the broadcast chapters hurt a hell of a lot more in retrospect, once you realize how hard it was for Dabi to discard that shirt and show the whole country his scars. This was him whenever the topic of the burns was brought up:
even as an adult, he hates when attention is drawn to how easily he burns
and after the flashback chapters, we know exactly why. The scars are what marked him a "defect" in his father's eyes, and the beginning of Touya's downwards spiral. It's because of those burns that Touya's life lost its "purpose", that he ceased feeling like his existence had a meaning. Whenever they were brought up, it was always with the inherent message to "stop" the training, to "stop" begging for attention, to "stop" trying to be "special".
Those scars are what literally branded by fire the world "failure" onto his skin, permanently, for everyone to see and for himself alone to suffer.
He always felt despair, anger, frustration well up inside of him whenever his burns were acknowledged by someone else, whenever his shirt was lifted for his father to freely yell at him. And yet—
He chooses to do the broadcast shirtless. To let the whole country see. To be so vulnerable, so exposed, to show off that weakness and to finally own up to it, to force himself to not feel any of the shame he was conditioned to feel around it. And we know how difficult this was for him, how it took genuine effort to unveil that part of himself he always wanted to pretend didn't exist, that part of his genetics he thought he could overcome with sheer determination. The way he's shown to be psyching himself up, his posture closed off, his hands in prayer as if to gather courage, finally makes sense.
This panel was him finally accepting his scars. Accepting that what was done to him was never in his control. This was him refusing to see them as a handicap, because those burns are his father's fault, so the shame attached to them isn't Dabi's to bear anymore
And I want us to take a moment to let it sink in just how brave that was of him. How much balls it takes to redefine yourself like that in front of your whole country. To say I'm not weak, I am a victim. And my silence only benefits my abuser.
This is for all of those people who genuinely think he's past the point of healing
Denki Kaminari VS The World
protags and social links
bsd 99 meme bcs tecchou in this chapter </3
alternatively:
Mha actor au but Todoroki actor has the exact same burn as his character on his face it’s just the wrong side
small yttd art dump
spoilers in tags
at it again but this time with a bunch of jokers and a surprise guest
Have some more :>
I do hope Scaramouches character arc goes something like this:
Scaramouche: ahahahaha! I am unstoppable! I am a God!
Scaramouche: wait this sucks
My problem with the plf war is that we get little to no information on the regiment advisors
God, ain't it the truth. I mean, I have a lot of problems with the PLF War, but that was certainly a prominent one. Like, I told myself when Taser Face lightning dude got unceremoniously no-sold by a high-schooler and effortlessly one-two'd by Edgeshot and Midnight that, well, if nothing else, maybe we could assume that all those nameless advisors were there to give the heroes some vaguely significant faces to fight while the named characters with more build-up would escape to have more prominent and narratively significant fights at some later point.
But if Trumpet, Geten, and Re-Destro all get off-paneled and arrested, what exactly was the point of the advisors, then? Like, a few of them have escaped, we know, but other than the one who killed Midnight, there's no particular reason to be invested in the fights with them later. It's not like they even got portrayed as a real threat, for all that they were billed as "stronger than the average hero."
Mind, Edgeshot of the Top Ten Billboard Ranking is by no measure an "average hero," but what does that matter, when you're not going to let any of them fight and beat an "average hero"?
Also too, dramatic tension in your fight scenes aside, I continue to be irked that we got all these characters that the League had three and a half months to bond with, only for it to come to nothing. And look, three months doesn't sound like a lot, but the League themselves had only been together for two months when the Shie Hassaikai arc kicks in, Magne gets killed, Compress maimed, and this pisses off the rest of the League so much they scuttle an alliance and maim the man responsible in return.
The League isn't even together for all of those two months! Their early meetings are much more sporadic; they all split up to lay low for a while after Kamino. Three months with the people at the mansion would be much more prolonged contact! I'm forever salty that the fandom just assumes--with little canonical reason to do otherwise--that those fourteen weeks just meant nothing, that not one single League member got invested enough in the cause they were building, the people they were seeing in regular meetings, to spare them so much as a thought.
I can only hope we'll get more of them back later; given their focus on Re-Destro, I find it unbelievable in the extreme that any number of escaped advisors would just let the man stay in prison--not after having lost Destro to prison the same. (Assuming, of course, that Geten hasn't hijacked the contents of an ice machine to break them out already.)
Thanks for the ask!