Two Words: Bad Wolf

"please don't say that. even as a joke" atsushi truly cares about dazai. he hasn't had many people to care about because he never had a family or any friends. dazai was the first person who ever showed him any kindness. and he looks up to dazai despite his silly antics and reckless demeanour.

atsushi's view of life might be the polar opposite of dazai's, yet he looks to dazai for hope and strength.

this isn't just because atsushi's a good person, it's because dazai was the first person ever who cared about him and showed him that his life was worth saving and worth living despite not seeing any value in living his own. he taught him to embrace his strength and believe in himself.

and he taught him that its okay to cry.

dazai means alot to atsushi. and that's why he chooses to care about him. on purpose he will care about him. despite everything he will care about him.

I certainly will translate the rest of the chapter that has skk stuff in it.

As always with translation take it with a grain of salt, I tried to use a word to word approach whenever possible, to keep the unique characteristic intact but sometimes it certainly makes the grammar suffer. Neither Japanese nor English are my native language so keep that in mind as well, but I think I did pretty well! So at least I’m proud, haha!

Atsushi: Doing stuff.

Kunikida: I don’t like the sound of that. where’s Chuuya?

Atsushi: Stopping Dazai from doing the stuff.

Kunikida: What about Yosano?

Atsushi: stopping Chuuya so Dazai can do the stuff.

Kunikida: and you?

Cause it’s not there at random.

Cold, distant eyes have already been used in relation to the Todoroki family as a visual narrative tool for how hatred is the gateway for toxic self-reliance and character stagnation. And cold eyes have a special meaning to Shouto as well

Shouto himself recognizes that his conflict with Inasa was born out of the tunnel vision of his hatred for Endeavor. And not coincidentally, that same hatred made him lash out and be highly uncooperative, an asshole to his peers and most notably, a man on a mission:

notice a pattern yet? self-reliance, lone-wolfishness and a stubborn clinging to an end goal are all traits that Early Shouto shares with Dabi. So when Shouto says “he’s ME”, he means it. Shouto’s flames used to be full of hatred as well:

notice how fire is always associated with his mental imagery of anger and hurt. His irritation at Inasa’s goading is literally represented by a small flame getting bigger and bigger, fueled by anger.

Shouto understands Dabi. He understands him better than anyone. He knows what it’s like to be consumed by self-destructive flames.

While Endeavor might try his best to atone after this (tho I doubt he’ll succeed), admitting that he wants to save Touya, he will never be in a position to truly empathize with him, because Endeavor will always be the abuser and Touya his victim. The only person who also happens to be a hero who can 100% understand Dabi’s feelings right now is Shouto. Someone who is literally in the same position Touya once was. His father’s pet project. Someone who let a deep hatred for Endeavor fester for the ten years he was separated from his loving mother. Someone who just barely managed to pick himself up from that downwards spiral, and someone who is still struggling with it to this day, choosing to be a kind person despite how much easier it is to let hatred consume him.

So when Shouto says “It can’t be father. Touya-nii has to be dealt with by me” you can 1000% trust that he wants to save him from himself, not kill him. Because Shouto is literally the only person in the story who can.

even if the rest of society will give up on Dabi and mark him as too far gone, Shouto will bring him back at the cost of breaking every rule and common sense

https://gf.me/u/ykgw4w

A lot of healing from chronic / childhood trauma is realizing there is a lot of dirt, grime, hurt, pain, and problematic behaviors and beliefs that living in such an environment has instilled inside of you.

It is realizing a lot of things you thought were normal were not, and a lot of the things you’ve done that you thought were given truths and normal things about the world were false, not needed, and hurtful to others and yourself around you.

A lot of people want a healing story that is inspiring and beautiful - with a clear abuser and a clear victim - someone who was clearly 100% perfect, innocent and never did anything wrong in life and someone who was clearly 100% evil, intentional, corrupt, and malicious. The hero / villian story of trauma, abuse, and recovery is so much easier to digest both for others and the person, but the reality is - living through hell instills and causes people to learn things that aren’t 100% perfect and innocent.

No trauma survivor or victim deserves what happened to them, nor did they ask for it in any form, but it isn’t abnormal for one to unknowingly after growing up and living in an environment that was dangerous, harmful, and painful to learn things that aren’t the best in the general world.

Trying to heal, mistakes will be made, a lot of unlearning and relearning will happen. People - especially children and teenagers who grew up in these environments - will likely reenact what happened to them or use defensive mechanisms that aren’t the best that they got from assuming the world is like their home.

Many will do things that aren’t “okay” or are “problematic” because that is all they know. This isn’t to say it is okay or excusable. This isn’t to say you should forgive anyone who did this to you.

This is to those who did bad things in the past that they punish themselves for, hate themselves for, the bad things they did due to being young and in a stage of survival.

The past does not define you and you were young and living by what you were taught growing up. You are not a horrible person because of how you learned to live. Who you are is found in the present and the future and in what you do now and what you do later.

You can and deserve to forgive yourself and your younger selves for what had happened when you knew little more.

You aren’t horrible or terrible. 

Being young is hard

Being a teen is hard

Having trauma is hard

Having chronic trauma is hard.

Being young and growing up in an environment conducive to chronic trauma is even harder.

You deserve and are allowed to forgive yourself and move forward and heal.

I love Shouto, but me and Dabi had the same reaction to this line. Yes, Shouto, he has lost his mind. He just said that. Now please try to understand that this is not his fault.

Don't get me wrong - I 100% understand Shouto being mad here and not taking Dabi's side or really understanding it yet. And I definitely don't expect a teenager to get complex mental illnesses, either. But he didn't blame his mom back then, because even as a child he hated Endeavor and understood the pain he caused. He understood that ultimately, it was Endeavor that drove Rei to snap and pour boiling water on her son.

Surely, that is some kind of indicator, a parallel or foreshadowing, however you want to call it, that Shouto can also understand that Endeavor is the reason for Dabi's existence - obviously to a much bigger extent here, if only because Touya didn't receive help like Rei did (even though Endeavor's reasons for getting her help were wrong).

I know some people in this fandom will take Dabi's line right here,

were he more or less indicates to not even care about Natsuo, too literal, much like when he said he doesn't care about Twice or the rest or the League. (and if you are of that opinion, please don't interact with this post)

The thing is, mental illness is complex. And people on social media love to be woke and claim to be against the romanticization of mental illness, but when some of those people actually get confronted with depictions of the darker sides of mental illness, like with Dabi, they suddenly forget all about it.

Rather than just reading this as 'Oh, look, he doesn't care about anyone except for himself and his goal of destroying Endeavor' try to look past that at someone who died as a child, whose brain has been rewired during the important years of development that happen until you're an adult, and is now obsessed with one goal - the goal that somewhere in his mind seems like the one thing left for him to do to survive, to reclaim himself when his own father deemed him unworthy before neglecting him.

He has been driven to a point where he even risks the lives of those that were always there for him, those he truly loves, because to him it's either that or actually dying.

People deal with and react to trauma differently. And sometimes it's in an extreme and uncomfortable way like with Dabi, but rather than just making it about him, we should also focus on just how bad Endeavor's actions were. Some people were eating up that 'redemption' arc, yet this should show just how difficult it actually is for him to redeem himself. Not because someone killed people for the sake of ruining him, no - because he has caused for Touya to die mentally, pushing him to become Dabi instead.

The heroes seem to stand a chance after all now, with Best Jeanist and Mirio arriving at the scene, but are they really going to win if they will just stick to their old ways and fight these 'dark' victims instead of trying to save them?

The past two weeks we have taken a look at the differences between the official English translation and the original Japanese version of Dabi in regards to the newest chapter. This week’s chapter mainly focused on Mr. Compress, so for this comparison, we will look at the two lines Dabi had as well as some of Mr. Compress’ lines and where/how they differ in the two versions.

Did Mr. Compress actually call them a band of egotists or was it another case of lost nuance?