Anyways If Kurogiri Isn't Nonbinary Why Are They Literally A Walking Nonbinary Flag. Checkmate.

anyways i really do want dabi and rei to meet face to face and her start crying and him tenderly lifting her chin before putting on some big sloppy grin and telling her how miserable of a creature she is and then proceed to set her ablaze. King. bonus if it’s in front of the rest of the family.

I have been laughing at this for 10 minutes straight

Part 2 of the response to this ask:

Part 1 was about where I think Geten’s story is going, and if I think it’s likely that Dabi will kill him; it dealt mainly with how those characters are set up in canon. Part 2 is far more about the fandom, and the assumptions people make that lead them to theories like the one above--specifically, the assumption that the League was always planning on bailing on the PLF. Hit the jump below with me and I'll go over why I think the common arguments for that are misguided at best, and willfully misreading the text at worst.

WARNING: Contains some generalizations about parts of the fandom that I have mostly taken steps to avoid seeing on my dash, so some of my characterizations may be out of date. I’ve tried to desalinate this post as much as possible, but as an unapologetic fan of the MLA and of Spinner (who I do not bring up incidentally), this is a topic I feel particularly strongly about. Apologies, but I Have Seen Things.

DISCLAIMER: I like Geten better than Dabi. I don't think he's better developed; I don't think he's a better character--I just like him better. This is largely down to the fact that I find the MLA fascinating from a worldbuilding perspective and its members compelling personally, whereas I’m less interested in Dabi personally than I am the Todoroki Drama on the whole, and have been tired of Fanon Dabi for approximately 83 years. I’ll also be the first to admit that my take on Dabi is pretty mercenary--hardly the irredeemable psychopath the Hero Stans on Twitter see, but nothing close to Secretly Soft Big Brother Touya, either. If that’s not your bag, you may want to skip this one.

So, here's a bullet point list of the reasons I have personally seen on why the League was always planning to turn on the MLA:

Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them.

Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

[Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

So, let's go over those, shall we? Note that a lot of what I'm going to lay out below isn't conclusive. What I want to establish is simply that the canonical evidence isn't conclusive, certainly not as much so as the people who support this view espouse.

|| Dabi and Toga mention "getting started early," and Shigaraki mentions a plan, suggesting that the League had a plan in place independent of the one they arranged as the PLF.

In responses to my recent Overhaul post, I defended Viz’s official translation as an accurate rendering of the dialogue in question. In general, I feel like Caleb Cook is pretty reliable in his translations, if sometimes kind of stiff or dry in localization. However, there are times he makes assumptions about lines--as indeed a translator for a currently-running series will sometimes have to--and sometimes, those assumptions don’t pan out. This is one of those times.

Dabi's line, "Shall we get started early?" is based on an assumption Cook made about a line that doesn't have an actual subject. In the original dialogue--Hayame ni hajimaru ka--there is no “we,” not even in the form of some implicit collective in Dabi’s grammatical inflection, nor is there a question of "should." All Dabi’s doing is musing that the start (again, there’s no subject, and so no indication of the start of what, or the start as initiated by who) is happening early.

Toga's line communicates much the same, save that she does specify that the schedule/plan/arrangement is happening earlier than expected--which is totally true, since her line is in response to Dabi observing that Machia moving must mean Shigaraki's awake, and Shigaraki was supposed to be down for another month.

Shigaraki's line, like Dabi's, lacks a subject to describe what exactly is supposed to start as soon as Shigaraki wakes. He's saying something that would, in a more stilted way, be, "I wake up and then it's the start, right?"

None of these lines suggest that the characters are necessarily talking about any plan other than the one the PLF laid out. Yes, it looks somewhat damning that Shigaraki's first action (after getting himself a cape, anyway) is to have Machia bring him the League, but heck, maybe that was always the plan. Just because Shigaraki wants to rejoin his comrades doesn't mean the rest of the PLF didn't already have machinations that they were supposed to set into motion the moment Machia left. After all, the plan as Hawks understood it did involve simultaneous attacks on major cities--maybe the League was going to be spearheading one of those attacks. Further, Shigaraki knew something was wrong from the moment he regained consciousness, and we don’t know how that knowledge affected the call he made. Hell, maybe the original plan was for the League to be brought to meet him somewhere in a chartered limo; we don’t know.

It's telling that this idea that the League had a Secret Plan to screw over the MLA rarely seems to account for Mr. Compress and Spinner being confused over the suddenness of events. The response to questions about this seems to be that the "villain trio" knew about it, so the ignorance of the rest of the League can just be handwaved--the important members knew, and that's enough. This is ungenerous towards both Twice and Mr. Compress, but I have got particularly little time for Spinner, the narrator of MVA and guy who decided to devote his all to Shigaraki, being disrespected in this fashion. More on that later.

|| Shigaraki says he won't forgive the Liberation Army for messing with peoples' feelings, so he would never really mean it when he forges an alliance with them.

Shigaraki does say he won't forgive the MLA, but consider what he did to the MLA and its leader. He destroyed most of their stronghold, killed scores of them, is directly responsible for Re-Destro losing his legs, and saw that vaunted descendant of Destro about six inches shy of full forehead-on-the-ground dogeza. The League Shigaraki commands killed a great many more of them, including one of their inner circle. He commandeered the Liberation Army, its resources, and its grand cause. I think it’s safe to say he’s more than responded in kind!

I'm not saying Shigaraki feels for the MLA the same way he does about the League, far from it, but I do think he's practical enough after two hundred chapters of character development not to throw them away out of spite. In Chapter 246, he tells Ujiko explicitly, "When someone offers me something, I take it," and, "I'm done taking the heroes lightly. I'll use everything I've got to obliterate the dregs All Might left behind." From a purely practical standpoint, if he intends to throw everything he has at the heroes, he has no reason to throw the MLA under the bus, and 116,000 reasons to keep them around. I'm altogether sure that, so long as they stood to be useful to his plans, he would have kept them around.

|| The MLA is quirk supremacist, like Endeavor, so Dabi would never work with them. + || Dabi is just using Skeptic against Skeptic's will; it’s not a willing partnership.

I hadn’t seen the second point in the wild, but I suppose it must be how the “The League will betray the MLA” theorists are getting around Dabi and Skeptic’s clear collaboration and how that collaboration totally scuttles the first point, huh? Hilarious.

Anyway, setting aside the fact that Dabi showed up to the one planning session we were shown when even Geten didn’t, there’s evidence in the canon that Dabi was working with Skeptic since even before the raid. Consider that Dabi’s video was filmed at the villa (the wall paneling and the style of the couch both match) and ask yourself where the camera he used came from. Once the filming was complete, where was the video stored such that Skeptic could access it from his laptop? If Dabi’d had it on an SD card and Skeptic was seeing it for the first time, why didn’t Spinner, Compress and Toga watch it alongside him? Surely Skeptic would need to watch it through at least once to know when to splice in the footage of Jin’s death for maximum dramatic impact? On that note, by far the most telling piece of evidence is this: if Dabi wasn't already working with Skeptic, then why was he wearing one of Skeptic's body cameras during his confrontation with Hawks?

Further, Skeptic's protest when he’s pulled onto Machia isn't that he doesn’t want to be with the League; it’s that he doesn’t want to leave Re-Destro behind. Once he's resigned that it's going to happen, though, he's cocky about his talents and complimentary of Dabi's big reveal, even if he is exasperated about the League's antics. It's ambiguous, I admit, but given that Dabi's wearing his cameras, he had to have known Dabi had a reason for them--and given that he is both abrasive and mouthy, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have demanded to know what that reason was.

Hell, Dabi even thanks Skeptic for his editing work, which is more direct positive approval than he's ever shown anyone in the League. That much vaunted panel of Spinner telling Toga to come back to the League? Dabi's grinning, which in isolation you could read as a certain rueful affection, but with the full context of the chapter, it becomes apparent that Dabi is grinning at Skeptic's laptop, seconds after telling Skeptic to "hurry up." Skeptic is, at that moment, probably gearing up the video to project nationwide, and Dabi’s more focused on that than he is Toga’s crisis, even when Compress directly appeals to him for aid. He tells Compress he doesn’t care, the same way he told Hawks he doesn't give a damn about the League.

Let me be clear here: I'm inclined to take Dabi at his word. I think Dabi hangs around the League because, for all that he says one man's conviction can shake the world, he also knows his own limits, and the League offers safety in numbers and an avenue to pursue his revenge. Maybe he finds them acceptable enough company, maybe he even does like them a bit despite himself, but I think any affection he might have for them is entirely incidental to his views on their usefulness. In the same way, while he's willing to bail on the MLA when the heroes attack, I don't think it was his plan to do so, especially not given his apparent immediate regard for Skeptic, as seen in the deleted scene here. Sure, he dislikes Geten, but ultimately, Geten is a stupid kid too tied up in his care for Re-Destro--who's now worshipping the ground Shigaraki walks on--to really be getting in Dabi's way.

Maybe if the MLA really were as quirk supremacist as Geten makes them out to be, Dabi would be actively looking for a way to see ‘em burn, but as I’ve said countless times before, Geten is not a reliable narrator vis a vis the MLA's doctrine. Now, obviously I don't expect Dabi to give them an unearned benefit of the doubt,(1) not after what he heard Geten say, but if Dabi has been working with Skeptic, it doesn't take a genius to realize that while Anthropomorph is a perfectly good quirk, it is categorically not what primarily defines Skeptic’s "worth" in the MLA societal microcosm.

Nothing that Skeptic does reflects the way Geten talks about "elevating one's ability" or "sheer strength" in the way that HeroAca fandom tends to understand as referring to flashy and offensive quirks. And yet, Skeptic is a ranked advisor warranting an introductory panel with RD's inner circle and Geten is not. Perhaps, just perhaps, this might have led Dabi to reevaluating his initial assessment just slightly?

|| Mr. Compress rejects the PLF moniker for Shigaraki, ergo Mr. Compress didn’t genuinely associate Shigaraki and the League with the PLF.

So, this one's pretty wild, because, in the same chapter that had people crowing about Mr. Compress's dialogue, Mr. Compress's actions show the exact opposite of the conclusion this theory would demand. Specifically, if it was always the League's plan to ditch the MLA, Mr. Compress would have darted right past Skeptic, ignoring the man's cries for help. He doesn't--he picks Skeptic up on the way past and (at least in the volume corrections) deposits him safe with Dabi in Spinner's scarf. Of course, Skeptic still stands to be useful, but if one acknowledges that Skeptic's usefulness is reason enough not to abandon him, then what exactly is the argument for leaving 116,000 perfectly useful warm bodies behind?

But let's set aside Compress rescuing Skeptic and focus on the actual point, because that point in itself is still flawed. Mr. Compress's thoughts on the PLF in the specific talk bubble in question are somewhat ambiguous. It's another case of the Viz translation making a couple of assumptions that are just that--assumptions.

Compress's words in the Japanese are as follows:

Chōjō Kaihō Sensen.… Viran rengo no Shigaraki Tomura ga…

Viz then renders the line like so:

The Paranormal Liberation Front's… No, the League of Villain's Shigaraki…

Note that in the Japanese, the possessive no is only included once, to indicate Shigaraki's association with the League. Further, the original doesn't indicate any negation in Compress's thoughts. Yes, he could be rejecting the PLF association for Shigaraki, but he could as easily be narrowing his scope to Shigaraki as the figure he represents to the League, rather than the figure he represents to the PLF--not rejecting wholesale, but rather becoming more specific. Compress might also be thinking first of the PLF as a general organization, then narrowing down to Shigaraki specifically.

Rather than reading this line as an indication that Compress regards the PLF as temporary, I was heartened by the fact that Compress thought about the PLF at all! If the League really had been planning to discard them this entire time, then there's no reason for Compress to have ever taken the Front seriously enough to have thought about them in that moment of crisis. You can carry this back further, too. In Chapter 258, when Twice is asking Hawks for help, he says that Spinner and Compress have been in meetings for days. Coupled with Compress's first thought about the entity that will carry out Harima's desired reformation being the Liberation Front (or possibly "the Liberation Front's Shigaraki"), this indicates to me that Compress was taking it seriously, not just gorging himself on sushi on the MLA's dime.

Indeed, back in Ujiko's lab, when it was just Shigaraki talking about his backstory and his dreams of destruction, Compress looks the opposite of impressed; we know from his narration in 294 that he liked the League because they didn't place any importance on one another’s pasts. Yet, at some point, his view shifted to believing that fulfilling his ancestor's ambition, his bloodline’s duty, really might be back on the table. We as readers don't quite know when that shift happened, but given, again, his initial mental invocation of the PLF, I think we can assume that it's tied to that alliance, those resources. And sure, when the moment of crisis happens and he's really defining who and what Shigaraki is to him, and where his values and priorities lie, it's with the League and Shigaraki as the leader of the League. But that doesn't mean he never had his hopes for the PLF at all, or was partaking in plans to ditch them.

Also too, this is a man who was lamenting the loss of their partnership with Overhaul, a man who personally maimed him, on top of killing a comrade. You're telling me the guy who shrugged off his animosity towards Overhaul would willingly allow the League to plot sabotage against even wealthier collaborators against whom he has even less reason to hold a grudge? Come on, guys.

|| Toga hated Curious, so she wouldn't want to work with the MLA either.

This one's easy: Toga pretty explicitly hated Curious, but she's even more explicit that she likes the MLA because she thinks the world they want to create is wonderful. She says this verbatim at the end of 225, after Curious has spent the entire chapter hounding her with explosions and intrusive questions. What turns her animosity on Curious is not some reveal that the MLA's world would be terrible after all, but Curious calling Toga's "normal" miserable and tragic. Essentially, she doesn't object to the world the MLA wants to bring about; she objects to being turned into a martyr for that world, especially when that martyrdom requires that the things that make Toga happy be characterized as horrific misfortunes.

Toga doesn't like Curious; she kills Curious. And then she comes into a position of leadership, and we don't know a lot about how that position takes her, but she seems delighted to be walking out onto the stage to be announced as such, and she makes active contributions to the discussion of the PLF's plans in Chapter 245. We are, again, given no indication that her lethal response to Curious means that she's planning to ditch the MLA on the whole.

Incidentally, Curious asserts what she does about Toga only in the context of the world as it stands. The world's rejection of Toga's normal, and the extremes that rejection drove Toga to, are what Curious considers tragic and miserable, not Toga's fascination with blood in and of itself. She clearly believes that, in the world the MLA envisions, Toga's life would not be so miserable because she would never have been oppressed to the degree that she snapped. And frankly, Curious isn't wrong. The only reason she is a villain in that scene is that she's willing to murder Toga to project that tragedy to the world. If she'd been willing to sit down and have a civil interview with Toga to print it in her newspaper, she would have been fine.

|| Twice would never forgive them for what they did to Giran.

You know, this is a totally fair point. It is, however, somewhat complicated by the fact that Giran himself never left the PLF. Now, there’s almost certainly something to be said about Giran’s whole information broker shtick being terminally compromised by his capture, his maiming, his client list being hacked, etc. He also had a bunch of identifying items strewn all over the country that were covered in the national news, items that people who associated with him closely certainly would have recognized. Maybe he’s laying low for a while?

I don’t know why Giran was still around by the time of the raid. I can theorize about his pragmatism or what have you, but the canon really doesn’t give us anything to go on. Still, if he really hated the MLA all that much, as he would be totally justified in doing, it’s pretty bizarre that Horikoshi showed him twice in PLF crowd scenes post-Deika looking nothing worse than kind of confused and uneasy. Heck, you’d think he would at least have merited a better seat in the crowd for the big merger announcement.

Giran aside, the fact that Twice never does hit it off with anyone in his regiment is, I think, telling. If there’s anyone in the League that intentionally kept himself at a distance from the MLA because of hard feelings, it’s likely Twice. After all, if he had befriended anyone, he presumably wouldn’t have needed to go to Hawks for tutoring almost an entire month after Deika. That said, the fact that Twice does go running to Hawks for tutoring shows that he’s at least doing his best to act in accordance with what he thinks Shigaraki and the rest want. That doesn’t preclude the League having a secret plan that he’s either in on and playing along with, or hasn’t been told about because he might not be able to stop himself from vocalizing about it. Still, while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, obviously absence of evidence is not evidence of presence. So, lacking any sign that the rest of the League is planning treachery, I’m not inclined to assume Twice’s lack of forgiveness is indicative of anything other than his own feelings.

|| [Error: argument about Spinner's opinion on the PLF not found.]

:: INCOMING SALT WARNING :: INCOMING SALT WARNING ::

This is the one that really gets to me. I have never seen an argument that the League is planning to betray the PLF that convincingly explains the fact that Spinner, to all available evidence, threw himself wholeheartedly into trying to make the PLF succeed. To be more precise, I have seen one explanation, and that explanation is that the plan to ditch the MLA was a secret that only Shigaraki, Dabi and sometimes Toga knew about, and to reiterate, that is bullshit.

In my experience, this is an explanation proposed by people who care about Spinner only insofar as he can be a Soft Gaymer Boyfriend or score them rhetorical points, but have little to no interest in his ongoing--and, indeed, increasing--importance to the League generally and Shigaraki’s arc specifically. The dude who talked about how Twice’s home was the League, who got through to Toga while still respecting her choice when no one else could, the guy who recognized the hollowness within Shigaraki but also bonded with him over video games, the man who Mr. Compress said was Shigaraki’s most devoted follower(2)--this man did not do all of that for people in this fandom to say, “Oh, well, the others probably just kept it a secret from him because they thought he’d be bad at lying.”

Really? “Bad at lying?” And that’s an adequate justification, is it, for Shigaraki letting Spinner toil for months under false pretenses? For lying to the man who adores him the most? Of course it isn’t, but the people who theorize this don’t really care about Spinner’s adoration for Shigaraki, or the fact that Shigaraki rewarding Spinner’s feelings by allowing him to dedicate himself unstintingly to something Shigaraki was planning to discard from the beginning would be a blatant abuse of Spinner’s trust.

I have never seen anyone try to argue that Spinner was in on a plan to betray the MLA all along. That’s because it’s patently obvious that Spinner--forthright, direct Spinner, who named the merged organization with Re-Destro, spends all his time in meetings, has a direct exchange with Re-Destro about the state of their plans, and is probably the reason RD started wearing polka dots--went all-in on the PLF. But for the people who propose the “the League was always going to bail” theory, Spinner and his labors are an afterthought.

Spinner is not an afterthought. Where Mr. Compress has been captured, Toga could hypothetically be peeled away from the League via Uraraka, and Dabi almost certainly will be peeled away via the Todoroki plot, Spinner’s driving motivation at this point is Shigaraki himself. He connected to Shigaraki’s nihilism, his hatred, but also his humanity--the humanity in Shigaraki Tomura, not in Shimura Tenko. His empathy didn’t spring from contrived psychic glimpses of crying 5-year-olds, but from long months of observation, doubt, and gradually deepening wonder. He’s the only person currently with Shigaraki that I can see caring enough about Shigaraki’s welfare that he might sacrifice his own goals and desires to help Deku save him.

Spinner is not an afterthought, and I refuse to build or entertain theories that treat him that way. So as to his opinions on the MLA? Despite having his own reasons to be leery of them based on how shabbily Trumpet treated him, he was obviously trying to make the Paranormal Liberation Front succeed, which means he must have believed that Shigaraki wanted it to succeed. Therefore, unless you’re prepared to assert that Shigaraki (and everyone else who was in on it!) was cruel enough to lie to Spinner about something he was devoting so much time and energy to, the inescapable conclusion is that Shigaraki also wanted the Front to succeed.

(Note: After letting a friend pre-read this, I have been informed that there is, in fact, one explanation offered for Spinner knowing the League was going to abandon the PLF but working his ass off on the venture anyway, and that explanation is, “Something something wants to prove himself because low self-esteem.” This is so ridiculous I can’t even bring myself to edit this post accordingly. Low self-esteem! Because nothing would alleviate Spinner's low self-esteem like toiling for months over something that holds no worth to the people he actually cares about, right? Right?? Bah. Humbug!)

And but so, to wrap all that up: I fundamentally disagree that the League viewed the Paranormal Liberation Front as a temporary arrangement, at least to the extent that they were actively planning to betray their newfound--new won--allies. The fact that I don't think the League intended to discard the MLA out of hand does, thus, influence my opinion that, whatever Geten's fate will be, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be, "He gets murdered in a way that resembles nothing so much as a sick revenge fantasy dozens of chapters after the last point when such a death would have been remotely tonally appropriate."

Thanks for the ask, anon! Sorry about-- *waves at all of this*

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

(1) Not that Mr. “Burns Random Delinquents Alive For Not Measuring Up To His Standards For Villainy” has any moral standing to criticize others for how they determine the value of peoples’ lives, mind.

(2) Other translations for the verb in Mr. Compress’s Japanese line of, “You are the one who ____s Shigaraki the most,” include yearn for, long for, pine for, miss, love dearly, adore, idolize, and revere. “Most devoted follower” is accurate enough, but considerably less homo than some of the things we could have gotten there.

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.

dunno if I should call this a headcanon or a theory and I know Horikoshi just went with what looked cool but the more I think about Dabi's initial design when he came to the League in the context of what we learned about him and what we saw happen to him during the second war, the less sense it makes that his body was already in that state.

according to the anime, he was learning by watching Endeavor's videos online. before Sekoto, he wasn't learning from any source at all and went about his training intuitively, but after Sekoto I strongly doubt he would be actively practicing his quirk, for a multitude of reasons. his body was still healing from the skin transplantation, the trauma associated with accidentally burning himself to death, plainly not having a place to train a fire quirk, which tend to be flashy and to use your quirk in public, having a provisional license is required, otherwise he risks getting arrested. he did a very good job staying out of the public's eye for the 7 years since he escaped AFO, who was also implied to be unaware of Touya surviving for so long.

so as far as we know, all he did for those 7 years is lay low and be very online. which makes his remark to Spinner hilarious ngl, at least Spinner sprung up to action as soon as he saw something that had inspired him, while Dabi had spent 7 whole years sitting on his very personal trauma and not going to therapy.

when Giran brings him to Shigaraki, he doesn't share any information about Dabi save for him being very invested in Stain's ideology. no criminal records, maybe, but not even a word of his absurdly strong quirk? no mentions of arson at all? they did discuss Toga making it to the news, so Dabi being left out like that was a bit weird in the context of the conversation, like him seeking out Stain's contacts was enough reason to let him join the League. he won't be useful to you, Shigaraki, but he's got the spirit. please take him in, he has nowhere else to go?

if you really look at the way Dabi uses his quirk until MVA, it's noticeable how he seems to have no idea what he is doing. there's no technique, no finesse to his moves, just throwing out huge blasts of fire with his hands and hoping for the threat to leave him alone.

when Shigaraki attacked him (fully provoked) his reaction was too slow to summon any flames at all, and if it weren't for Kurogiri, that would have been it for Dabi.

When he is fighting Geten and starts going beyond his limit, he scares himself with the increased fire output. because, yup, overusing his quirk by accident was the source of his trauma.

the databook puts his technique as the weakest of his stats. his power is huge and eventually allowed him to become the strongest fire quirk user in the BNHA universe, but his technique was extremely lacking.

all of the above just doesn't paint the picture of someone who has been consistently mastering his quirk for 7 years. rather, it gives the picture of someone who had just started using his quirk for the first time in years, having background training from his childhood.

it's not even that Dabi isn't hardworking as hell or doesn't have the potential to be trained, because he's a complete opposite. continuously going beyond his limit, despite his own body getting in his way, mastering Enji and Shouto's complicated techniques they have worked for weeks/months/years on in a matter of minutes after just observing it. surely, he has been watching Enji and learning the way his father uses his quirk for years, but putting theory to practice? i doubt he even had the chance, before joining LOV.

he had to wait, because starting to actively use his quirk sets the clock into motion, counting down the time he has left. he is like a candle, destroying himself with his fire, until nothing is left at all. he had to make sure his plan of revenge will have a chance to succeed before fully committing to the 'Dabi' route, a slow and agonizing process of cremating himself by continuously using his quirk. because when he really starts using his quirk for long stretches of time? this is what happens to him.

to conclude this post, I know why the final design was chosen (because it's cool as fuck) but after analyzing the crucial points of Touya's story and his relationship with his quirk, I really think him joining the League with post-coma design would have made more sense. once he had started really using his quirk, his body would slowly degrade to the state Dabi's was in, because his fire literally melts his skin. but his body already having 40% surface third degree burns, when he didn't even use his quirk the entire time, perfectly holding up up until the first war arc and then quickly starting to burn down? idk, seems a bit inconsistent?..

anyway, i love the concept of Dabi's skin slowly and inevitably burning down after he had joined the League. him losing more and more skin until there's barely anything left, when he reveals himself to his father and is bitter at the lack of recognition, because burning himself to the point of being unrecognizable was one of the many sacrifices he had made to be finally seen by Endeavor.

also, more of this. because this was bittersweet as hell

this is kinda messy fanart, i just wanted picture tenko looking at his grandmother with the same hairstyle, but what happened, happened.

yr so right fr the tgchk/3rdwheel tsuyu thing...,.... 3rdwheel i think underrated dynamic HEARMEOUT. hear me out.

1ly i love me some drama espcially in my freakships.

2ly it can be very funny. recently read a fic where one girl is like "shes talkingshitaboutme. shes sooooooo talkingshitaboutme" and her friend is like "OoooKay" (psychologically revealing)

like yeah you are acting like a weird obsessive freak. ackshually. and its funny and i wuv it. yr friends dont want you to kiss but iiiiiiiii do

freakship exactlyyy i love togachako being completely abnormal abt each other and Tsuyu being caught in the crossfire

AND IK PPL HATE LOVE TRIANGLES but wouldn't it be so funny if Tsuyu did have a little girlcrush on Ochako at first but eventually she mostly got over it + assumed she's straight, only to find herself getting dragged along for thinly veiled dates between her best friend and the girl that tried to kill them 1000 times isn't that so silly

All of a sudden Dabi be like

So does this ending signify we’re getting AFO Vs Endeavor & Hawks next chapter? That seems an…odd choice.

Like, I’ve mentioned more than once how this arc is tragically tensionless because the whole war’s stacked too much in the heroes favour; with the villains VASTLY outnumbered, outgunned, & outplayed. The heroes have a few hundred times the forces they actually need to win this war, and that’s taking Tomura & AFO into account. So long as a proportionate amount of heroes were sent their way with any modicum of pre-planning (both of which seems to be true), this fight is already over.

And that’s true for the other fights too; Bakugou was right for the wrong reasons when he said it was obvious Shoto would beat his brother, and the Spinner & Toga fights are pretty much already decided too, baring an increasingly unlikely upheaval to the whole war. But those fights still work because we really care about the characters involved and their connections.

Not really the case here; these are some of the most polarizing/outright hated characters in the series, and I’d be wondering who to root for if there was any question of who would win, so my initial thoughts seeing this match-up were “if ever there was a fight that could happen off-screen”. I think the only thing I’m interested in with this is seeing what reason Endeavor absolutely had to be here instead of confronting his son.

Ahhh- i cant do annon- 😭 just wanted to say me and my partner really love spinner and your art- maybe if its ok could you possibly draw them a lil spinner! (If not its totally cool!)

Anyway have a good day- *fades out of existence*

Aw thanks so much bro!💛💛💛 Here’s a little dude, it’s raining where I am so I thought it was fitting 🦎🌧