#yes hawks wanted to see endeavor grow but he didn’t force endeavor’s victims to feel the same way

[latuuart]

Hawks is often said to be someone who would push Endeavor’s victims to just forgive Endeavor already because of his unrelenting support towards him despite knowing about his abusive past (although actually there are significant reasons behind that unrelenting support). However, I feel like Hawks’s dialogue in the hospital chapter has, in fact, told us that Hawks is not like that at all (at least till today).

In that chapter, it was shown that Hawks regarded Shouto highly because he discovered Shouto still wanted to repair his relationship with his parents despite everything that he had been going through. Hawks didn’t think that it was an obligation on Shouto’s part to forgive Endeavor already because he had been trying to change then. Hawks didn’t push the Todorokis to support Endeavor, despite him willing to support Endeavor very much. If Hawks were to push his desire to help Endeavor to others/Endeavor’s victims, I think he would comment on Natsuo’s reluctance to help Endeavor if it wasn’t because it was Touya (although Natsuo had every right to) and Natsuo’s overall resentful demeanour towards Endeavor (again, Natsuo had every right to), as he was eavesdropping their conversation previously after all. In addition, Hawks’s reaction towards Shouto still wanting to reconcile with his parents would also be different if Hawks were to think the Todorokis must support Endeavor trying to be better. Thankfully, Hawks didn’t think that way at all.

Even though Hawks really supports Endeavor trying to be a better person, he doesn't feel like every Endeavor’s victim has to be accepting of Endeavor’s change one way or another.

The thought that the victims should just move on and forget the past was not even crossing his mind. Yes, he insisted that everything had been different then even before hearing the full story, but, as I’ve mentioned in my previous meta covering the reasons why Hawks reacted the way he was upon hearing about Endeavor’s abusive past, it was more for his own sake. It was for a completely different reason rather than he wanted/needed Endeavor’s victims to feel the same way as he did.

Because Hawks himself knew how it was like to have an abusive parent, he understood those who wouldn’t want anything to do with their abusive parents anymore. Because Hawks himself is one of them; he gave up on his parents and left them behind. Rightfully so, as it was on him to decide after all.

No one should tell you to accept your abusive parents back no matter how sorry they are now. Forgiveness and acceptance must come from our own self, not because someone pushes you to forgive and forget. Hawks is aware of that.

[linkspooky]

Do you have any thoughts on the Pro-Hero's discussion about Shigaraki and his hatred from chapter 311?

My thoughts are this, from both Jeanist and Hawks utter cluelessness to why Dabi could possibly have turned into a villain despite Dabi just telling them why, on tv, and being next to the man who pushed him into it, and from how all three of them fail to understand how Shigaraki could have been so easily groomed into hatred reflects an unacknowledged shadow for all three of them.

In Jungian psychology the concept of the shadow exists. The Shadow is an unconscious aspect of the personality which is outside of the conscious ego. While our consciousness is mainly made out of behaviors and memories, we judge as positive, and our Shadow differentiates by holding emotions, behaviors, and memories we label as adverse or painful. In a shadow, constructive perspectives might be incorporated, but most of the parts remain camouflaged under the thumb points of low self-esteem ness, anxieties, and false beliefs. "Everyone carries a shadow," stated Jung "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. To know yourself, you must accept your dark side. To deal with others' dark hands, you must also know your dark side.

In other words, for characters like Enji and Hawks, all of their bad traits define them just as much as their good traits, to be a whole and complete person they have to recognize those bad traits instead of being in denial of them however, both of them choose to only see themselves as heroes.

Anyway, now for something completely different. Let’s talk about batman and the joker. Batman uses Jungian symbolism a lot, of all the heroes he’s the most famous for being a normal person, who dresses in a costume to fight crime specifically in shadowed alleyways, and has a rogues gallery that also consists of mostly normal people in costumes. Batman’s villains are batman. Batman plays with both the relationship between himself and his villains, and also the relatinoship between Bruce and his own Shadow, because his Shadow is part of who he is. 

Now the most iconic batman villain is obviously the joker, and he’s a character like All for One who most of the time is just written as a character who does evil for evil’s sake, but more serious looks at the Joker like The Killing Joke which My Hero Academia directly references make this comparison between the two of them. The famous One Bad Day speech is also, notably, an attempt for Joker to connect to batman, to try to explain himself to him. 

He’s not just spouting a villain speech, he’s also looking for sympathy and trying to give sympathy, because that’s just what humans do. Because deep down, both Batman and the Joker were normal people once. The connection between Batman and the Joker is that they were both normal people, but one of them became a hero, and the other one a villain, and therefore that potential exists in any normal person. 

However, the heroes in MHA still don’t acknowledge their connection to the villains. Hawks and Enji did apologize yes, but what’s also important is their actions after, which is to choose to continue fighting villains as heroes.

It’s been pointed out by Shoto before that what Enji really needs to do to heal his family, is act like a good father, rather than a good hero. However, when given the chance to reach out to his son, he chooses to fight it instead. There’s a reason that the public isn’t reassured by the actions of Hawks, Jeanist and Endeavor and that’s because they continue to keep playing heroes instead of acknowledging what’s wrong. I’m not saying they are good or bad people, both Hawks and Enji have bad sides of their personality that they are almost completely ignorant of. They, like any human being have the potential to be driven to villainy. That’s why Enji can’t reach out to his son, because his brains have still made the connection that he was what drove Toya to villainry. 

It comes across in the casualness which Enji remarks upon what AFO did to Shigaraki and the complete lack of self awareness. Enji did the same thing, he had a child for the sake of passing on his quirk, raised that child to hate all might and want to do anything to surpass him, and he even wanted to live vicariously through the success of Toya and then Shoto so everyone would know him as Endeavor’s son. He still only cares about Toya to the extent that his dreams were once resting on him. 

So when Enji makes the connection to AFO, he asserts that there must be something wrong with him to do all those bad things, because he’s unaware of the resmeblance between his own deeds and AFO’s. He sees himself as a human being with reasons for his bad actions, he didn’t mean to neglect Toya, he didn’t know what to say to him, he was too guilty and hid from his guilt for so long but he doesn’t allow his enemies to have that guilt. This is a pattern that repeats with Hawks, and Jeanist as well, they can’t understand why people like Twice and Dabi would feel like they have a right to be angry at the society that mistreated them. 

Jeanist’s defense is why can’t he just keep quiet about it. 

Twice’s last words were hating Hawks and wishing the worst for him, yet Hawks still thinks they were best friends somehow.

Hawks and Twice were not friends, because Hawks chose not to be his friend, and to hurt what was most precious to Twice which was all of his other friends. Enji chose not to be a father to Toya and not be a father. Enji and Hawks are neither heroes nor villains, they are not good or bad, they’re just humans and as humans they have the potential to be both. 

In only seeing the hatred that Shigaraki was groomed to have they’re also fundamentally misunderstanding him. The thing is Shigaraki has reasons for his hatred, and not just because AFO forced him to feel that way. It’s not just AFO, that’s what they critically misunderstand, it’s Shigaraki’s experiences with how the society around him has neglected both him and his friends.

That’s something that the heroes can never see, because Shigaraki has been assigned the role of a villain who hates society. It’s not just AFO, Shigaraki can’t be at peace with a society that is designed to reject others.

That doesn’t come from his hate either, it comes from his sympathy with the victims. Just like they only see their own good traits, they can only see the villain’s bad traits. The thing is we have witnessed Shigaraki constantly been challenged on the fact that he only has empty hatred, first by Stain, then by Chisaki, and finally be Re-Destro. We also witnessed the moment he changed. 

The conclusion Shigaraki comes to as the result of his arc is that while he himself doesn’t care about the people, he’s not alone anymore, he wants to give the future to the others around him. 

That’s why Shigaraki’s actions aren’t driven just by hatred, but also by a deeply broken sense of empathy. Not only is he a crying child himself, he’s also someone who acknowledges the feelings of others. What converted Spinner from being someone who didn’t particularly care about the goals of the league, and doubted Shigaraki in front of everyone to his most loyal follower. 

It’s because he came to recognize that this human side of Shigaraki was there. The same way that underneath his mask, Spinner was just a pathetic NEET struggling with his own feelings of inadequacy, Shigaraki gets close to broken people, he tries to protect them, he tries to give some kind of validation to their feelings. 

Shigaraki has grown from just hating all of society because it rejected him, to realizing the real reason is because it rejects everyone around him. That means while there’s hatred to his character, there’s also a very selfish and intense love that applies to a small group of people, but the potential for love is still there. Shigaraki reaches out and saves people the same way that Deku does, he tries to do all the fighting himself to protect others just like Deku, it’s just that he’s been hurt again and again and that’s twisted him to act on his worst trait. None of the heroes understand Shigaraki’s love, because they can only see his hate. 

It’s not just that he’s been victimized or that he’s a crying child. Shigaraki is constantly compared to a child both in a negative sense as a man child, and a positive sense as a child pure heartedly pursuing their dream, because there is that potential within Shigarkai, to grow up, and grow into a better person if he was given the same chance to atone that characters like Hawks and Enji have already received. 

Shigaraki and Deku just like batman and the joker both reflect that in perfectly normal people, there’s the chance for great good, or great evil. For Shigaraki there’s an added level of complexity, that you can still grow into a better person, after everyone has written you off as too far gone. You can still grow to love the people around you when you thought you were only capable of hating. 

Enji and Hawks still have the oppurtunity to grow just like that, not as heroes, but as people. 

However to truly grow as people they would have to learn to empathize with the villains, especially because they have done wrong things too, Hawks killed because he had to, Enji hurt his entire family. Defeating the villain really is not the solution, because sometimes you yourself are the villain. 

In order to fully grow as people they have to learn to see themselves as people, and not heroes. That also means admitting the villains are just as human as they are. If Endeavor is someone who can become better after realizing that he made so many mistakes in the past and the only thing he can do about it is try to do better from now on, then Endeavor’s ending point should be realizing that since he was given that chance by his family, others deserve that chance too, especially his own son.  People are not villains, or heroes, Endeavor is just Enji Todoroki and Dabi is Touya Todoroki deep down no matter how they see themselves.