#dabi character study

[hopelesshawks]

Hi Ren! I saw your ask game and think it’s super cool!! Could I request Dabi from bnha with the song Possession of a Weapon by Ashnikko? If this doesn’t spark anything please feel free to ignore

I could never ignore you!!! And you picked such a great song for Dabi omg.

This again gave me character study vibes of just like Dabi finally revealing who he truly is and watching Endeavor’s face as he does so. Watching Endeavor realize the magnitude of how much he fucked up with Dabi in particular. Like by the time Dabi reveals that he’s Touya, Endeavor has already realized he was a terrible father and needs to change but I don’t think he realized just how bad he fucked his kids up until that moment. And god does Dabi get a sick pleasure at watching his abuser have that realization for the world to see

Something vicious and triumphant rises up in Dabi as he watches his pathetic excuse for a father absorb his every word. There is something so incredibly satisfying about watching Endeavor’s face go grief stricken as he realizes that he’s staring at the remains of his eldest son. Dabi is a living, breathing, walking corpse and he relishes it. He welcomes the smell of decay and burning, rotting flesh that has followed him since that fateful day in the woods where he murdered Touya Todoroki to become the man he is today.

Endeavor’s eyes drag over Dabi’s charred body and he can tell by the twist of the man’s face that he is horrified by what he finds now that he’s bothering to take a good luck. Dabi knows what he looks like. He is grotesque and he loves it. Love every godforsaken moment of it. He wants Endeavor to be disgusted by what his flames have done to his eldest son.

Then the fear comes and oh isn’t that a wonderful sight. Big bad number one hero finally got all he wanted and now he’s fucking terrified because Dabi is here to raze it all to the ground.

Good.

Dabi wants him scared. He wants him to experience the same deep seated, overwhelming terror that engulfed young Touya when he lost control and felt his own quirk eating away at his skin. But now Dabi knows that it’s just flesh. It doesn’t matter. None of it does. He’ll burn himself up until there’s nothing left of him to burn if it means finally tearing down the man who abandoned him.

Isn’t this what he wanted? A son who is the strongest? A son to best even All Might?

Endeavor’s perfect experiment rushes forward. Still trying to play the hero. How cute. Dabi could try to scheme or plan what happens next but he doesn’t. No it’s no use trying to think now. All that’s left to do now is burn. And burn he will. Himself and everyone else too.

Touya Todoroki is dead and Dabi will turn the world into his funeral pyre.

[haine-kleine]

Fulfilling my quota of Touyadoomposting by going back to this theory and expanding it. This is mostly a crack theory except instead being funny everything is just horrible lololol

Ok so as silly as the Tenko's entire life being orchestrated by AFO pretty much since he was born reveal was, it also gave us the fact AFO used to have drinking dates with his father specifically for the purpose of making him as abusive to Tenko as possible.

Combine this with the weirdly OOC fact that Enji gave up on achieving the number one place at the ripened age of 20. Sure, Allmight's shining beacon of hope and strength may have been a source of great jealousy for a young and upcoming number two pro hero but come on now. 20 is still a teenager, why are you giving up without even trying.

Enji's admirable hero quality is determination.

No matter how insecure he secretly was, giving up at 20, with a perfectly healthy body, and putting all of his determination into making a kid with a quirk stronger than his own and making that kid achieve his dream in his place, is not even backwards logic, it makes absolutely no sense. Enji is not even one of the quirks obsessed characters, he has never been interested in anyone's quirk besides his own and his sons'. Despite his weakness (overheating), he is all about pushing through and overcoming it. To put this shortly, Enji is dumb as a shoe a very single-minded person. This is simply not someone who would entertain such concepts as perfect quirks or eugenics.

You know who does though? Yeah, this guy.

Enji is ruled by his emotions and has tragically low emotional intelligence. This makes him very susceptible to manipulations. And AFO is one hell of a manipulator. A villain obsessed with destroying Allmight and the number two hero who dreams of throwing Allmight off his pedestal. Why wouldn't AFO seek him out? If he saw that seed of self-doubt and carefully nurtured it, Enji giving up despite being so young would start making sense. Enji seeking out a quirk marriage would also make sense (I refuse to believe this man is the only one who came up with this idea in the entire manga). He clearly didn't know what he was doing.

Even choosing a Himura as a candidate for his little eugenics experiment would start making sense if it was actually AFO's suggestion. The Himuras are famous for their strong ice quirks, and Enji's goal was creating a heir whose heat tolerance would be higher than his. This is basic logic. Having babies with a woman who has an ice quirk and is vulnerable to heat won't land you any kids with a fire tolerance higher than your own. He set himself up for failure, they all came out like Touya

Granting Enji's logical thinking abilities the benefit of doubt, we look the other way and spot Garaki being involved in this case. AFO wanting to see what would come out of genetically combining strong ice and fire quirks just for the sake or his curiousity makes so much more sense than Enji being unable to comprehend his choice for the quirk marriage wasn't even fit for his goal. Touya did eventually end up in AFO and Garaki's child laboratory, which was the purpose of Garaki fronting as a quirks doctor for kids. And Enji was in contact with Garaki since Touya was 4 years old.

Also makes for such an evil irony that Touya's trauma stems from him seeking a reason for his existence and not finding one. And the entire reason for his very birth is just AFO being a cold-blooded quirkist manipulator

[fireburial]

"I GO BY DABI THESE DAYS " ... the scarred arsonist with black-dyed hair and icy-blue eyes runs a life shrouded in mystery. . . Rude, merciless and apathetic, the 25-year-old is hell-bent on a path of r e v e n g e — working actively together with a group of supernatural outcasts that terrorises the world.

Y O U 'R E A L L THE S A M E.

But when people start to question their F A I T H in you, it will finally SHAKE SOCIETY TO ITS VERY CORE ... We don't need a large number of thugs to achieve our g o a l ... all we really need is a small group of experienced elites . . . [ & ] SOON YOU WILL REALIZE ... that your precious PEACE is resting in OUR hands.

# FIREBURIAL ; selective. mutuals only. indie rp. manga based portrayal of the villain "DABI" from "Boku no Hero Academia" by Kōhei Horikoshi. & stuck with @kettensaege.

( CARRD.)

[vivika-ka]

does anyone know any fanfics that are Touya and Shouto focused, or just even just Touya focused, that don’t have DabiHawks as a pairing? 😅

I don’t like putting ships “on blast” like this, since people can absolutely enjoy whatever ships they like, but DabiHawks just isn’t for me.

I usually don’t resort to this, but unfortunately I can barely find fics without the pairing (even in fanfics the pairing is untagged).

[buttercupshands]

Chapter 419 Analysis or "How to make allies not pawns" a helpful guide from League of Villains (part 2)

This is now a second part of Tomura character analysis.

With chapter 419 being probably our last time seeing Tomura for a while, since we need to learn what happened with Aizawa now is time to remember that not only bad things exist it Tomura's life.

Warning of spoilers to the whole manga to the point of chapter 419! All of the warnings from My Villain Academy side of manga are applicable

So like... mentions of death, killing other people, manipulation, emotional abuse and many more!

This is Part 2 - See here for Part 1 of this depressing mess

With AFO being so sure that he knows better and actually controlled every single part of Tenko's life creating a Symbol of Fear without any redeeming qualities or even hope for saving after he destroys him. There's one thing that AFO still doesn't understand about Tomura and never did - and that's his allies, or the League of Villains that he created.

Even Kurogiri, being a Nomu who's views do not stray from what AFO thought was important didn't exactly understand what did Tomura think about his allies quick to assume that he thought of them as pawns all the was back in the Training Camp arc. With Tomura making game examples to explain the situation, he still didn't think of LoV as just pawns on a desk, like AFO does.

At the time of USJ arc there weren't many people Tomura called this, which could make you wonder how much it was just AFO's plan rather than Tomura's with him never worrying about those other villains yet getting so worked up over losing Nomu not only because he was strong enough to defend him from All-Might, but treating his defeat as something that must be avenged.

And that was long before Stain even entered the picture, the first of three people who greatly affected Tomura's view of his own motives alongside AFO's manipulation of literally everything else.

Tomura was terrified of fighting All-Might seconds before this and yet as this goes on it's becoming more noticeable - Tomura doesn't care for his own fear or worries as long as he's fighting for someone else's good. Not so different from how Izuku is ready to disregard himself for the sake of others, resulting in many injuries and being so close to dying so many times.

It never was a secret that Tomura is highly dependent on others to keep himself from losing confidence, or even will to fight, getting either too anxious to continue without anyone's reassurance.

And while AFO's "help" was mostly given only with some kind of lesson as we saw in "Tomura Shigaraki: Origin", with AFO literally sitting there, saying how Tenko is weak for not killing but showing some restrain instead suffering himself, never actually helping or comforting him. Only offering what he deemed nessesary for his own plan of making Tenko kill those thugs not caring that he's feeling sick from those hands.

But in USJ it's not AFO who's there with Tomura, it's Kurogiri, who was shown to still have some care that Shirakumo had that even Aizawa and Mic couldn't argue that it's similar to how Shirakumo couldn't just leave a kitten in the rain. No matter the responsibility that it would bring with taking a little one in.

A helpless little kitten that didn't get the help it needs from anyone else. Sounds way too familiar.

This never was a direct order from AFO other than he needs to "tend and protect" for Tomura, which can mean anything from just looking out when Tomura's sick, or protect him from any tread like someone trying to kill him.

Not helping him getting over his anxiety to fight or helping him and guiding him to do better as a leader of the League calming him if it got out of control. Which is somewhat opposite to the way AFO deals with Decay and Tomura's temper - letting him destroy anything even the hands that he gave him, just offering new ones when he succeedes and never really caring for his pawns, he can always get new ones.

And surely not asking if Tomura's well the first thing while talking to Heroes.

Which then leads us back to how Tomura never viewed anyone that he chose as pawns calling them his allies, with the word '仲間' which can even be translated as friends in needed context, but usually used as comrade or ally when Tomura says it. And the same thing is usually translated as "friend" when used by Twice.

In any case Tomura never once doubted his allies since he saw them as reliable, even if his first meeting with Toga and Dabi went so wrong that Kurogiri had to stop them from killing each other.

Up to the point of Training Camp AFO describes as him teaching Tomura to be independent which was at that point too far from the truth than he thought. If Tomura begging for AFO to leave with them is any indicator he actually was even less independent after All-Might almost caught them, making him doubt his own worth as a leader. Even if AFO's defeat finally let him think and wonder about himself and his past.

AFO believed that Tomura just knowing how to recruit people would suddenly make him great at using those new "pawns" which was proven wrong by Overhaul no so long after that. Showing how Tomura believed the same thing AFO did as well, fully trusting his judgement of anything including himself, all the while parroting what AFO says without fully understanding what it means.

Only after losing both Magne and Mr. Compress arm does Tomura slowly start making progress in becoming someone more than AFO tells him to do. Even if as we see in part 1 it used Decay as the ground to make it stable since he believed it was his quirk. And yet.

Even if Tomura didn't simply instruct his allies how to choose who to recruit, he never blamed them for it. On the opposite, when Twice was hard on himself after bringing Overhaul to them Tomura just looked at them for the first time without a hand on his face, or even on himself at all, showing how he trusts them as much as he would trust himself and believes that they can do it.

Taking off hands of his family would mean not relying on the conflicting feelings that they bring into the picture, something AFO would very much dissaprove, since he was now like an equal to everyone in LoV instead of being above them. He

And with this instead of making them blindly trust his decisions and following him from fear or adoration like people had been following AFO or Overhaul, he instead was an equal to them both in failure and victory that wasn't even all that guaranteed yet.

Each one of them had their own somewhat selfish goal that just seemed like they were just using each other without any worry being each other's pawns. Or maybe that's just how AFO would see them.

Yet it doesn't explain why did Toga care for Twice's trauma response of not having his mask on, since he already did his part and all that they both needed to do was done. But LoV was never about following orders or giving them, expecting for the pawns to follow without question. It was about a leader of the group that would stand up for his allies while allowing them full freedom, except when they needed to also accept that something is needed to be done for their own sake.

Like following Overhaul for a while all for cutting off his hands leaving him with nothing. Did that sound like something reasonable to do? No! They literally lost their chance at having sushi instead of just living at some abadoned building all the while occasionally searching for money or food, stealing and killing just to survive all while Tomura was just... waiting.

Nothing was really stable at the start of what we call My Villain Academia and yet no one from the LoV left while their state was... bad at the very least. No matter how AFO was teaching Tomura he was still left mostly waiting for something to happen rather than doing something to change the situation himself.

Sure, Tomura now was a famous leader of League of Villains that suddenly needed to be stopped rather that underestimated like before. But that was in the future, now LoV was laying low on funds and slowly Tomura showing his face became the norm, with him usually never wearing hands around LoV.

And with Tomura becoming more and more comfortable around LoV, the LoV itself was becoming more like a place that had one core value that accepted anything else added without anyone wondering about the past of others, like Compress said. Just some selfish people, who still followed their own needs first.

And yet somehow Toga, who joined just because she loved Stain and disliked how life was too hard found her place in the LoV alongside Twice who just needed to be trusted and trust in return. If Tomura only followed what AFO deemed to be the best way to lead no one would actually feel like they're accepted in the LoV as much as they were.

Goal or no goal Tomura succeeded even without having the whole world at the palm of his hands by just never pressing anyone to actually follow him - if they wanted to they could've just left here and there, but since they chose to follow he did what he thought was the obvious best - let his allies do what they wanted.

Which was okay for someone like Toga or Dabi who were either already comfortable by just being allowed to be themselves or being free to plan their own things for their own goals.

But not exactly that for Spinner. Who was instead literally searching for someone to show him what to do, not so different from Tomura, who still only followed whatever 'his Sensei' deemed worthy for him to look into, like letting Kurogiri go find unknown "power" that AFO left along with contact with Doctor.

And while Spinner was not fine with still being hollow even while following Tomura pretending that it's the same thing as following Stain... all it took for him to look differently at how exactly was Tomura thinking was the last real "barrier" that there was - Tomura basically spilling his whole backstory and motivations mostly for LoV to listen to, since Doctor was just testing Tomura's will all according to AFO's plan.

And after that it didn't took too long for Spinner to now follow Tomura, even if it was still not the time to really see the 'warped horizon that was waiting for them'. And yet in times where Tomura still showed some doubt over his decisions - that one old trait of his showing up like it was always at the back of his head not so different from USJ, only thing changing that Tomura got better and better at not letting his emotions control him so easily.

Since the price of that would literally be lifes of his allies.

And neither that or using their emotions to his own benefit was ever in his plans, contrast to AFO manipulating Tomura to do just that. Letting his emotions consume him completely just for his own goal and for his own sake. But as a person who was so familiar with this Tomura still was adamant at NOT allowing something like this to happen to his friends allies.

Effectively creating a bond between all six of them, including Toya that in the end kept them together until the very final arc, with Spinner keeping what Tomura would've thought and with him waking up and calling Machia to get LoV first and foremost Spinner did understand their's leader wishes, as well as Twice's who literally died for his friends.

With all that happening in the War arc the moment AFO returned with both being in control of Tomura's body and just abadoned anything that Tomura would care for like leaving Mr. Compress and Machia behind just to punish him for not getting OFA or not even caring to show any actual respect for Tomura's wishes. Instead showing how little he actually cared for anything but his own good.

But while AFO made so many pawns that he could change like gloves at any given moment, threating them and manipulating them with his power and quirks, Tomura only had 6 allies who stayed after AFO was caught and who were willing to die just to live the life they wanted.

And AFO couldn't give them that.

Even if Decay isn't Tenko's quirk and even if he has so much guilt for killing without it being a little bit justified by it...

LoV still followed him as a person who allowed them to live as they please and so what they want, not some all-powerfull overlord but an ally and a leader who had his flaws and fallings.

[todorokistheories]

Endeavor Is One Of My Favorite Characters

I don't agree with his redemption from a viewer standpoint but heres the thing no one seems to realize.

It's really realistic.

tw: discussion of abuse, toxic masculinity, it's the todorokis what do you expect

I can't count how many middle aged men I've seen realize that what they were told about being a man their entire life was false. They never learned to mature, sit with their feelings, and all they were left with was this anger they never learned how to control.

Now let me make this clear. I am IN NO WAY defending his actions.

Think of those older men you know who are still misogynistic, prideful, greedy. They all think they're better than everyone else because if they don't, they have nothing.

Fathers, uncles, grandfathers, even brothers who were just too proud to sit with the fact that all they've done is hurt have a breaking point. Sometimes that point comes when they're on their deathbed.

Or, like Bakugou he was taught by the ppl around him that he was what everyone wanted to be.

Difference is... he grew up. Endeavor didn't.

He had the great success of his 20s, a loving wife who was bought specially for him, the public's awe, and his first ever prodigy who was going to be even more special than him. He was in the best position he'd ever be in his whole life.

That's why All Might's success messed with him so much.

He was at the highest point of his life and career and he STILL wasn't good enough to become number one.

For a man who only has his pride, that's a huge ego crusher. Unlike bakugou he never sat with this. He became obsessed, deciding that if he couldn't be the best then he'd train his kids so that they were. That way he was still worth something. Because all of his worth was tied to his success.

It didn't matter what stood in his way, because he had two choices: succeed, or admit to himself that he was a failure.

For men who bought into toxic masculinity, yeah that wasn't an option.

And then his worst failure happened. Touya burned.

He died and suddenly those voices that told Enji that he was a failure grew loud enough for him to lash out at everyone who might even hint that they agree. Unfortunately, Rei was in the forefront of that. Every comment about their children turned into a criticism that his ego couldn't handle. It was a personal attack.

And then his second failure happened. Shouto burned.

Suddenly, the shame was too much to handle. So, he sent away the person who would constantly remind him of his inadequacies: Rei. Sent her away to never see the light of day again because he couldn't face it.

He locked everything away and threw away the key, shutting down Shouto verbally and physically just so that he didn't have to think about what he's done. Because he's special, remember? He's better than everyone. He is worth something because he's special.

Then Touya, who he shoved all of this generational trauma onto, turned out to be alive. Not only is he alive, he's the antithesis of what Enji fought his whole life to be.

Suddenly, he couldn't hide anymore. The whole world knew he was a fraud. He's forced to face the jealousy, the embarrassment, the shame, and the feeling of worthlessness that he ruined his life to run away from in the first place.

His career, gone. Image, gone. Youth, gone. His life is over and all he is left with is the shards of a family he broke years ago.

So he embraces it. He accepts the blame for the first time in his life.

And it changes for the better. He can't undo it. He can't fix what he hurt. And he can't truly repair anything. But he can try and that's worth something even if he's not.

This is a scenario that happens daily. This is something that happens in real life. And no one is expected to forgive these people for the harm they've caused. But understanding it is the first step to not repeating it. So yeah, I fucking hate Endeavor but goddamn he's well written.

Horikoshi wrote something very accurate to the experiences thousands of people have and I appreciate that. It's needed in media. There's many things he's done with the Todoroki family that I do not agree with, but the premise of Endeavor's redemption is one that rings true.

[myherochedaia]

I've seen a lot of people comparing Zuko and Shoto but, BUT, Zuko is Dabi on the right side of the narrative.

Bare with me.

Messy childhood in which they were made to feel inferior for their level of talent with their fire powers and overlooked in favor of a prodigious younger sibling.

Sperated from their mother while young.

Starts out desperately trying to regain their abusive father's favor only to do a massive 180 and join their fathers enemy.

Joins a rebel group who plan to destroy everything about the community and culture his father is a part of and, ya know, murder him. He's down with that.

[fan-dweeb]

[bnha S6 spoilers]

Y’all I’m-

I’ve been procrastinating on the bnha anime and been binging fanfics instead (mostly Hawks-centric because I’m obsessed)

And how is it that I just find out from a random clip of his fight against Twice and Dabi that he tried to save Twice from Dabi’s flames?????

Like there’s a lot of fics about his guilt or the study of morality or the Commission’s abuse and stuff, but why is no one talking about how Hawks was still trying to be a hero despite saying he deals with cases fast to not dwell on emotion?

And then we can go on to interpret Dabi’s dialogue after that? Like??

(Or maybe I just haven’t seen any yet, hmu if u know any good ones)

[schrodingers-romy]

I love entering a fandom and being apathetic about the fandom's Most Specialest Boy

[lgbtlunaverse]

There's a few "league gets adopted by Rei / Rei takes care of the league" fics out there and I love them dearly even if i have to admit that they're all quite unrealistic, mainly because they tend to paint Rei as a better parent than she actually is. Sort of what happens to aizawa in fanon, too, completely accepting and eternally affectionate. The "comfort" in hurt/comfort personified. I get why this happens, it hits like a truck watching people who were denied parental affection finally get it.

But, as always, with fanon tropes, there is a part of me that's melancholic for all the potential that gets left behind. Because there's a kernel of truth in these fics that i'm sad isn't highlighted enough, there's something that could draw rei to the league outside of one of them being her literal thought-to-be-dead son or some nebulous perfect motherly instinct. And that truth is: Rei is not an amazing parent. Her faults are mostly of inaction, and the whole thing with Shouto was due to the abuse she suffers herself. But she has- and she knows this- failed her childen as a mother.

And what that gives you is a woman with a deep massive guilt over failing to be there for her kids when they needed her. She believes one of them died and it was, in part, her fault. Shouto she can reconcile with, but Touya, she thinks, will be a wound that never heals. And why wouldn't you, as a fic writer, use that?

What i'm saying is, if you were to- in the right circumstances- throw a traumatized child also failed by their parents her way. (Perhaps, say... a child rejected by her parents explicitly because of her quirk, wink wink?) And it reminded her just of how much she herself had failed as a mother, specifically because she was too scared to do anything, then she would absolutely want to take care of that child. She just wouldn't be all that good at it. Really, she'd be terrified to even try. But she'd want to try. And wouldn't that make for a story worth telling, one that could be just as cathartic in the end as the 'perfect mom takes care of her new murder children' fics?

[into-the-feniverse]

WOOHOO Fen character sketch for the BNHA universe!

BNHA templates here: bit.ly/bnhatemplates

[arbitrary-numb3r]

Dabi 🔥 Character Playlist

"Just keep doing your thing and don't die on me, 'kay?!" (Vol. 21, Ch. 191)

🔥 Dabi’s Dance: Spotify

Other Playlists | Midoriya | Mirko | Bakugo | Shinso

[secret-engima]

(I DID THE THING. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY. HAVE A TWOSHOT THAT ISN’T THAT ROMANTIC BUT DARN IT I TRIED).

(also gentle reminder, you need to be signed into Ao3 to see my fics atm)

...

Miruko wakes up with a hangover and a hot (in more ways than one) criminal in her bed. Surprisingly, most of the things that implies don't actually apply.

Dabi finds a quirk drunk hero on the street and drags her to bed, and there's nothing sexy about it (sometimes he hates that his morals aren't flammable).

[fireburial]

dabi + interacting with the league of villains.

[mossy-opal]

Who Else Would You Like To See Me Write For?

[itsmeezra]

i havent been caught up with mha for months is bakugou still dead