Dabi: Why Are You On The Floor

♫･ﾟ: *

King Pin

Call this a conspiracy theory

but with the recent reveal about Tenko's quirk and having spent some time dwelling on the details of Touya's death there are more and more things not making sense in the context we were given.

Touya died in a fire on Sekoto peak after having a breakdown which lead to him losing control of his fire. This happened notably on a day when Enji was at home, having a day off from work.

Then Touya's burned body was taken away by All For One, who had broken off a fragment of his jawbone and planted it as evidence of his death.

As neglectful as Enji may have been as a father, he was still a hero. I have no doubt he got to the mountain as soon as he realized there is a fire. The Todoroki mansion was also located close to the Sekoto peak, as both Enji and Touya used to go there regularly to train. Are we really supposed to believe AFO just so happened to come across the fire started by Touya, manually break off his jawbone, leave it there and get away from the mountain with his body faster than it took for Endeavour to come there? Enji is the one living there, not All For One. Touya's breakdown is not something that can be predicted by the other party, unless they are keeping close contact with the Todoroki family. Ujiko directly confirms they were indeed aware of the private matters happening in the Todoroki house, which lead to AFO taking interest in Touya.

Those kids were our spares, in case anything happened to Tomura Shigaraki.

What did happen to Tomura Shigaraki, when he still was Tenko Shimura?

AFO sought him out when he was still a baby, and immediately took away his quirk factor. He was meeting with his father privately and encouraged his behaviour towards his son. He even contacted Tenko's friends. When Tenko was 5 years old, AFO personally passed the Decay quirk to him in another meeting.

AFO was a fucking control freak, manipulating Tenko's life to unbelievable degree. Everything that happened to Tenko was a doing of All For One, pretty much. And once he had hold on him, he kept him in complete control and isolation for most of his life.

Is it really so far fetched to believe that Touya's death on Sekoto was also AFO's doing?

We already have the confirmation Touya was one of Shigaraki's possible replacements and AFO toon specific interest in his quirk, before giving up on it.

We also know the only reason they let Touya go was because his body was so messed up Garaki prognosed his life expectancy after leaving the facility to be a month tops.

Another point that stands out is Touya's ice quirk awakening. The evolution of quirks explanation is handwavey at best. But if the condition for Touya was a near-death experience, then wouldn't a 13 years old boy who was used to dealing with minor burns and didn't want to burn to death fulfill those conditions better than a 24 years old man who was dealing with extreme burns on the regular and actively wanted to die?

Anyway, All For One is the one who started that fire on Sekoto, not Touya. In this essay I will-

essentially Dabi said no to League Bonding Camp to go spend the month hanging out with Shigaraki’s creepy stepdad and weird necromancied dogs

Not to be bitter or anything but im happy dabi killed fanon touya

OK BUT WHAT IF

The Importance of Toya and Fuyumi’s Age Gap (Spoilers for the manga)

You know what has always struck me as odd? The fact that Toya and Fuyumi have such a small age gap. The manga has confirmed that they were born in the same calendar year, with Toya being born in mid-late January and Fuyumi being born in early December.

Prior to all this being confirmed, many people had assumed Toya was 3 years older than his sister to fit with the "Endeavor waited for each kid to get their quirk before having the next one" narrative, but now we know that Toya was only 10 months old when his sister was born! (We also know that Fuyumi was born partially out of Rei's genuine desire to have more kids so they could support each other).

But still, why have them THAT close together? From a family planning standpoint, probably so the kids would be closer in age and therefore possibly closer emotionally, but how about from a story standpoint?

Well, I believe it was to avoid any misreadings of what exactly got Toya so frustrated regarding his siblings.

Think of it; if Fuyumi had a 3 year age gap between her and Toya, there would probably be people arguing that Toya was simply angry that he was no longer an only child. Any frustration he voiced regarding his siblings could simply be hand waved away by saying "oh, he's just bitter that he has to share his parents' attention".

But by having him and Fuyumi be THAT CLOSE in age, it's physically impossible for Toya to remember a world where he was an only child. In his earliest childhood memories, Fuyumi would always be present, meaning he's literally never known a world where he didn't have a sibling and didn't have to split his parents' attention.

So when, in the future, Toya gets despondent and angry over Natsuo and Shoto's births, we know it's not because he's losing his "only child" status. Toya has never really been an only child. Instead, he reacts that way because he sees the bigger picture and understands that these siblings are different than Fuyumi. They weren't born from a genuine desire to have more kids.

They were born to replace him.

“all he ever taught me…was how to turn up the heat”

rei todoroki is such a difficult character to talk about because I think people have legitimate reasons to be…some level of uncomfortable with her, but at the same time most people who bring that up don’t do so with anywhere near enough nuance or empathy for a woman with an abusive husband, and lots of them outright victim blame her (as I posted about before, people straight up blame her for being raped) and don’t see the way horikoshi is treating her lately as a problem. 

watching the responses to her these last few chapters…………the misogyny and people’s inability to care about a battered woman made my stomach churn. people have become so quick to jump on her before questioning the writing at all. 

I wish she was written with more care and actual thoughtful, complex characterization–I think her relationship with shouto sorely needs to have actual work put into writing it because what she did to him was pretty awful and traumatizing even if there were obviously extenuating circumstances. shouto doesn’t blame her, but with ten years of distance between them after the incident to stew in their feelings and suffer alone there’s a lot to explore when they reunite. and I think healing from trauma your mother caused because of your mutual abuser is much more worth exploring than putting all kinds of screentime into forcing him to build a better relationship with his dad, but a lot of what seems like obvious baggage he carries from his relationship with his mother has never been unpacked. 

same goes for her relationship with touya. I’d be interested in exploring his anger towards her more but we’re probably not going to get that, because these days she’s only relevant when she can be used to make endeavor look better (and before that as an accessory to shouto’s character). the way touya reacted to both his parents was very different despite resentment that built towards both(desire to please endeavor mixed with resentment over being tossed aside vs. what seems like complete dismissal of his mother), and I think that’s worth looking at. also I think, with what you can extrapolate from her relationship with her parents and then the way endeavor abused her, her inability to help touya is partially learned helplessness(on top of the fact that…there’s only so much she could do when she was being abused the way she was). 

AND I get that they’re not major characters the way shouto and now touya are but it’d be nice to get more on what natsuo and fuyumi think of her, too, especially since they’re the only ones who visited her for ten whole years! they saw a stage of her life everyone else missed entirely, have maintained a closeness with her no one else has. 

(original post/link)