#sure hope they like my offering

[jellypear]

Philza is not an old man. Not nearly as old as he looks.

And perhaps there is a story to that. (And perhaps that story begins with a curly haired boy looking to him for guidance). (And perhaps that story ends tragically with Philza losing the boy who was nearly a son to him.) However, that is a story for another day. 

But maybe there’s a story after that. And maybe that story begins with a pink haired boy and his brother looking to him for guidance. (And maybe that story ends happily).

That is a story for today.

--------------------------------

Philza is not an old man. But he is a man, and a weak one at that. 

It’s storming tonight and storm’s always make him melancholic. They offer memories once joyful, twisting them, so they serve as a reminder of his failures. 

It’s a knock on his door that tears Phil from his brooding. 

When he opens the door to see two young boys before him, soaked to the bone with the elder’s hands sparking, he knows what they’re there for. And he feels some of his will crumble away before they can even speak. 

“Please,” The child in front of him croaks, the smaller one peaking from behind his knees “Please I need help. I can’t control it and they said you could help. I just, anything, anything at all I just need to be able to control it”

It’s a familiar plee. But Philza has traveled down this path before, and he knows how this story ends.

“I can’t,” He whispers, quiet yet audible through the storm “I won’t” The boys before him look crestfallen. The sparks from the older boy’s hands grow more frantic, and he clenches them harder in response. Phil understands, to come so far only to be denied must be soul crushing. 

And perhaps it’s the storm that makes him do this, maybe it’s the feeling of nostalgia, but Phil steps aside urging the children inside. 

“Stay for the night, it’s far too dangerous to begin your journey back tonight.

And as Philza sits them down by the fire, feeds them, clothes them and learns their names (Technoblade, but you can call him Techno, the one with uncontrollable magic and Tommy, actually it’s Tommy Careful Danger Kraken Innit yes that’s his real name Techno, the one with a mouth worse than most sailors Phil soon learns), he feels his determination to send them away in the morn crumble further and further. 

Still, for this night and every night after, Phil wonders if he’s doing the right thing bringing them in. 

(Many months later Phil will realize that it was one of the best things he ever did)

--------------------------------

Orignal AU by Wolfy | AO3 | Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

uh hello @wolfythewitch, i bring you a lightning in a bottle au offering?

[spotaus]

Hey. So. @oodlesndoodles and @mylackofgrammaristerrifying I did a lil smth! Really no context behind this one, I just got mildly inspired-

[fullmoondaggers-art]

My friends made me play Ace Attorney and I finished it at long last and I'm making them regret it by being infatuated with the horrible horrible old man. Say hi to Von Karma the most feared Purrsecutor of Japanifornia also be nice to me i drew this for fun because I like that idea so if you think its cursed or whatever. Scroll away! I am enjoying the old man

[abunnsburrow]

Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars

[ocpdzim]

what you’ve got to understand about working conditions in education (and also other care-oriented careers) is that if they’re shit, two things are true at once:

that does not ever excuse being cruel to a kid, no matter what

until those conditions are fixed, education will continue to suck absolute shit

this is because when working conditions for teachers are really bad, many of the good teachers who recognize when they are reaching a point where they can no longer be the sort of teacher the kids deserve due to burnout WILL quit. they will do the responsible thing and go away for their own sake and the sake of the kids. and you end up stuck w a combination of new teachers who are trying their best but won’t last long, burnt out teachers who are trying their best but have nothing left to give and therefore aren’t very effective at actually teaching, and cockroach shitheads who take out their misery on the kids.

we have all had terrible experiences with bad teachers, many of them flat out traumatic, but for fuck’s sake please try to look at the systemic underpinnings of the problem for one minute. spitefully declaring that teachers don’t deserve good working conditions or even the right to complain about bad working conditions because ms. whoever in 5th grade was a bitch is only going to create more of her. if you want good teachers then we need an education system they can survive in

[ardate]

sniffs. man. i really want this job :(

[cr1ms0nesp3ra-ac3]

Oh boy, guess who's gonna participate that "Sleep Token Lyric" challenge. (Made by @a-s-levynn btw! Check em out!!)

So I will be choosing some lyrics of the songs that relates me the most. Trust me,

you'll see why.

Part 1: DAY O1

The second lyric interests me so I gotta choose this..

Undercut for art!

( That's my irl oc btw, hope you like it or not.. idc. )

[sevenyeargap]

practicing gratitude about this past year tonight and it IS actually helping?? a lot????????? unbelievable

[josephtrohman]

i sent in my application for the summer student jobs a whole two days ahead of the deadline. who clapped

[toastsnaffler]

the hr person from the last interview has asked to call me on TEAMS........ im so scared

[daz4i]

i think it's kinda funny when ppl complain about there not being any gay relationships in bsd and then bring up how atsulucy is very heavily implied to be canon or at least set up to be that. bc like. i think at this point you have to accept that ranpoe is the same. in which case the original argument lost its meaning didn't it

(i generally think it is a bit silly to expect any bsd ship to become canon. hope, enjoy the idea, make content, that's great. but expecting it - and that includes the m/f ones too - is. pointless imo. this isn't a romance story i don't think any relationship will be explicitly stated in the main story, at most it'll be somewhat acknowledged in wan. i think if you build up some expectation that a ship is gonna become canon you're only setting yourself up for disappointment. and that's a bit of a shame. i hope you can enjoy the story and enjoy the fan content as they are)

[sysig]

We met a darling 💕

[austerulous]

[thyandrawrites]

Hey, I'm a huge fan of your page, your analysis' have enlightened me on Dabi and Hawks. You explain and structure your stuff so well.

I have one question about Dabi's character

What would you say the overarching message of his character is, the concept.

Like what would say is the message Horikoshi was trying to convey to the reader when he was writing Dabi's character

Hey! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my analyses! It makes me happy that you find them enjoyable 💕

Anyway, to answer your question: I don't know if I'd talk about a message per se, because there is too much back and forth with the framing of the Todoroki family's plotline. And that makes it kinda hard to judge if Hori is trying to push forward a moral lesson, besides the barebones of "abuse is bad." But Dabi's arc definitely follows certain themes that fit into an overall narrative, so we can talk about that instead.

I think that Dabi's role in the story is that of challenging the idea that heroes are infallible. For the longest time I assumed it was exposing the idea that they are corrupted instead, and that's why I started getting frustrated with the story the longer heroes didn't face consequences for their actions. But recently I adjusted my reading.

See, if we're talking about unveiling corruption in the hero system, that's Stain's role, not Dabi's. Stain not only was the first character to introduce that very idea, but he also is the only one who prompted a slight social change. After the resonance his ideology had on the masses, the HPSC was forced to readjust some things. They lowered the number of provisional hero licenses issued every year to students, thus making an effort to promote quality over quantity. Of course, this adjustment didn't change much, in the grand scheme of things. As it didn't address the blind idolization of heroes as gods, it didn't solve the underlying problem of corruption overnight. But I'm bringing this up to contrast it to the public's reception of Dabi's broadcast.

While Stain had charisma and people gravitated towards his ideology because they recognized the truths in it despite the fact that he was a murderer, the public can't see past Dabi's (and the League's) kill count and finds him a threat instead. Dabi wanted social change, and he thought that unveiling even more corruption would bring sympathizers to his cause the same way Stain gained followers by speaking of those issues. But Dabi had the opposite result. People turned even more of a blind eye to the heroes' misdeeds, and instead demanded that the top three go back to protecting the country.

So if we only read the purpose of Dabi's character as an agent of social change, the result would be pretty unsatisfying. Those who expect his backstory to have resonance and revolutionize the system will likely end up disappointed. There was a point where that still seemed like an option, but the more the story progresses — and the heroes aren't condemned for their methods and their beliefs — the more I reckon that using Dabi and the League's past as a condemnation of his abusive father and of the uncaring system backing him up as "irredeemably bad" was never quite Horikoshi's point.

So, if not that, then what is the point? Why were we even shown all that corruption in great detail, and from the sympathetic perspective of an abuse victim?

Don't get me wrong, Dabi was definitely created to confront Enji with his actions. No doubt about that. It's even stated straightforwardly in the story. He became a villain because he wanted his father to finally acknowledge all the pain he caused. But this is where it gets complicated with the "message". Hori is certainly writing Dabi like a sympathetic victim turned violent, but at the same time he's not portraying Endvr as a morally black bad guy anymore. Instead, the focus is on atonement and forgiveness (or lack thereof).

This is how I came to my current reading. If Dabi's overarching goal was just that of confronting his father to ruin him, then either Dabi or Enji would've died in the war arc and it would've been a wrap. Cutting it off there would've solidified the idea that there is no coming back from what Enji has done to his family. It would be a moral condamnation of abuse, and that would be it.

However, the story moves forward, and both of them are still alive. So clearly that wasn't the overarching point, was it?

As I pointed out in my last meta (the one about the noodles), the Todofam is written around the the goal of an eventual reconnection. To have that, Dabi's broken bond with his father will likely have some kind of closure (not in death or emprisonment tho. I'm taking about mending things, not futher separation).

If we then work on the assumption that exposing his dad was never the end goal of Dabi's arc but rather a mid point, it helps understanding what I mean when I say he exists within the narrative to address that heroes aren't infallible.

See, All Might puts forward this belief that heroes are pillars, that their work is the backbone that keeps society standing against the chaos and unregulated violence of the pre-quirk and early quirked gen era. And while that might've been true at some point, possibly at the beginning of heroism as a profession, society has evolved past that. Things are no longer as black and white as they were at first. Nagant even tells us that heroes staged criminal activities that they then busted to cheat the system and up their rankings. Society progressed to a point where the line between heroes and villains is a lot blurrier than it was supposed to be at first. In those gray areas where the public doesn't look, corruption thrives.

Endvr is a monster created by that obsession with the limelight and by the blurring of those lines. He's neither completely good nor completely bad. But because the HPSC worked for decades to make the labels distinct and separate, to put heroes on pedestals of moral rectitude and not question things past that, the abuse of the Todoroki family happened undisturbed for 25+ years without anyone noticing.

But Dabi challenges that. He calls out that bias, that normalized tendency of assuming heroes always have a "good reason" to do what they do. Before Touya, no other character showed us the "dark side of heroes" quite as thoroughly. Stain addressed the corruption of people who get in the business for the wrong reasons. But Touya's story goes one step further and points out the fallibility not of fake heroes themselves, but of a system engineered to assume heroes can't have flaws.

Because everyone always expects the best from heroes, no one foresees the number two Endvr to also be Todoroki Enji, the domestic abuser. Because people don't expect pros to make wrong choices, until the broadcast no one thought of connecting Dabi the villain with a top hero.

So yes. Part of Dabi's role in the story is exposing all that. Dabi, like the rest of the League, poses a challenge to the official narrative by denouncing all the different reasons why individuals keep falling through the cracks of the hero system. Their backstories are instrumental to that. They point out that the corruption of heroic ideals (the normalization of quirk discrimination, hero worship and the focus on individualism and the greater good) not only creates fake heroes, but also gives birth to a lot of villains.

But earlier I said that I don't think Horikoshi created Dabi just to throw him at Enji to ruin him. In other words, Dabi doesn't exist purely as a narrative consequence of Enji's hubris. He is also a narrative challenge.

What will Enji, and the society he represents as number one, do to face the things Dabi denounces?

An overarching theme in bnha is that a true hero is someone who extends a hand to help those in need. But Touya notably was never offered one. Specifically, he was never offered his father's.

Not only that, but in his attempt to get justice for the abuse he suffered, what he got instead was the public doubling down on their support of his father, not only once but twice (after he fought Hood and after the war, with the fam + Hawks gathered to encourage him). So far, Enji hasn't really done anything substantial to show his growth and demonstrate that the trust he received was well-placed. In fact, he's still prioritizing the wrong thing to this day. He's still avoiding Touya and leaving him in Shouto's care. Now, consistent and cohesive storytelling would have it that as long as Endvr does that, Touya won't be saved successfully. Basically, Enji needs to get over himself and prove Touya wrong. Shouto alone isn't enough to overwrite Dabi's mindset that heroes only care about their pride and only ever help themselves. And that's because it wasn't Shouto who abandoned Touya over and over. It was Endvr.

By stating that heroes can be fallible through Dabi, Horikoshi is basically setting the stage to eventually give Endvr's character the growth he needs to carry the story to its final act. I'm working under the assumption that Hori's building towards a hopeful ending where hero society correct its karmic bad by letting the heroes choose to do things differently than the norm. That is, by saving the believed-to-be "too far gone villains" instead of killing them. Cause this story is optimistic to a fault at times, and Deku's still too naive himself to suddenly become invested in revolution.

Framing the heroes as fallible gives Horikoshi room to write their eventual growth without having to revoke their licenses, and thus have the chance to write that hopeful ending where the power of friendship and connection will save the world. He's been building up towards this since Deku's rogue arc. I don't think he's planning for a substantial change in how society functions on hero worship and sheep mentality. The public's too stubborn and used to their old ways for that, and too many heroes still see villains as weapons and not humans for any change to happen overnight. Not even with the new gen focused on rescuing their villain foils. (in fact, I'd even argue that the kids, while well-meaning, are still far from thinking critically of those social issues themselves. Deku's fight with Nagant in particular solidified for me the idea that for all its flaws, they're gonna keep this system standing and only replace the people in power).

I also lowkey think Hori wrote Touya's backstory the way he did to make this happen. If Touya loved his dad and "only" became a villain when his father ignored his existence for years on end, then all it takes to "solve" the todofam plot is for Enji to finally stop ignoring him. Ta-dah. I'm oversimplifying and flattening things, but so is the story, kind of. By going at it this way, Hori can let the heroes off the hook while also saving the villains. It's a have your cake and eat it too type of situation, but also what I realistically see him go for at this point.

So... Yeah. The concept behind Dabi is simple. He is an obstacle to overcome in the heroes' journey, but also a narrative challenge for them to see the pain they caused and do something about it. Not necessarily something that will fix society, but definitely something that will "fix" the villains — and by this I mean, removing the reasons that caused their descent into villainy. Eventually, acceptance will work better than a fist to restore peace. That's what the whole "extending a hand" thing is supposed to build towards, anyway.

[guinevereslancelot]

i'm so bummed i accidentally turned town a job interview for a job where I could have worked with a good friend and mentor 😔

[skyburger]

WHAT THE HELL NOBODY EVER TOLD ME TWO OF MY FAVE VILLAGERS GOT A LINE STICKER TOGETHER. ive loved tabby for YEARS like since 2019 at LEAST. and these stickers are from 2018 how did i not know !!! i love tabby and boots so much 😭😭😭 TABBY AND BOOTS ANIMAL CROSSING I LOVE YOU SO MUCHHHHH OOMFS FOREVER AND EVER