moral indictment. It’s like the narrative is terrified of letting Endeavor be fully responsible for what he did.

Endeavor successfully outruns the consequences at the expense of Dabi.

Perfectly said.

MHA legit bends over backwards and ruins not only the characters but the entire story for the sake of the morally bankrupt characters because Hori probably knew that no one would empathize with someone like Endeavor when confronted with his sane and valid victim. Because that's lowkey the main goal, make him petty and insane to invalidate him - and even then, it didn't properly work.

Touya still comes off sympathetic, the other victims and him just suffer more, and the abuser still doesn't actually atone despite that being his arc. Like, why bother if you're not going to follow through? It's one of those things where if you can't write it decently, don't include it - especially heavy ass topics like abuse, grooming, abandonment, and so forth.

I genuinely hated how Touya was ruined for the sake of his abuser, especially because I know most of the characters in-universe would've logically turned on Endeavor based on how Hori originally wrote them, including Shoto confronted with essentially what he could've become had he not been "created properly."