#I JUST WANT THE TODOFAM TO BE HAPPY | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

trashformha · 1 year

Text

Since this episode will inevitably stir up bad todofam discourse and I'm a clown who hopes to convince ppl to look at Touya's situation more critically let's look into it, shall we?

First off: Endeavor married Rei for her quirk not out of love.He had children with her because he wanted a successor and not children. This in itself already established that Endeavor is not going to be a good dad.

I mean sure in the first few years he wasn't abusive and things seemed alright. Rei was ok with the situation, Fuyumi was happy and Touya seemed really excited to train with his father but then Touya's quirk started hurting him.

Of course the most reasonable approach here was stop training him. This was not the problem. The problem was that Endeavor neglected him.

There is a reason we are shown this specific scene. Endeavor has a day off and instead of spending it with his family he is heading out. He didn't need to train with him but he could have at least tried to convinced him to do smth else together.

The reason Touya liked training was because he could spend time with his father, so the moment Enji stopped training him he also stopped spending time with his son.

So even if Touya's quirk wasn't harming him think about it: Touya might have surpassed his father but could he really surpass All Might? What would happen if he didn't manage to surpass him? Would Endeavor just start avoiding him? Would he really deal with the situation in a healthy/good way? How would Touya feel about his inability to surpass All Might after his father spend his whole life intoxicating Touya into this role? At the end of the day Enji would have doomed this family one way or another.

Back to the topic at hand. Touya could not be trained. As a result Endeavor had Natsuo and Shoto. This is an even WORSE slap to the face towards Touya. Because Touya might be a child but he is not stupid. His father stops spending time with him and now he has 2 new siblings? Even though their father doesn't bother to spend his free time with the 2 children he already has? Touya KNOWS he's being repalced. And for a child that's still so young and developing this gotta leave psychological scars. What Enji did was cruel towards Touya and it's why he ends up lashing out at Shoto.

Another problem was that Endeavor's attempts at stopping Touya from hurting himself were half-assed. He did not want to face the problem.

Every instance of him talking to touya is him saying to stop because he's hurting himself and to find smth else. He never bothered to sit down and talk through this issue with Touya because then he'd have to admit to himself how awful his behavior has been so far. How he spend years avoiding Touya and didn't spend a single second of his time with Natsuo and Fuyumi either. Natsuo literally describes Endeavor as a stranger despite having lived with the man in a house his whole life.

Eventually everything escalated when Touya makes one last plea to his father to watch him at Sekoto Peak and the later never arrived.

Endeavor was probably never physically violent to Touya in the way he was to Rei and Shoto but that doesn't change the fact that his treatment of Touya was cruel and that he had never been a good father towards him in any way.Touya wasn't born unhinged and evil and his accident at Sekoto Peak is a direct result of Endeavor's actions.

#mha #bnha #dabi #touya #todoroki touya #endeavor #enji todoroki #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #mha s6 #bnha s6 #dabi meta #meta

797 notes · View notes

hella1975 · 3 months

Note

hellaaa plz share your favorite dabihawks fics for all of us who want some recs into their crazy minds!!

sorry i didnt answer this straight away i was reading a 230k words fic that i wanted to finish before i added it here 😭 does anyone know what's wrong with me. therapists hate me

dabihawks rec list!!

burn it all down by dorothycanfly - an au where dabi comes back to the todoroki estate to kill shouto when he's 19 and shouto is 11, but decides instead to take his little brother with him as part of his Grand Evil Masterplan that doesn't quite go as he wanted. this is the fic i always rec first in this fandom as it's the first dabi fic i really read that felt like it Understood Him and really made me go bananas about him. it's dark and twisted and true to what i think his actual mindset would be without demonising him, and also has shouto and him being very close and the way the author writes their dynamic is everything to me like it's so true to a real sibling relationship and id die for them. it gets very smutty in the middle but if that's not your thing the plot also kicks right back up again at 100mph immediately after, and there's also a sequel still being updated that's very promising.

big reputations by phanatics - singer fake dating au!!! i absolutely love dabi's characterisation in this and the celebrity angle is handled soooo well. the miscommunication and slow burn is incredible and that's coming from a bitch who finds both tropes frustrating unless they're done to my very niche standards. im pretty sure i read this fic in one day. im not making graduation i fear.

gunshots and molotovs by ironicallystupid - this is a 14k oneshot where dabi treats hawks' gunshot wound in a distinctly dabi way and then they get drunk. this one really got to me and i think it's bc it's one fic where they feel so true to character while still, for once, both acting their age. a big appeal of dabihawks for me is that they are both ultimately just two guys in their early twenties and seeing them embody that youth and silliness was surprisingly poignant

the 'will you accept this rose?' series by satelliteblue- the famous bachelorette au! if you don't know what i mean by famous, it's bc this fic has a habit of getting people who don't even read mha fic obsessed with it. like it's genuinely addicting. i remember first finding it and being like 'bacherlorette au dabihawks? be so fr' and look where im at now, 355k words later. it's genuinely just such a fun read AND i love the drama of it AND it has the todofam angle AND an actual plot snuck into it effortlessly. one of my fav fics of all time truly and it's still updating!

perspective by theeclecticeccentric - this is the fic i just finished and when i tell you ive powered through all 230k words of it in the past 4ish days. i love the league dynamic in this with the whole found family angle. i'll say it was something i clicked on less bc this kind of au (childhood friends dabihawks brainwashed to forget each other) is what i would normally go for and more bc i have BATTERED the dabihawks tag for all it's worth so i just tried it on a whim, but im so happy i clicked this bc it wound up being so fun! i also love any fic that forces the heroes and villains to ally against the hpsc and this fic does that. instant hit with me.

#if you want more dabi-centric fics (bc those are my bread and butter to the surprise of no one)#then i recommend ao3 user theyaremycrocs for singlehandedly RUINING my mental health with every and any fic of theirs #but yeah! i tried to keep this short and sweet but genuinely a ship hasnt had me in such a firm chokehold as dabihawks since like #my haikyuu era or something. not quite zukka bc who could ever but sakuatsu are getting nervous #ask #dabihawks #mha #fic rec

60 notes · View notes

class1akids · 8 months

Note

I honestly wish coercion never became a murky part of the todofam plot because the todofam fandom is worse than ever to navigate. With what we’re stuck with now, I’m willing to bet neither rei nor endeavor saw what happened as s/a and it will hit like a ton of bricks when they both see their separate therapists that yes this is a thing even if both parties were unaware at the time. I don’t even know if hori knows it. Like he obviously knows coercion is bad, but is he aware that by rei not wanting to for natsuo and shouto that it would technically count as s/a? For me such a topic is a step too far to enjoy todofam anymore and it’s sad because they were my favorite part of the manga. Just one of multiple disappointments in the final act.

Tbh, I'm not sure I understand well your ask. The element of coercion is not a last-minute addition - it has been the basic feature of Enji's and Rei's marriage, ever since we first heard of it back in Ch 31:

We did not know the specific details, but the underlying premise was established - the marriage was an unethical transaction - money for Rei's quirk with the understanding that children would be created until Endeavor got the tool he wanted for his own purpose.

The tension around Shouto's existence was also established already back then. How his resemblance to Enji is Rei's trigger...

... or how Shouto perceived his very existence to be a breaking point for his mother.

Children are perceptive this way. Just like Touya understood that he was being replaced, Shouto understood that his birth was a breaking point for Rei and in fact the whole family. The coercion, the sad truth that Rei did not want to give birth to Shouto is written between the lines already back then.

It makes the whole drama between Rei and Shouto that much more believable. If Rei breaks not "just" from being hit by Enji and being helpless to protect her child, but because there is a much deeper violation at play. Rei having to bear Shouto (and Natsuo) as part of a dirty transaction, something she even agreed to, the feelings of repulsion, then the feelings of guilt because Rei is fundamentally a good person who understands that the children are faultless in this situation.

Rei's limp pose as she can't bear to embrace Shouto as he clings to her...

... only then to touch him only on the right side.

Rei is trying her best, but the way she leashes out against Shouto makes more sense with this whole unwanted birth aspect added to the picture.

Just as Shouto sensing his mother's mixed feelings towards him make it believable why he would not try to see her for a decade, despite we know how much he loves his mother and how much he misses her. He believes that even looking at him is triggering for Rei.

And yes, it's a very dark origin, but it was never portrayed as anything else. The fact that Rei and Shouto are able to forge a positive relationship after all that is all the more precious. I'm sure Rei already had plenty of therapy (she spent 10 years in a mental hospital) and has faced most of her guilt, and Shouto reconnecting with her was the last push she needed to get back on her feet.

Shouto and Rei released each other from their respective guilts - so they could move forward and focus on recovery. Because while I'm sure Rei was coerced into having another baby, I'm also certain that she still loves him and is happy about his existence now.

As for Enji - I think he's definitely aware by now how screwed up the entire premise of his family was. Up until now he kept moving from crisis to crisis, having his hero work as an outlet for his feelings of guilt (like we saw in both the Nomu and AFO fights). But I think if he stops because he chooses or is forced to retire, all that crushing guilt will hit him (I hope).

I'm honestly more worried about Shouto who is still carrying the burden of his birth being a breaking point for the entire family, and what pushed Touya over the edge. Right now he's got a solid enough support structure at UA to deal with it, but I could definitely see him suffer from depression later in life.

#c1a asks #todoroki shouto #todoroki enji #todoroki rei #todometa #todoroki family

80 notes · View notes

sinnamonpork · 1 year

Text

au of a less traumatized todofam and their shameless favoritism when it comes to one another:

Shouto loves all his siblings, but Fuyumi would always have a special place in his soba obsessed heart. That's his sister that took care of him, attended his school meetings, and generally became the one person he knows will be there when the house would be empty of any soul. She's the one he'll run to when his brothers would be bullying him, knowing full well she'd side with him always. Class 1-A sees their resident ice prince goes full baby mode when his sister comes to visit. "Nee-san, nee-san, did you miss me? I really missed you, nee-san."

Natsuo having Touya as his favorite sibling isn't really a surprise, especially when the two slept in the same room. Touya was the first one who he told of his dreams of being a doctor, becoming a hero in the way he wants to. Touya only grinned at him and said he's sure he can do anything he wants to, because he's his baby brother. His big brother who he hid behind when the house got too loud, too destructive for such a quiet child that Natsuo was. He saw the lean, fragile back of his brother standing tall against Endeavor and not flinching for even a bit and was inspired to be like him, that when he grows up, he'll be the one protecting other people too. Basically, Natsuo's hero worship for the only person in their family who wants nothing to do with heroes lol.

Meanwhile, we got Fuyumi who we all know would be a complete daddy's girl. Because while their family became a tad shaky in the years of Natsuo and Shouto's childhood, she still remembers calling the no. 2 hero her Papa and being carried on his broad shoulders. She remembers those rough fingers brushing through her hair as she fell asleep to his singing voice, a little rough around the edges, but it's her Papa's. She remembers inexperienced hands fumbling to tie her hair yet still calling her the most prettiest princess even with uneven pigtails. It might be tainted by the years to come, but it's those memories that pushes her to keep their family together.

Touya, pierced and edgelord Touya, is a complete mama's boy. When he was young, still not knowing how to control his emotions that are always too much, he'd know that his mother's quiet and comforting demeanor would be the break he needs from the world. She would quiet the buzzing in his ears, playing with his hair as she hums a quiet tune, grounding him to reality when he's close to lashing out at anyone near. During his highschool days, the whole LoV(League of Vtubers) would get a front row seat to their resident deliquent being an obedient puppy and being nothing but a complete gentleman to his visiting mother. "Mom, you can have Shiggy's seat, I'm sure he'll be happy sitting on the floor if it's for you." Tomura just grumbles through it all.

Extra:

Future son-in-law and Honorary Todoroki Keigo's favorite person would obviously be Endeavor, to the horror of his boyfriend. Touya didn't think anything would be worse than the time he had to babysit a Shouto who puked in the middle of the supermarket but there it was. It takes the form of his boyfriend being an absolute simp for Enji and the hero just confused why this smol child is being so chatty. "Endeavor-san, what do you think about going with me and Touya to our trip to the Bahamas? Of course Touya said yes, why would you even think otherwise?" Keigo slept on the couch for two weeks after the incident, Touya making him remember who his attention should be on with his very talented tongue and hands. (and the piercings- oh god the piercings. keigo can die a happy man)

250 notes · View notes

introspectivememories · 5 months

Text

i've been reading a lotta todofam fics recently and i think you guys give fuyumi too much shit for wanting a happy family. she's not delusional or blind or anything like that. she's just an abused girl who wants some semblance of a normal family. which is fine!!!! not once in canon does she ever tell natsu or shou that their feelings aren't valid or that they need to forgive enji. all she ever says is, hey. he says he's changing. can you please be civil with him natsu? also, from what i understand about canon, it's not like enji was beating the shit out of his children the minute they came out of the womb??? he was okay-ish those first few years and it's more than likely that fuyumi remembers that enji!!! natsu probably doesn't have any memories of that enji. of course, she wants a happy family. she remembers when enji was okay-ish!!! like do you think she doesn't know about the abuse????? she's the only sibling who still lives in that house!!!! she was there for all of shouto's abuse!!!! all this to say, if you even look at my girl wrong, i will stomp you to death with my hooves.

#don't you ever speak ill of my eldest daughter in a shitty household character again #who was the one that bandaged shouto? fuyumi #who was the one making sure shouto ate? fuyumi #who stayed in that fucking house even though she could've left at any time???? FUYUMI!!!!#and to this day she is still soothing everyone's hurts and looking after everyone and does she ever get a thank you???? not once!#say what you want about the endeavor redemption arc but i think it gave us really interesting responses to abuse #fuyumi is willing to move on if enji never does it again #natsuo will punt enji into the sun if endeavor so much a breathes in his direction #and shouto is still thinking about it #(dabi as we all know will murder his father if given the chance)#oh fuyumi you are so “surface pressure” coded #bnha #todofam #todoroki fuyumi #todoroki shouto #todoroki natsuo #todoroki enji #todoroki family

30 notes · View notes

sparkles-and-trash · 1 year

Text

I keep getting those videos of little kids being so excited to be big siblings on tiktok and it always makes me think about Touya, and I don’t wanna be sad so I chose to think of a happy todofam au

I think, in a happy au, Touya would be very excited to meet his new siblings every time, but as they grow they don’t have THAT much in common with him

Fuyumi always wants to teach, since she was little, and Natsu doesn’t want to talk much about heroes, and while they’re still very much pals and love each other, Touya kinda wishes he has a sibling to talk to about these things and share his hype and just generally someone to bond over the hero dream with

when Shouto is born it’s the first time Touya’s not super excited, he’s getting older now and babies are kinda old news by now

he likes Shouto enough, he’s a simple baby that doesn’t cry too much or pull his hair or anything, but that’s about it at first

however, when Shouto starts to crawl, they all notice that he always seems to follow Touya around the best he can, he always smiles when he sees him, and even hos first word turns out to be Touya (‘Ouya, but like, close enough), and as his personality starts to develop, it becomes clearer and clearer how much he looks up to his eldest brother

Touya has no idea what to do with it, he’s never been anyones favorite before, but it feels nice, and Shouto is a remarkably non-annoying child

he mostly observes quietly, he always responds when Touya talks to him, and he LOVES to watch Touya when he trains, he’s always cheering and applauding, and when it makes Touya kinda embarrased, Enji starts to offer to sens Shouto away, but Touya refuses, he loves the way his brother is so into hero stuff and would never want to derail him from that!

masterlist - wip list - ao3 - ko-fi - wishlist

#todofam #touya todoroki #shouto todoroki #happy todosibs #todosibs #happy todofam #the todoroki family #the todoroki siblings #touya and shouto #todoroki #shoto todoroki #dabi #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha

114 notes · View notes

villainsandvictimsalliance · 11 months

Note

I wonder how Toya will even get healed? He can't eat noodles with the rest of the family as a charred frozen husk.

I also think Natsuo didn't just ask Toya that question of what do they do now? I think Natsuo meant the entire family because the translations by Pikalua states it more as they and it makes sense that a hellish life awaits all of them after this war knowing Toya revealed the family name and will live.

Thanks for the translation thing! I think the point still stands. Touya wanted them all in hell and in some sense, his wish was fulfilled. Of course this is a shonen and the Todofam issues can magically disappear, but I hope it doesn't. I like how Natsuo is thinking that, now that the impossible has been done, what's next?

Even when the question comes now, is something to think about for the world bnha world. When the focus is winning the war, and the war is over, what happens next? The destruction, the damage, it all will remain. For things to get better again, there's work to be done. Rebuilt, remade, rise from the ashes and the dust. The Todorokis needs to face what type of family they want to be know, how do they plan to mend their relationships (they seem to want to mend it, at least), what do they want to do with the pieces of their past, since it can't be erased.

Like you said, the question includes their social life, with Enji and Shouto being popular heroes and Dabi being a popular criminal. Their decisions affect thr public directly, because Shouto is there with the kids that want to change the hero society and how it operates. What will happen to Touya now? Jail? The hospital? A new building made for these new villains, that symbolize the shift in the hero society by prioritizing rehabilitation?

As for Touya's healing, the new ice quirk makes it easier for him to live, but this has been a topic the fandom love to discuss since I joined. We know he (Dabi) is heavily burnt, but no one seems to know how did he even survive for so long all these time, there must other secrets to be reveal. Or we are going to see other characters step in and help to heal the villains, who knows.

For now, I'm more than happy to allow them to rest in each other presences.

46 notes · View notes

thyandrawrites · 2 years

Note

I just read your Fuyumi character analysis and it made me see her in a totally different light. I was one of the people that thought she was easily forgiving her father and forcing her siblings to do the same but after reading your analysis I realized that was wrong. I see now that she isn’t selfish as I first thought. I can see that her actions are more of defense and self preservation than forgiveness and it made me feel some sort of appreciation for her struggles and her love for her siblings.

So I wanted to ask if you had a Rei character analysis because I would love to read it. Your analysis are awesome.

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to read my Fuyumi post. I’m pleased to hear you found it an interesting read, and I can only be glad if it gave you some food for thought on a character I love so much :’)

To answer your question, I haven’t written anything extensive on Rei yet, and certainly not anything solely focused on her. Because of how little screen time she gets, I find it much harder to get a cohesive read of her goals and motivations. Her lack of backstory and internal narration leave a lot of unanswered questions. But I wanted to thank you for asking about her anyway, because your ask gave me a push to try and get something together. It won’t be as thorough as my other todofam meta, and it will contain a lot of guessing, but I’m putting it out there anyway. Maybe I’ll add more to it later on, if we ever get some more info on her.

On Rei, and the double-edged sword of Choices

As the title prefaces, Rei puts a lot of importance on making your own choices. Despite the fact that she’s often depicted as having little agency, a core belief of hers seems to be that even when your options are limited, you can make the most of them and find happiness by confidently choosing your path forward, and sticking to it through the end.

[more under the cut]

It’s because of this mindset that she’s able to see marrying Enji as her own informed choice. From her perspective, she didn’t agree to it because of external pressure from her family, but rather because Rei wanted this for the Himuras’ sake. Now, whether this is entirely true or not, and she was “sold off” for money and prestige like Touya says, we don’t know for sure. But for the purpose of this speculation, it's not really important to determine whose choice the arranged marriage really was; what matters is that Rei thinks she walked into it by her free will.

What she says to Shouto here (read right to left) gives us a little more insight. This is her response to Shouto's fear that his circumstances (=being trained by a cruel person) will dictate the outcome of his actions.

Essentially, Shouto's scared of going along with Enji's will, because he doesn't want Enji to make him into the type of hero who hurts others. And Rei steps in and tells him, "it's okay, you wouldn't end up like that, because being a hero is something you want for yourself, not just to crown Enji's aspirations. You wouldn’t be a puppet in his hands that does what he wants, but your own person pursuing your own goals. Keep your eyes firmly set on the man you want to become, and you will get there."

Envisioning the future you want to achieve is the crucial part here. When the proposal of an arranged marriage was on the table, Rei tells us she didn't have many options in front of her. In that sense, she too was limited by her circumstances and by her blood. But she agreed to it, and I quote, "hoping, if nothing else, that [she] would keep smiling." In other words, Rei might not have wanted to marry Enji, per se, but maybe she wasn't as opposed to the idea of making a family of her own. A part of her thought she'd still find happiness (maybe even fulfillment) as a wife and a mother.

And at least at the beginning, I think she might've been, too. Happy, that is. At the very least, she loved her children. Back then, Enji was still an… okay father. He planned to live vicariously through his children, and that's not the ideal mindset behind having a child, but he had yet to act on it; the family dynamics weren't as tense and toxic as they become the longer he went without achieving his ambitions. Fuyumi's birth wasn't planned as a replacement like her younger siblings, a demand from a man obsessed with his goals. It was Rei’s idea to conceive her, to give little Touya a sibling close in age so that they could support each other.

What this tells us is that even if Rei knew she was expected to bear Enji’s children, up to that point, she still had a vision of a future where her kids were healthy and fulfilled, and Rei too, with them. Thus, she actively took the initiative to make the family a happy nest despite the not so happy circumstances behind the union itself.

Then Enji starts growing more and more obsessed with an heir, and Rei starts properly fearing her husband.

This is where things get complicated, and also when Rei betrays her beliefs. As I went over, she puts a lot of weight into making your own choices, but when Enji’s temper gets worse and worse and he stops asking, Rei begins surrendering to his will. This, despite knowing how Touya will see right through the intent behind Natsuo’s conception, and realize they are finally replacing him.

To her credit, Rei does attempt to protest, to stand her ground. She’s not unkind, and she doesn’t want to cause unjust suffering to her kid. She's aware that being replaced will crush him, and that knowing so and persisting anyway is cruel of them. But for someone who values choices so much, she chooses to stay. She could’ve walked away with the kids and gotten out of dodge. That wouldn’t have stopped Enji, of course, he could’ve gotten married again, but she wouldn’t have been an accomplice.

I want to make clear that this is not me condemning her for being too scared to oppose Enji in any substantial way. It’s the story itself that draws attention to this. Touya spells out her complicity, and it’s something we are asked to take notice of. Despite trying her best, Rei is depicted as a flawed mother who made mistakes as well, particularly in raising Touya.

It’s subtle, but it’s there, and this line here is particularly telling. We know that Touya pushes back against the idea that Rei had the option to say no to marrying Enji. Since she was poor, and her family needed it, Touya states that she only had the illusion of a choice. Agreeing to it was an inevitability. Like training until he can be stronger than All Might was inevitable for him, too.

Now, Touya thinks of it that way because has a sharply different mindset than her. From his perspective, both him and his mother have no other options than to perform the role they’re thrown into. While Rei thinks she’s responsible for her decisions, Touya reckons there was only ever one path in front of her (and him), aka that of bearing the burden of one's legacy. By being born into an impoverished family that used to have prestige and power, Rei’s destiny was already written for her. Just like how, by being born as Endvr’s son, Touya’s fate was already decided as well. This fits into his idea of predestination, of the straight or warped tracks he mentions to Shouto.

So Touya frames Rei as someone lacking agency, someone who cannot change the tracks of her life. He does it to make a point about himself, to state that doesn’t have any alternatives, either. But his word choice happens to be… brutally ironic.

When he says “you had no choice” in the panel above, in Japanese he’s echoing his dad.

Specifically, he’s echoing Enji when he said he “had no choice but” to have more children. Nominally, to make Touya stop training in secret. In truth, to have a more suitable heir who could beat All Might.

I'm not sure if Touya's wording itself is intended as a callback, but the fact that he accuses Rei of "being guilty too" in that same scene makes me think we're supposed to think of it anyway.

We know that somewhere after Touya snapped at Rei here, she had just as much of a hard time facing him as her husband did. The given reason is that she sees Enji in her children, and her fear paralyzes her and makes her slip away a little more every day, until her eventual breaking point. But I think that there was another component at play here: guilt.

If we assume that in that moment Rei was thinking of Enji's stubbornness—as it's hinted at by her equating their narrowed, angry eyes—then Touya's words might've hit a nerve there.

Mind you, this is very much unconfirmed, so I could be completely wrong about it. But notice how it's only after Enji mentions All Might that she drops all protests. Before, the topic was Touya's wellbeing, and the morality of inflicting this onto an innocent child who just wanted his father's attention. But the second Rei is abruptly reminded of the reason behind this contract between her and Enji, the goal of producing a fitting heir who will beat his rival, we see her expression shift. She's no longer frantic, she's stricken. A bead of sweat rolls down her face, like she's digesting this. Realizing what it means, what will happen.

Of course, we could attribute this to fear; she could be seeing Enji's true colors for the first time, or realizing that nothing she can say will ever stop him. That has been my interpretation so far. But what if there was more?

What if she felt pressured, similarly to how she might've felt pressured by the Himuras' circumstances, and ended up folding and defaulting to do what was expected of her as a result? And then calling it her decision, despite how it’s clearly not what she wanted?

Psychologically, it would make sense. It's not too hard to make the jump from "I walked into this myself. It was my choice" to "I chose this life. It is on me. I can't pretend I didn't know what my role in it would be, and I have to play it."

If Rei fell for that kind of reasoning, maybe even subconsciously, it could help make sense of why, despite witnessing the worsening of the abuse and of her own mental state, she clings to her hope of eventual happiness for years. Or why, despite having been complicit in punishing Touya with two more replacements, she still doubles down on her belief about the importance of choices, enough so that she passes it down to Shouto. Like allowing Touya to be hurt like that wasn't also a deliberate act; she took part in it knowing the harm that would follow, so ethically speaking, she can't hide behind a lack of better alternatives. She can't deny ownership of her actions by claiming she was blinded by foolishness, like Enji later does. That, too, was a choice, but since Rei cannot bear this weight, I think she coped with it by telling herself it was part of her duty, of her role, and thus accepted it as an inevitability, too. Something that she surrendered to because her "options were limited" to quote her rationalizing of things. It would be a defense mechanism of sorts.

If a part of her justifies what they did as part of her marital contract, then she can frame it as something she had to endure for the sake of her family, too. In the process, she can avoid the guilt attached.

But when Touya calls this out, she cracks, face stricken in fear, and she cannot say anything to defend herself. He sees through her, and she cowers from it. His self-awareness makes it impossible for her to soothe him with easy words like she later does with Shouto. She has no legs to stand on. Her words ring empty, and she knows it. A lie to keep up the pretense of being in control.

Though Rei had entered this situation hoping she would find happiness somehow, the truth is that she hasn't been happy in years. She's exhausted, jaded, wrung out. The family she had pictured doesn't match the broken one she can't keep together despite her best efforts. So, what use was walking into this of her own accord, with her own agenda (however simple), if she couldn't make the most of it, and instead ended up succumbing under the impossible weight of her role?

By then, Enji had given up on even pretending to be involved in Touya's life. He was similarly neglectful to his other children as well. And by giving in to his demands for more kids, Rei co-signed the destruction of whatever normalcy they could've ever hoped to achieve, because Touya knew exactly what they'd done and why, and it made him restless. By the time a fitting replacement came around, the family was as good as gone, and with it, Rei's aspirations.

But acknowledging this means acknowledging her agency in it. And she can't. She can't look Touya in the eyes and insist again about how many other paths are available to him aside from becoming a hero. Not when Touya pointed out that she had paths, too, and still walked the one written in the tracks of her life.

In this light, her avoidance of Touya from then on mirrors Enji’s. She's running away from facing things about herself she doesn't want to confront, things that Touya brings to the forefront of her mind by being their unfortunate victim and byproduct.

Interestingly, though, Rei later shows a bit more of a willingness to face the past.

Shouto's influence helps her in that sense. When he finds the courage to reconnect with her, despite how he should've hated her, she gets a taste of what actually sticking with your choices means. And it spurs her onto action herself.

As a child, Shouto told her that he didn't want to become the kind of person who would hurt her. He already believed in kindness, and aspired to be a hero who rescued others, like All Might was shown doing in that TV interview Shouto was watching with Rei. But then Rei was hospitalized, and she spent ten-ish years away from Shouto, thinking the entire time that he resented her for having burnt him.

In truth, Shouto was simply afraid of meeting her. Since he saw himself as the cause of her mental break, he feared that his visit would be unwelcome, or maybe that she would get worse because of him. But in the end, he pushed through those fears and went to the hospital, and then kept coming back and writing letters with the purpose of reconnecting. Shouto could've easily kept things as they were, but he decided to confront her, to seek a conversation, to seek healing. He didn't want to leave those loose ends unaddressed, or to hide behind his insecurities, his anxieties. Shouto was obviously afraid of rejection, of facing her and finding out she still saw his father in him. He was trembling when he arrived at the hospital that first time. But that didn't deter him. Like his mother told him to do all those years ago, he firmly set his eyes on the man he wanted to become, and that man was someone who had a relationship with his mother again.

When Rei witnesses that unshaking resolve, that determination to stay true to himself and his choices, she becomes stronger as a result.

She finally faces Enji, despite admitting to still being afraid of him not too long before.

And when the topic of Shouto's scar comes up, she owns up to it. Her expression is serious, unflinching. She's not feeling sorry for herself the way she looked away from Touya, eyes downcast and expression laced with visible guilt.

That's a step towards healing for her. Burning Shouto wasn't a conscious action on her part (it was a fight or flight response to fear), but the fact that she is willing to look head on at the past instead of avoiding it is a nod in the right direction.

Before, she let that vision of a happy future slip away from her. She let herself be swept by her circumstances, and lost sight of herself in the process.

Losing sight of yourself because of said circumstances is an idea that gets explored through Shouto as well, by the way. To further underline it. Shouto, too, temporarily let his family situation cloud his vision and push him off his original path. For a handful of years, he was too angry, too bitter and resentful to remember that the things that had motivated him to become a hero was kindness and compassion. He almost nearly becomes cruel like Enji. But remembering himself, setting his eyes on the kind of man he originally wanted to become, puts him back on track. Thanks to that, he's able to successfully rescue Iida from Stain.

Similarly, Rei's misstep is letting her fear get the best of her, and letting herself forget that happiness was still within her reach. Because of that, her challenge is to fix that and face Touya again. In that sense, she can prove she has a choice. She isn't there just to provide the ice genes to make the perfect kid. She still has the power to create a family that isn't dysfunctional, if she commits to the idea that choices were never about making the most of limited options and adverse fate, but rather sticking to your guns and making your future happen despite those adverse circumstances.

Her challenge, then, is to make a family that will be happy for real. With Touya as an integral part of it, this time.

#bnha #todoroki rei #meta:rei #my post #ali replies #todofam #todofamily #todoroki shouto #todoroki enji #todoroki touya #forgive me for the sucky images but I couldn't do better quality ones

142 notes · View notes

bnhaobservation · 6 months

Note

Any random thoughts about todofam? Doesn't have to be anything specific just really miss em ;w;

I miss them too!

They're the characters I love the most in the story! There are plenty of things I love about them!

And even though Natsuo said things are going to be hell from now on, I actually hope they won't be and that things will somehow... get all right for them. I want them to be happy, I think they suffered for too long. I think they deserve happiness or, at least, the hope to reach happiness.

LOL, I would totally love it if they were to get their own spinoff, not that I dare to hope it!

At the same time I wish Horikoshi had just paid more attention to some parts of their past story as... they feel a bit shacky here and there, as if there had been retcons along the way. But this might be just me.

The Todoroki are still an extremely interesting and well constructed family and I really love Horikoshi for creating it and I truly hope he'll manage to give it a happy ending!

(also I would really love for Horikoshi to finally give Rei her own character page as well as an update on Touya's page with what are his favourite things since so far that area was left always blank but I guess here I'm really asking too much...)

#boku no hero academia #Todoroki Shouto #Todoroki Touya #Todoroki Enji #Todoroki Fuyumi #Todoroki Natsuo #Ask

9 notes · View notes

classicequinox · 15 days

Note

I LOVE UR WRITING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE ITTT!!! fm is written so intelligently its rlly such a fun read thank u for putting ur work out there its super enjoyable … other than it just being so cool it also hits all those emotional beats its so good. kotaro and enji’s talk lives in my brain always. i love it a lot. what made u want to write it, and how did u come up w the premise?? how long does it take to plan out, and do u have to do a lot of research with it??? is writing enji’s pov difficult?? it seems like itd be difficult but u execute it so good tbh. it really does feel as if he IS the n2 hero w his thought process and insight. its so good!!!! :D

Ahh thank you I'm glad you've been enjoying!! 💞💞 Those philosophical/plotty bits always kill my brain cells so it's great to hear their sacrifice is worthy xD Kotarou's and Enji's talk remains one of my top 5 fave scenes in this fic! From the very first moment Tenko's backstory was revealed, my brain went: can you imagine these two flawed fathers just nursing a bottle of alcohol in the dead of night discussing their kids and their failings? (And so that entire grand sleepover plot line was born. Oops.)

If you're talking about the fic as a whole: bc I'm a sucker for time travel fix-its, I really really wanted to write happy Todofam scenes, and the entire story/plot here is an excuse for me to bc Endeavour would never just sit back and chill while the world burns down around him :')

I plan out milestone scenes periodically, then everything else I pants along the way 🙈 luckily tho, bc it's let me incorporate more wild stuff that Horikoshi's revealed in canon over these past few years… 👀 As for research: not too much, but I'm sure my search history has been loving "what temp do bones disintegrate" etc :D

On Enji's POV: oh for sure at the start! But now I've written him for so long that it feels like going home after writing other characters/fics :') Tbh I'd say the irrational parts of him are harder to write than the analytical side! But then I've always liked the logically competent ones. All Might's POV… now that was and is lvl 1000 difficulty xD

#ask #endeavor #mha #where your love has always been enough (for me)#fanfic

3 notes · View notes

x-neurotoxin-x · 1 year

Note

Something something about how grief can cause people to romanticize the deceased and remember only the good memories with them. And how Enji's memories of Touya always involve him smiling. The first image of Touya from Enji's pov was Touya with a gentle expression. After Dabi confronts him is when Enji seems to remember the "bad" memories of him being completely distraught and what Touya would do to try and get his attention.

Rei, on the other hand, remembers him as an angry child with eyes that are too much like his father's. (This is probably because Touya was more aggressive (for lack of a better word) with his mother than his father. In the flashbacks we've seen, how he talks to each of his parents is very different.)

Idk where I'm going with this, I just find it interesting how both of them remember Touya differently.

Much of the todofam are unreliable narrators, especially Enji and Rei. Change my mind. (I'm joking, i don't want discourse leave me alone.)

Specifically involving the Touya situation, they're both unreliable narrators. Enji chose to only see the "positive" moments, and Touya's pleas for attention, likely because of guilt. He didn't want to look too hard at any of his more intense emotions (ie Touya's breakdowns seem to cut off right when it gets bad; he attacks Shouto, starts ripping out his hair, etc). There's also conveniently very little flashbacks of him training Touya before his quirk started burning him. It's like he's self aware enough to know Touya was not a happy child, desperately needed help, and he ignored and mistreated him, but he doesn't wanna look at it. Wants to remember things differently.

Rei seems to be doing much of the same, and only has a few memories of Touya in her point of view but they are SUCH a drastic difference from Shouto and the other kids, almost all of which are so much softer, tender memories. Touya's always hostile, angry, bitter, almost like she's choosing to remember him that way instead of acknowledging that he wasn't a cruel child, he was just really hurt and felt ignored, and lashing out because he felt like he wasn't being heard. It seems like she's also doing it out of guilt, and kind of shifting blame. I don't think she deserves the praise she's getting this arc for doing the literal bare minimum after ALSO hurting Touya. It was mainly Enji, yes, and Rei's mistakes dont take the blame from him, but she also fucked up incredibly.

Yeah it's certainly grief related that makes them think like this, but it's still, like... Damn.

#please dni if youre gonna be a dick to me about this #im only stating my opinion

8 notes · View notes

haleigh-sloth · 11 months

Note

"The perfect ending for the todofam is sitting together and having dinner without Endeavor. They would be all happy without him." sigh... I'm no fan of Endeavor but hardcore Dabi stans need to understand that the story not only wants Enji to atone for the shit he put his family through but also be present at the dinner table and like... be an actual part of the fam via participation instead of being absent. What good will it do for the Todofam arc if Endeavor is not even there for his family and is just... going around doing hero work? That would be just like earlier times lmao. Enji needs to step up as a dad yes but that can't happen if he's out of the picture. Moreover wasn't Fuyumi's dream to have a family dinner with all of them sitting together around the table including her father?? Are we really going to ignore her wishes?? And Shouto who wants to see Enji finally become the father he was meant to be? And most of all Touya who just wanted to be with his family and that also includes Endeavor bruh

Yeah I mean....I agree with both of these.

Granted, idk what'll happen 100% certain. But there are two things I'm convinced of:

I'm very very confident in Touya going home

Touya doesn't just want any specific family member to be there, he wants all of them, clearly as we saw

So....how that ends with Endeavor being yeeted out of the family picture, idk

I get it, I've been saying I get it for almost 3 years now. My opinions have changed damn near 180 in most things, but my understanding of why people don't want Endeavor in the picture hasn't disappeared.

But we're almost 400 chapters in and at this point it's literally not the manga's fault if people are unhappy. If people want an ending where the abuser, whose arc is about trying to do better--and actually doing better in some capacity--with some bumps along the way, is given absolutely 0 grace from the family he broke and for the family to tell him to fuck off and never come around again, well, I feel like it's been obvious for a very long time that this is not that. It kinda just feels like denial to cope because it went this direction. Again, I get wanting that and don't think that's wrong or a story that shouldn't be told, but this is not that story. Horikoshi isn't obligated to tell that story ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ he's just not. He doesn't owe anybody anything, but I feel we're blessed enough that we get a coherent, narratively sound story that actually follows through on almost EVERYTHING put in place, at some point, in some way, even if the pacing isn't the best suited for a weekly release.

My understanding kinda stops though when people just....straight up make shit up and ignore what's on the page. I mean I don't care what the opinion is at that point. If someone is deliberately ignoring images put on pages because they don't like them, well I don't care to discuss tbh. Also thinking about recent anons I've gotten, saying things like "if Endeavor is with his family it ignores everything he does", well, no it doesn't. That's just not true as the story has not ignored anything at all nor has his family, so that's just a blatantly false statement and I also won't take the time to discuss there either. Idk.

I agree with y'all though.

#anonymous #bnha asks

9 notes · View notes

adventureofthedancinggirl · 6 months

Text

This is primarily a fandom blog, currently focused on BNHA, previously active in BBC Sherlock.

Here you'll find fandom things, headcanons, rambling about fics (and writing in general), occasional meta, as well as other miscellaneous things I find interesting.

AdventureOfTheDancingGirl on AO3. Writing updates are tagged: dancing girl writes

Sideblogs:

@seeyouafter a collection of my thoughts and various ephemera related to my ongoing tdbk epistolary fic "See You After"

@ordinaryoffensivemagic various content related to the manga/anime 葬送のフリーレン (Sousou no Frieren)

Notes and helpful tags:

Asks are open if you want to chat. Give me an excuse to talk about my writing notes or headcanons if you want to make my day. Anon is usually on but be kind. There is a real human on the other side of the screen.

Replies are tagged as dancing girl asks. If you want to say hi but don't know what to say, feel free to check out the ask games tag.

🏷️Tag Index:

I have a comprehensive tag index that I finally updated but these are the tags that I'm using most often these days:

💜Personal Tags:

dancing girl rambles - random thoughts, generally not fandom related

dancing girl writes - tag for my fics and general thoughts on writing (previous tags: my writing - this one has mostly Sherlock stuff, writing updates)

also: see you after fic, sya writing log

dancing girl's reblog themes - sometimes I go down a rabbit hole and reblog a bunch of related posts. It's a fun time.

🩵General writing & fandom stuff

on writing, writing reference, fandom life, AO3 tips, tumblr tips

💚BNHA Content

dancing girl’s bnha thoughts - includes my personal reactions, headcanons, misc. thoughts related to bnha

bnha fanfic - includes my fics and others I recommend

I use the tag bnha for all my hero academia related reblogs. spoilers are tagged bnha manga spoilers

Chapter reactions/thoughts are tagged with the chapter number as bnha xxx, see also: bnha meta (not all meta is mine)

images: bnha manga, bnha anime, bnha art (for my favorite bnha fanart)

Multi-ship friendly but TDBK is my OTP. (that being said, a lot of my reblogs with "ship" tags are purely for organization purposes and many can be viewed as platonic.)

I just want a happy todofam au so I made a tag for it (other favorite AUs: fantasy au, winter au, childhood friends au)

The ladies of this series don't get enough love so I like to highlight them with the tag bnha girls

Todoroki Shouto tags: shouto loves cats, sleepy shouto, todofam, shouto art, shoutocat, strawberry shouto-cake, shouto birthday

Bakugou Katsuki tags: dynamy, sleepy katsuki, katsuki comfort, bakugou family

Other commonly used character tags: class 1a, origin trio, remedial squad, dadzawa, eri-chan (If you're searching for someone specific I generally just tag the character’s name as it shows up in AO3’s tagging system)

misc collections: 2023 bnha xmas sketch

💛BBC Sherlock

Main tags: sherlock, johnlock

Sherlock Fic Recs - Mostly BBC Sherlock universe. Most of my own Sherlock fics are under the My Writing tag

BBC Sherlock: sherlock meta, series 4 theories (also: season 4 theories), sherlock parallels, mirrors

Original Canon: acd canon, AStudyInCanonBookClub, acd parallels, sherlock analysis

see tag index for additional tags and other fandoms

🧡Misc. Tags (not fandom)

mental health, reminders, encouragement

otterly adorable, cute animals, beautiful things, reasons to smile

bookish things, reading log, quotes

💭Random Facts:

I share my birthday with Dabi and Burnin'

My username is a play on the Sherlock Holmes story "Adventure of the Dancing Men".

Even though I'm not active in the Sherlock fandom anymore, I decided to keep the same username because dancing is part of my IRL identity and I didn't want to keep track of a separate account. Also, Mina is my dancing (alien) queen so the name still works.

#dancing girl rambles #welcome #navigation

1 note · View note