#i know it's not really plot relevant but perhaps then you shouldn't have included it in the first place!

[fluffykitteninabox]

Hate it when 90% of a fandom misgenders a canonically trans character because "ThE cHaRaCtErS iN tHe ShOw Do iT tOo!!"

[laundryandtaxes]

I think it's very very difficult for a lot of people to come to accept that sometimes a set of circumstances can 1) only reasonably be called abusive by sheer virtue of the intensity of the unidirectional pressure, condescension, and outright cruelty, and 2) ALSO be a set of circumstances in which one person was not sitting around actively thinking of ways to abuse the other person, systematically moving them through stages they've established as the track to get someone to continue to endure abuse. I'm sympathetic to the argument at least that we shouldn't call that abuse, but rather mistreatment, and that we should reserve the term for intentional manipulations of other people, but I don't actually agree with it. Ulltimately I think that framework makes it very difficult for people who've been abused to accept what is happening to them, because it requires that they reimagine someone they love and are intimately familiar with as an entirely separate kind of person from other people, as some special kind of evil human being who has spent the last x years just plotting on how to psychologically destroy them. But more importantly, I just don't think it is actually true- for instance, I think the majority of people who regularly hit their children must love them AND must believe that hitting them is a perfectly reasonable way to correct their behavior because they consider it within the purview of loving behavior. I also obviously think they're outright wrong and that that is child abuse, but when something like 80% of Americans still think it is okay to hit children, I simply think it is improbable that everyone in that group, including all the parents, actually hates or even doesn't love children. That is just one instance, but I think this is especially relevant in the context of emotional abuse.

Perhaps this is especially important to me because it's so, so hard for women who date other women to recognize and leave partners who regularly mistreat, condescend to, and pressure them in ways that I think are only reasonably called abuse, because they have this concept of abuse as something bad people do on purpose to harm other people and I think that absolute caricature isn't real and isn't helpful- it's hard enough to get out, I know personally that it's hard enough to get out, of an abusive relationship even when it doesn't require a total reframing of every interaction you've ever had with someone as them proming you for more abuse. Perhaps I'm functionally theorizing my own refusal to see the people in my life who've caused me the most harm as evil masterminds, and perhaps they really are evil masterminds and so is everyone in the country who treats their children poorly or hits them. I'll grant that those things could be true, but I don't think so. I think this abusive boogeyman is like the back alley rapist- real, yes, but certainly not making up the majority of sexual violence in a way that merits centering it as the thing women need to see as their primary concern in a way that informs their safety practices. I also don't think it's a coincidence that focusing on the back alley rapist lowers the defenses of women in situations they may perceive as less dangerous than walking down the street but where they're actually at much greater risk of harm due to being away from other people, etc. But I think that we need to move past this really static idea of what abuse can be (I imagine this has got to stem from domestic violence or abuse and the absolutely massive role that intentional control of another person has in that context- I have known women whose partners who kept regular surveillance of their phones, for instance) because it keeps a lot of people stuck, thinking their partnerships aren't bad, and frankly when a lot of adults in general but especially women who date women are just emotionally underdeveloped and have a low capacity for healthy relationships even when they have the absolute best intentions, we need markers of bad behavior that tell you to get out, not caricatures of essential traits.

[stillness-in-green]

Why does Hori keep leaving out horse guy I am legit irritated we never even saw his quirk :(

Oh my god, right?? Where is he, goddamn. Why even put him in that group shot if you're never going to include him in any other scene with the sidekicks ever again??

Below the cut: Endeavor's sidekicks, and a little bit each on forgiveness, denial, and making a stand.

I suppose it's probably too much to hope for that horse guy is the one of Endeavor's sidekicks that got a look at the Dabi broadcast and resigned from the agency; I think it's always been a weakness of the post-reveal Todoroki plot that no one we actually care about is willing to draw that line in the sand.

In Hawks' case, I like it, both because Hawks's only relationship with Endeavor came after the latter started trying to become a better person, so Hawks has a fair reason to be willing to judge Enji only as the man he knows him to be, and because Hawks has been enormously psychologically invested in Endeavor since he was a desperately vulnerable and emotionally neglected child. It's difficult and thorny, with the potential to get fascinatingly ugly but also to allow for a beautiful grace. I quite like grace, in the sense it's used to mean forgiveness.

My Hawksdeavor soft spot aside, however, all the rest of the people in Endeavor's immediate circle, the ones with fewer excuses and longer exposure, really ought to stop defending Endeavor right to Touya's face, especially when it would be so easy to say, "I'm sorry he hurt you, but I still can't stand aside and watch you commit murder right in front of me," and leave it at that.

There is perhaps some tragic realism to the fact that we haven't seen that;(1) it's not uncommon for accusations like Dabi's to be met with denial and defensiveness, claims of, "Well, he was never like that around me..." Still, so much else about Enji's path to atonement has been so good, I hate that in this one area, his professional career, we never have to see him face a single consequence.

It'd be a nice touch to see that the reveal did actually cost Endeavor real, personal, direct support,(2) not just nameless faces in a sea of angry civilians. If that is the case, though, we do need to see it. In the layover chapters between that war and this one would have been ideal, but I would still accept a relevant flashback if sick horse-guy pops back up somewhere else, still trying to be a hero even if the association with Endeavor is doing his popularity no favors.

It's possible he's got something else to do yet, but if the Sidekickers were going to be all that relevant in the upcoming chapters, you'd think we'd have at least seen him, separate from the others if he's been assigned to a different villain for some reason. Also too, I went back and skimmed through a portion of it, and as best I can tell, he isn't anywhere to be seen in the war arc, either! As it is, it really just feels like Horikoshi has largely forgotten him, or never really intended him to play any major role.

And on the one hand, Endeavor does have thirty sidekicks working at his agency, so I wouldn't expect all of them to be with him on every assignment; we know they specifically don't work like that. On the other hand, if horse-dude was just going to be a random one of Endeavor's thirty sidekicks, not in the major, named, recurring group, Horikoshi probably shouldn't have a) put him in the Flaming Sidekickers introduction shot, and b) signed off on Betten Court's inclusion of him in that same group when they show up in Vigilantes!

Whatever the case, just give us the fuckin' rad-looking horse heteromorph dude already, Hori!

——

1: Oddly enough, Hawks himself is the one who's come closest to revoking his personal support of Endeavor, when he pointedly asks if Endeavor is the one who gave Shouto his burn. I don't imagine he would have turned around and walked out of the room if the answer had been yes—Hawks is a pragmatist, and society as Hawks knows it was in far too much danger to just write off its current Number One Hero—but in that moment, he did feel very ready to start cutting his emotional ties.

2: Part of me wonders if this sort of thing is why Rock Lock hasn't gotten any lines in the post-war arc; that dude is too much of a straight-talker and consistently willing to say things that are bad for morale if he thinks it's important they be said. He's also afaik just about the only other hero in the main canon (so, not counting Captain Celebrity) who's married, much less who has any kids. It's very easy, and indeed very satisfying, to imagine that he might have some very choice words for Endeavor in both capacities, hero and family man. We have been cheated out of this, I feel.