hii !
the third chapter of can you melt a frozen heart? (or will you let it burn down?) is out! it's titled 'and i'm a witness watching it' , hope you enjoy!
Shouto still did not like the League of Villains. He, once again, stood against a wall, however, this time Touya stayed close to him. It reassured him. Touya literally radiated heat, so Shouto could feel him by his side. Call him a baby but he felt untouchable with his big brother near him. More than a bodyguard, Touya acted like a hero in his eyes. If All Might could maintain peace in Japan, Touya could maintain safety in Shouto’s life. * “So, why is the troupe gathered?” Mister Compress asked from the bar where he sat, stimming with a duo of marbles in his hand. Toga commented how she thought they were a league and not a troupe. Shigaraki got up and - oh god that hand was truly disgusting. Anyway, Shigaraki got up and stood before everyone while scratching his neck.
“UA’s organizing a training camp for the first-year students. We’re gonna sabotage it.”
read 'the guy I was interested in wasn't a guy at all' and now all I can think about is an au where fem!shigaraki fucking hates the guts of the arsonist guy who joined her League of Villains because he's the exact type of villains she hates most: a rude and condescending misogynistic asshole (what right does he have to swagger around looking like he owns the place when he refuses to express an ounce of respect to her, his rightful leader, and is ugly as sin?!).
what tomura doesn't know is that dabi's experience as a scarred teenage girl on the streets with nothing to her name besides a dangerous quirk has led to her hiding her gender and acting as off-putting as possible in hopes other villains leave her alone and don't bother her about her body or appearance.
I think enough time has passed that we can finally talk about how utterly useless and disappointing the final act of Dabi's arc ended up being.
The most disappointing thing of all is how fucking cool almost every setup was. Enji finally seeing the full extent of the damage he did to his son, his mind almost gone and his body about to blow up, and deciding to sacrifice his own life. Dabi developing an ice quirk, like his mother's. Rei coming there using her powerful ice quirk to save both Touya and Enji's lives, because she felt responsible for her part in driving Touya to this point. Fuyumi and Natsuo following Rei because they couldn't sit idly, while their family members are risking their lives. Shouto going above and beyond his limit to save Touya's life and then praising Touya's natural talent the way no one ever did.
This picture. The eerily happy what could have been, what both Touya and Enji wanted, a happy family where they both are accepted and loved, where Touya is healthy and doesn't hurt himself. Except he is missing an arm now, a new self-inflicted injury transferred from the real world, where the family is as far from happy as they could be. Enji is also missing an arm, the mutual self-sacrifice which was payment to getting Enji to finally fully see Touya and accept him, accept his own role as the parent responsible for this child of his.
This was the exact moment. That first frame is such a masterpiece it's much more thought provoking than the entirety of what followed. Look at your son's disfigured face. See the monster that you created. The fire that you have ignited. It's hotter than your own Hellfire and it won't ever stop burning, as long as either of you is alive. There's no end to this hurt. It's been hurting him since he was a child, and now it has spread to you. You did this to yourself.
And one thing I can tell for sure is that these chapters are going to go hard as hell in the anime. These surrealistic frames, followed by blockbuster-worthy action sequences. But what comes after that? And then nothing. It's like Horikoshi made these chapters specifically to work well for the anime adaptation. Because there is no resolution or even conclusion to any of the things that happened here.
Enji and Dabi losing their arms had so little meaning Horikoshi himself forgot about it and gave Enji the missing arm back in chapter 425. We never get to see the state of Touya's body after the war, so him losing his arm also loses his meaning, as he is covered in a full-body metal restraining jacket. Did they provide him with a prosthetic? If not, are they going to? Is he even going to notice the missing arm, or did it truly not matter? Or perhaps he somehow grew his arm back, the same way he grew his melted eyeballs back? Who even knows.
What about the family? Rei clearly cared a whole lot, enough to risk her own life to attempt to save Touya from certain death because she knew there's no point to rely on Endeavor , but now that the heat of the moment is over, how does she feel about what happened? Does she insist on getting to visit Touya more often? Does she reflect on her own experience of spending ten years in isolation and try to give Touya his freedom? Did Shouto share the story of Touya coming back home after his death with her and his siblings? How does she feel about it? How do they feel about their dearly missed brother willingly choosing to abandon them?
On that topic, how do Fuyumi and Natsuo feel about Touya at all? We do get to hear about Fuyumi's desire to talk more with Touya, but what does she want to talk to him about? Does she want to share her own life with him, to tell him about her old job and the kids she was teaching? About the many family dinners she had been organizing for their family despite it falling apart? Or does she want to ask him about his life? Is she at all curious what he had been up to? Does she want to know how he ended up a villain, why did he keep burning himself despite almost dying from it as a mere child? Would Touya himself want to talk to Fuyumi, or does he still think his sister will never understand him? If so, will she try to push through and repair their sibling bond, try to show him that mending their family is possible and she wants to see him a part of the healed Todoroki family, eating dinner with the rest of them?
Natsuo... I don't even know where to start. Todoroki Natsuo when he first appeared in the manga and Todoroki Natsuo from Dabi's dance onwards are two wildly different characters and the development that made him change so much is skipped entirely in the story.
The entire point of Natsuo's character conflict was being unable to let go of the past, when the rest of the family was demanding he puts the past behind them and looks towards the future. Why exactly was he so fixated on the past? Two reasons. One, his father's neglect of him and abuse of his brothers. He is indignant about what Enji put Shouto through, still angry about Shouto being isolated from his siblings despite the younger freely interacting with him and Fuyumi for quite some time since before the manga plot had started. He outright says that his father had killed Touya. And that's the second reason, his close bond with Touya. While the rest of the family, even their mother, have been able to grieve and let go of Touya, Natsuo has been haunted by him ever since the day of his death.
Their relationship was a toxic one, that is true, Touya was traumadumping his extremely unhealthy feelings on a little kid who was too little to process or sympathize with what the was going through. But from the way Natsuo talks about Touya after his death it's obvious that Natsuo cared a lot about him, still cares. He is indignant about the unfairness of what happened to Touya precisely because he knows the most out of all family members about what his experience was like. It's pretty clear that the reason he stubbornly refuses to forgive and accept Endeavor the way his mother and siblings did, despite genuinely believing himself to be a bad person for it, is not just because Enji was neglecting him as a kid but because since he was a kid he was exposed to the horror of what Touya's life was like. He was watching a person begging to be helped hurt himself everyday and he didn't know how to help him or stop him. Hell, it's pretty straightforwardly implied that his career choice was impacted by his inability to help Touya, who was covered in burns at all times, and Rei with Shouto.
So with all of that in mind, Natsuo's resolution feels fairly... bizarre. As far as his reunion with the dead brother he was bitterly mourning for 11 years, the one who showed up back from the dead expressing the exact same sentiment Natsuo has been trying to express to his family, 'The past never dies', goes, it's this:
This wouldn't even be so bad if there was some followup to this. Natsuo was highstrung with nerves, he was terrified at the thought of both of his parents and his brother dying for real this time (except it's Fuyumi who gets this line). Natsuo apologizing to Touya for saying this, after the climax of the battle is behind them. Anything. Because this framing with no followup at all makes it seem like Natsuo's feelings about his oldest brother is just being annoyed at him for constantly causing trouble to others, because he was venting to him so much when they were kids. If his were any other character, this claim would hold some weight, after all the dynamic was genuinely toxic, but all Natsuo did for the entirety of the Hellish Todoroki family subplot was causing others trouble by his inability to cope with his feelings. You know, the same thing Touya is doing right now, was doing as long as he was in the Todoroki household. Hypocritical much?..
Then we get to look at the final pages of the Todoroki family's conclusion, and it's all about Natsuo once again disrupting the fragile family harmony and peace by announcing he never wants to see Endeavor again. Also he is getting married. For someone who was so held back by the past for 200+ chapters, this sure is a big leap of faith into the future. What caused this development? Touya reappearing back into his life? Did Natsuo make his brother the symbol of that past that was holding him back and decide to abandon him, never see neither him nor Endeavor again?
Maybe so, maybe not. Does he hold hard feelings against Touya, because the real living Todoroki Touya is too different for him to accept as the brother whose ghost had been haunting him for a decade? Is it being a villain that he can't forgive? Or is he simply unable to cope with everything right now and puts off the conversation with his brother because that would be too hard right now? Isn't that the same thing Rei and Enji were doing for Touya's entire childhood?
That's the thing with this ending, you can ask a million questions and make up endless interpretations but you won't get any answers or reasonable conclusions to any of these character's stories, save for Endeavor.
And what is his ending? It's this.
He has moved on! Doesn't matter what happened to his original family, because he's got himself a new one. He is moving towards the future, surrounded by love, support and acceptance. It's the same thing as this picture!
Minus the inconvenient and explanation-demanding children subplots. That would require too much space and effort and the story needed to be finished asap. So? Why resolve the Todoroki family mess when you can give Enji a whole new family of his own? What happened to the other, original children? Who even knows. Who cares? Definitely not Enji, he has new ones.
What about Touya? Well, he was already accepted by his father once, that's enough for him. About his family? As far as we know, they left him all alone, crying, dying. About his missing arm? About his ice quirk? About his relationship with his siblings? With the League of Villains? The the living villains, Spinner, Mister Compress, his cousin Geten, Skeptic? Who even cares. Definitely not this story.
our view his view
he's so cute☹️ I love him he's never done anything wrong, ever.
izuku and ochaco are BOTH going to wake up in the middle of the night with their head in their hands
he would either use that as a teaching opportunity (like teach his students to not be irresponsible, or how to quickly analyze quirks) or avoid those questions like the PLAGUE
meanwhile aizawa is watching him struggling from afar and refuses to help him, something about “having problem child deal with the consequences of his actions”
i like to imagine that somehow the true events of the hosu incident got leaked to the public causing a lot of controversy for shouto and tenyas hero careers
meanwhile izuku is in his classroom just being asked if stains tongue was really that freaky in person by his students
Bakugou makes the claim that he's a bigger All Might fan than Deku is, and this really pisses Deku off. He starts listing every single piece of merch he has, and sure, a lot of it Katsuki has as well, but he stopped collecting merch years ago while Izuku is still going strong! But the entire time Katsuki just sits there with an infuriating smirk, nodding along, the entire time claiming he's still the bigger fan.
Finally Izuku just throws up his hands and demands to know what makes him the bigger fan.
"I have a one of a kind piece of All Might merch no one else in the world has, worth a shit ton more than your crappy collection."
And Izuku's brain just starts trying to figure out what piece Katsuki could have, how much it's worth, where he got it -
Katsuki leans forward and gives him a long, hard kiss, shutting down his brain like always.
"I've got his heir."
A few seconds of stunned silence while his brain tries to reboot before
"KACCHAN!"
me when i have to write about science
(i’m the one who decided to make shouto a science nerd)
the line “your worst sin is that you’ve betrayed and destroyed yourself for nothing” is so raw you’d think it’s from a destiel fanfic or even hetalia but it’s actually from dostoyevskys crime and punishment
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