essentially Dabi said no to League Bonding Camp to go spend the month hanging out with Shigaraki’s creepy stepdad and weird necromancied dogs
LOV-centric Text memes, part 7 (6) (5) (4) (3) (2) (1)
(source on the first image for context that no one asked for) Anyway, AFO giving a bullied child an IBS quirk is still one of the most back-handed, black hearted acts of pure fucking evil I have ever seen in a manga. Greatest shonen villain of all time, of the year, of the century, of the week even, etc etc etc.
cw salt, but the fact that Shouto lets Rei say this:
without explaining the circumstances to Hawks doesn’t sit right with me, especially when we have a previous in-text reference for how Shouto feels about his burns and the real person who’s to blame for it:
and idk, call me pedantic, biased or whatever, but the framing of the scene makes it feel as though the further the story goes on, the more the characters aren’t allowed to have complex and sometimes contradicting emotions towards the abuse they experienced. It’s just as Fuyumi said, “it’s not like I don’t feel the same way Natsu does, but we finally have this chance, you know?”
and that was perfectly fine when it was just Fuyumi’s chosen way to deal with her own feelings. Like, when it was still a decision motivated by a character’s agency. Fuyumi wants a second chance at a normal family. What she wants is not presented as an authorial statement on what everyone else should want. In fact, Shouto and Natsuo want something else entirely. And that was fine.
Until now.
With the shift the story took now, with the whole Todoroki family coming together to stop Dabi,
and with the emphasis on extending a hand to Enji while doing so, it feels less like this is an organic choice that makes sense with the characters’ personal journey of acceptance and of healing, and more like the narrative is forcing them to reconcile because it’s what the story needs in order to keep moving forward down the “saving Touya” path. Like, even admitting that there was good faith on hori’s part, even conceding that they might’ve just called a truce for the time being because they realized they have a second shot at getting their brother back from death…
That good faith falls short of the actual framing.
Cause Hawks asks Shouto that question right after acknowledging that Enji was indeed an abuser. Past tense. As if shedding a few tears suddenly cancels that out. It’s all good now.
And… idk… For it to be a “truce” the narrative still needs to hold him accountable. But it doesn’t. The second Enji vowed to do better, the story declared he was better. Hori can say that the victims don’t have to forgive him all he wants, the truth still stands that the story has already forgiven him
Dabi's first interaction with Spinner really was to call him a slur
It's probably to be expected for the product of a multigenerational eugenics project though...
this line is so jarring to me because if shigaraki really is gone... where are his friends waiting?
up until now we always took their survival for granted, no matter the situation they ended up in. toga's blood loss. dabi's quirk awakening at the brink of death.
but calling back on shiggy's line "even if [...] i turned into an empty shell, i'd still need to become a hero to those guys"
suddenly has me worried about the fate of toga and dabi.
they're waiting for him.