Ghosts

can we talk abt touya's medical trauma more please

On Heroes and Villains

(or: how I stopped worrying and learned to hate the system)

Now that I’ve gone off a bit about how Midoriya sees heroes and how he sees himself, it’s time to go off about how he conceptualizes villains. The definition of “hero” in BNHA society veers off of what we’d consider the idealistic definition, and indeed the definition that the Western-style comic books Horikoshi was apparently partially inspired by follow — a hero is someone who acts to save others, often at great risk, without being asked and without asking for payment in return. Unlike BNHA’s heroes, heroes in Western comics are sometimes viewed negatively by society and civilians (see various eras of the X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, etc) but that doesn’t change the fact that they are heroes at their core. Heroism under the idealist/Western comic definition is both intrinsic and chosen. Heroism in BNHA draws a government salary.

That’s heroes. How about villains? In Western comics, villains are people who do bad things, often using supernatural abilities on civilians who aren’t able to defend themselves the same way. Villains are sometimes portrayed as evil for evil’s sake (ex. the Joker), but more often they’re humanized. A classic example is the X-Men’s Magneto. In his initial appearances in the comics, he’s unquestionably a villain — a mutant supremacist who believes that the human majority should be subject to the mutant minority. This is a bad look. Plus ultra bad, one might say. But when the comics reveal Magneto’s backstory, it becomes clear why he holds that viewpoint: As a Jewish character alive during World War II, he was a member of a tiny minority, persecuted and murdered en masse by the majority culture. The phrase “never again” is often used when referencing the Holocaust, and Magneto takes that concept and broadens it. Never again will he or anyone like him suffer at the hands of the majority. Magneto’s backstory, tragic as it is, doesn’t excuse his villainous actions (prior to his various redemptions, that is), but it does explain them. The reader understands why Magneto does what he does, and more importantly, the reader is meant to care. In Western comics, ‘villain’ isn’t a personality trait, but a descriptor of someone’s actions — and quite crucially, they can choose a different action at any time.

BNHA takes a different viewpoint. Villain isn’t a description of a person’s behavior, but an intrinsic trait. And this gets problematic when one thinks about the fact that all someone needs to do is use their quirk in the committing of a crime to qualify as a villain.

Moving on. At the beginning of BNHA, there’s no evidence that Midoriya or anyone else has much sympathy or even a desire to understand the villains. Notably, the first villains we’re shown are thieves — the purse snatcher on the train, who activates his quirk out of panic when he’s caught, and the Sludge Villain, who by virtue of his heteromorphic quirk is using his quirk at all times. (That begs an interesting and horrible question. Some heteromorphs are theoretically using their quirks all the time. Would getting a parking ticket while “using their quirk” then classify them as a villain?) In any case, the motivation of these characters is identified as greed or enjoyment of stealing. But there are a lot of reasons why a person might steal. I don’t expect Midoriya to ask those questions in Chapter 1 as a fourteen year old who idolizes heroes. But it would bother me less if it hadn’t turned out to be a harbinger of things to come.

The first villain Midoriya encounters as a hero student is Shigaraki, who at first glance during the USJ attack appears to be the least threatening of the main trio. He’s also the youngest and the most physically vulnerable of the group. Unlike the previous villains, Shigaraki actually has a chance to explain his motivations — which are admittedly not phrased well, and are thoroughly infected by All For One’s ideology. However, Shigaraki is given multiple chances to explain his motivations, and his ability to articulate them improves by leaps and bounds. Shigaraki also has something in his back pocket that villains such as Toga and Twice don’t have: He’s related to a hero, and particularly a hero that All Might holds in the highest esteem. And yet, while Midoriya can sympathize with or “understand” Stain and Gentle Criminal, he can’t or won’t reckon with Shigaraki. (He also fails to understand Overhaul, but there’s an important difference in that Overhaul has no desire to be understood, saved, or stopped.)

On the surface, this makes no sense. Stain explicitly targets heroes, members of a group Midoriya is aiming to be part of. Gentle Criminal threatens to ruin the school festival, which Midoriya and his classmates have worked hard for, and unlike Stain, Shigaraki, or Overhaul, Gentle Criminal turns his villainy into a performance. His motivation is entirely selfish. Stain’s motivation doesn’t arise from a personal grievance. Why can Midoriya acknowledge common ground with them and not with Shigaraki?

Because in Midoriya’s worldview, “villain” isn’t something a person does. Villain is something a person is.

On some level, Midoriya is able to identify with Stain and with Gentle Criminal. Because he can identify with them, he makes a small but significant leap in logic — they’re like me, and I’m not a villain, so they can’t be villains, either. Under this paradigm, Gentle Criminal’s selfish crimes are relevant only where they might put Midoriya out. Under this same paradigm, Stain’s murders become a misguided offshoot of his veneration of All Might. Villains that Midoriya personally understands are seen as people. Villains he can’t relate to aren’t.

Shigaraki and the League of Villains have legitimate grievances, causes of their misery that they’re able to name and point to. The bystander effect, heteromorph discrimination, the school-to-prison pipeline, general intolerance, parental abuse, and so on. They also get chances to articulate these viewpoints to the heroes. But because Midoriya can’t personally relate to Shigaraki, because Shigaraki got angry in the face of his mistreatment instead of accepting it in silence like Midoriya did, Shigaraki never escapes the category of villain.

A villain in BNHA society is effectively unpersoned. They can be injured with impunity, to the point where villain-specific hospitals exist to treat the injuries caused by heroes. They can be imprisoned under inhumane conditions. They can be written off completely. This inverts the Western comic understanding, wherein heroism is intrinsic and villainy is a choice; under BNHA’s paradigm, heroism is a choice, and villainy is intrinsic. Villains can’t be saved, and it doesn’t matter, because there was nothing there to save in the first place.

In fact, the only way Midoriya is comfortable acknowledging Shigaraki is by acknowledging that he was once Tenko Shimura — an innocent child, a victim of All For One who should have been saved. This viewpoint has the benefit of being uncomplicated and not requiring Midoriya to think too hard. To reckon with Shigaraki as an adult, Midoriya would have to accomplish the Magneto dialectic; that is, acknowledging that while Shigaraki’s actions are terrible, the person taking those actions didn’t spring fully formed into the world as the Symbol of Fear. Shigaraki is still a victim of All For One, and arguably the victim who suffered the most at his hands. It’s entirely reasonable for Shigaraki to be hurt and furious that he wasn’t rescued. But rather than understanding that the innocent child and the adult villain are facets of the same individual, Midoriya separates them — which allows him to metaphorically “save” Tenko while literally murdering Tomura.

To summarize: Unless he’s able to personally relate to the villain in question on a superficial level, Midoriya makes no distinction between person and action. “Villain” is seen as an intrinsic, immutable trait, a label that effectively dehumanizes the individual it’s applied to. In BNHA, the only “redeemable” villain is a dead villain, and neither BNHA nor its main character ever takes issue with this premise. At least not enough to matter for the villains themselves.

I’m going to take a second to vent about this heroes act/villains are bullshit. We see multiple heroes take actions while on the job as heroes that should disqualify them from the label. Even as a full-blown hero, Bakugou is an utter shit whose main interests are becoming Number One and beating Midoriya, rather than actually helping anyone. Present Mic, as much as I love him, attempts to murder Kurogiri in cold blood even knowing that Kurogiri used to be his friend and that there’s at least a possibility that his friend’s consciousness is still present. Hawks straight up murders someone on camera. These characters aren’t even acting like heroes at this point. But as long as they don’t earn the label of “villain”, anything can be excused…and is excused, by the narrative, by BNHA society, and by BNHA’s creator.

watch your step to hell, its a long fall!

“The corruption begins with the mouth, the tongue, the wanting. The first poem in the world is I want to eat.”

— Erica Jong, from “Where It Begins,” Fruits & Vegetables: Poems By Erica Jong (Holt, 1971)

obsessed with the concept of being haunted by yourself

hiiii first off i love ur art so much i always look forward to seeing it on my tl or on here!!!! secondly i think ur dabihawks is soo hot and they make a lot of sense from an aesthetic pov for me but they don't compel me much outside of that so if i can ask, what's your interpretation of why u ship them? or like narratively what compels you to like them as a ship?

this is so long i'm so embarrasssed, but i tried to gather my thoughts a bit :)

first things first: a lot of fans say that horikoshi wasted dabihawks' potential but tbh i've appreciated that horikoshi has kept most of it between the lines for us to figure out, i think that mode fits reflects their dynamic (and the endeavor - dabi - hawks triangle) well.

Also I know you asked what I find appealing about the ship, not all of these interpretations are about romance/shipping; some are just about their general dynamic. as I keep saying, the yaoi is only secondary to their overall weirdness, that’s more appealing to me tbh.

the obvious canon dynamic: Dabi and Hawks are (filial) foils: they represent 2 opposing outcomes of what happens when endeavor/enji (we have to differenciate) basically shapes your life. they're two sides of the same coin that symbolizes endeavor's 2 sides: enji, that father who fails vs. endeavor, the hero who succeeds. I don't think I need to elaborate on this, but yeah it's pretty overt in the manga that they’re filial foils, the fact that they’re the same ages makes it even more obvious like they’re equal opposites and I love that sm.

my ship interpretation of their overall dynamic: dabi and Hawks can get under each other’s skin in a way that no one can; there is so much irritation but also uncomfortable intimacy, because how come this guy who barely knows me knows where it hurts the most??

I think dabi is easily irritated by hawks because – as mentioned above – hawks is the complete opposite of dabi, I just know hawks’ charming (& sleazy) hero persona would piss him offff, but that’s only surface level annoyance, once dabi starts digging, connects the dots, and realizes that hawks is weirdly attached to his colleague aka dabi’s dad? And that his dad basically saved hawks from his abusive dad?? and that endeavor set off hawks’s career as the youngest hero to enter to top 3??? That hawks basically has everything that was promised to dabi??? CUTE THE CAMERAS!!!!! the irony is NOT lost on dabi!!!!!!!!!!!! One thing I love about dabi is his resentment towards those who make him painfully aware of his failures in life, I think resentment, jealousy, grief for what could have been are so interesting to explore, especially for a 23yo character like you rlly lose your mind at that age.

But as easily as hawks irritates dabi, dabi can get on hawks’ nerves and hit him where it hurts like no one else, precisely because they’re inextricably tied to each other through endeavor. So dabi is ver intimate with hawks’ flaws & issues and likes to probe and poke……. I made a whole post about this, but I think the todorokis’ closure would’ve been less disappointing if dabihawks got to face each other one last time; this time with everyone present. Dabi could have reminded hawks that  -- while he’s the one withering away in an oxygen chamber & hawks climbed up the career ladder and gets to work with endeavor – hawks is caged in a far more constricting way; he didn’t learn shit from twice’s death and that’s gonna haunt him, dabi would also say out loud what hawks is ignoring, namely that endeavor hasn’t chosen hawks once over his son (much to be said here let’s not digress oaughh). So hawks can have fun running after his father forever and secretly yearning paternal attention & validation. Dabi might be on the verge of death, but he got to reflect, let go, and change at least; Hawks’ character is SO stuck & and I think dabi should remind him of that <3 hawks should have nightmares sometimes <3 this is yaoi to me <3

This one isn’t about romance, but dabihawks are also so interesting to me because I think  their relationship is kind of similar to dabi’s relationship with shoto: imo, hawks parallels dabi in a way that is analogous to the parallelism between dabi and shoto. As I said before, hawks and shoto both represent a life that was supposed to be dabi’s, but another parallel I see is that hawks and dabi are so similar and had the potential to connect (both as normal kids but also as damaged adults), but life is unfair and they never and on the other.

There’s a real tragedy in dabi’s isolation (endeavor forcibly isolating his children from each other is repeatedly mentioned), and I think that this can be extended to hawks as well, which is why there’s a LOT of fan work of them befriending each other as children 😊 but I think that in a more radical approach to the story, dabihawks could’ve also connected as damaged adults but let’s not get into that.

Tl;dr: they’re parallel lines that cannot reach each other or cross paths but there are enough hints to make you feel like they could find each other in a kinder universe…………… KILL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok now my yaoi interpretation of that: I think the dynamic that I’ve described in the point above lends itself really well to a vast array of outcomes they’re such a dynamic duo. I love the cute aus that are just about dbhx falling in love, but I also LOVE the doomed yaoi, there’s something beautiful about dabihawks doing their thing despite all the odds and the pride and the repulsion (let’s not get into that,,,,,,,,,,,). I love when their intimacy is permeated by an anticipation of betrayal like the quirks stay ON during sex, the breakup text is DRAFTED in their notes app, the IP address is always READY to get leaked, they have each other’s moms on SPEED dial to snitch on the other………………………… they’re not meant to be but they WILL fuck nasty ( and have surprisingly intimate moments) yup

attachment styles /yaoiimplied: I think dabi is an avoidant and hawks an anxiously attached partner. Which means that dabi is hyper independent and scared of emotional intimacy to the point of self-sabotage (he WILL create problems out of thin air and lash out at hawks when their weird situationship starts getting too comfortable). Which means that hawks is terrified of rejection (his parents left him & his clings so much to endeavor & he forces himself into the Todoroki family) and fears that he could lose whatever he and dabi have so he clings, which is so so scary to dabi. I see a lot of headcanons about dabi being possessive but I don’t agree at all; I think the second dabi feels like hawks might fall for sb else (they do cheat on each other I thin), he’s just gonna give lmaooo, dabi is NOT a fighter!!!!!!!!!!! His obsession is exclusive to his beef with his father!! He will NOT beg and fight for hawks’ love!!! Idk I like how their trauma gave them very different attachment patterns <3

names as another layer of intimacy (cute): this is in the manga so I don’t feel the need to elaborate on this, but there’s sth SO intimate about dabi and hawks both letting go of their birth names and those being such a big mystery for such a long time, both to the readership & characters. The fact that dabi finds out hawks’ name and CALLS him by his name during a fight ugh I love the juxtaposition of intimacy and violence. They probably use their 1st names during nice moments also keigo and touya are really cute names but I digress…..

names as another layer of intimacy (bad): while the paragraph above present this as rather cute and intimate, I think there’s also violence and a hierarchy at play when you use somebody’s deadname (I think we can call it that idk). Not only is there the juxtaposition of violence and intimacy when dabi uses hawks’ name, I think there’s also sth. deeply disrespectful about hawks using dabi’s given name like WHO are you to call him toya!!!!!!!!!!!! And the answer to that is that hawks uses it because endeavor uses it, which is so insane but whatever let’s not go there………….

also hotwings is such a good ship name sorry i was sold on that alone..............

sorry this whole page is yaoi to me, this fight is sexual in general well whatever let's move ON!!!!

Abjection: the aforementioned mutual irritation with each other that results from their uncomfortable & unwanted proximity feels so abject to meeeeeeeee

idk they have perfect yaoi equilibrium to me

the color symbolism :)

kevin is so alecto tlt coded………. what if i (riko) made you perfect and irreproachable like a barbie doll but knew there was something inherently wrong and violent about how i created you….. whattttt if i took and took and took from you and you still loved me. what if i created you from my rib to make sure someone else is there to shoulder the burden of having massacred everything that would since become you…… many horrible such cases. what if i had to lock and chain you in a tomb to make sure no one remembers what i did to you

Do you ever just think about how the headboard on Kevin's bed on the Nest doesn't budge. Of all the hints about what his life there was like that's the one that gets to me the most because it's so deliberate. Because even though he's probably physically stronger than Riko or at least evenly matched, Kevin wouldn't fight back. But he wasn't given the choice to anyway

honestly i think putting neil in kevin’s side of the room is such a telling choice during the castle evermore scenes. we spend so much of the first and second book hearing about how much kevin fears his so-called family, their haunting of the narrative as bloodthirsty hounds who can sniff out his fear, and when we actually get to finding out why that is we see it from someone who was immediately shoved into kevin’s old place. riko wasn’t just hurting neil because he wanted to (“i’m going to enjoy hurting you just as much as i enjoyed hurting kevin”), he was making sure neil knew he was inferior by putting him in direct contact with the roles kevin and jean played in the nest, using him as a substitute for the one that got away. neil gets a speedrun of some of the worst moments of kevin’s life, and he gets not a single breathing moment for it before he has to be shoved back into exy, like kevin was

i wouldn’t dare presume nora sakavic’s intentions on anything at this point, but i like the idea that neil’s stay at evermore was supposed to tell us all we needed to know about kevin’s time there, without kevin ever having to actually recount the years (he wouldn’t, even if he could): that it was horrifying, and that being in his shoes will never be as glamorous as neil previously thought. i like the breaking of neil’s expectations for kevin; i like how it makes neil realize the life kevin led was not better. and that’s the point, isn’t it? when neil is lying in kevin’s bed, handcuffed to kevin’s headboard, his legs pinned under kevin’s only friend, getting hurt by kevin’s brother, that’s what neil realizes: this is not better. it might be different than life on the run, but it is not better.