Okay so I know there’s an unfathomable amount of discourse going around about Dabi/Hawks/Endeavor, and people being apologists and whatnot. I don’t want to add to the chaos because the last time this much arguing happened in a fandom I was in (read: Voltron), I just completely dropped out of it and I don’t want to do that here.
The thing about stories is that they are very intentionally written, especially in this case, and thus incredibly nuanced. I don’t necessarily believe that anybody’s opinions on characters reflect on how they’d feel about similar situations in real life so it’s definitely not as serious as people are making it out to be.
This is the whole thing about parasocial relationships, even with fictional characters- you see much more of them being people in everyday life than you’d see in any real life events or news stories. Because we know the characters so closely, our perception of their actions is inherently biased. I think this also has to do with which was introduced first- the character and their personality, or their negative actions.
We are told by the narrative that Endeavor is a terrible, abusive father before he’s even introduced, and later we see more of him interacting with characters and who he is in the present, so we know his actions retroactively.
Dabi/Touya is rather the opposite- but we have two conflicting viewpoints.
Dabi’s personality is tied to his actions, because he does many of them in the present that we see onscreen- kidnapping Bakugou, murdering petty thieves, etc. We learn who he is in the context of his actions, so it seems less shocking/extreme when he does obviously bad things. He’s a villian. That’s the point, and he has no moral standards, but that also makes him an interesting character.
And then there’s Touya, who is a mysterious silhouette of a character but we get to see who he was by how his family remembers him. Endeavor’s biggest regret is his death. Natsuo, who is an inherently good character, remembers him fondly in a positive light. And of course most recently with chapter 291, we see Touya as a small, innocent child.
So when these two personalities are juxtaposed we get this cognitive dissonance, because it’s naturally hard for us to resolve this conflict between a innocent abuse victim and a ruthless murderer.
We’re supposed to feel pity for Touya and the things he went through, but just because we understand the intent of his actions and the slippery slope that led to them doesn’t mean we justify them. We might even feel some catharsis in watching him get revenge on a world that tore him down and pushed him aside, and I think it’s important that we’re capable of distinguishing the contextual weight of a situation from the moral ramifications.
I’m getting really wordy here, but to put it more plainly, hypothetically if Dabi killed Endeavor we can still feel happy as readers for him achieving his goal and the catharsis it allows him, but still understand that it is morally wrong. If Dabi was framed as the protagonist, narratively this inherently bad action would be a victory.
(For further reference I just watched the Joker last night and it’s a very interesting case study that really made me think about Dabi’s character more critically)
Anyways, all of this nuance and conflict is an explicitly intentional choice by Horikoshi.
There isn’t supposed to be one right answer. I think everyone should stop for a moment and consider that stories are often made to start a conversation. This dialogue is important, and it encourages us to think critically and talk about difficult subjects. This is exactly the same thing that you do in school when you have a discussion in AP Lit or whatever.
It’s not about being right, it’s about having a conversation.
I know this is the internet and it has an overwhelming tendency to be toxic, and a lot of the fandom doesn’t care nearly as much as I do about literary analysis and impartial character studies, and I know I will continue to see more posts addressing people with staunch opinions then people actually stating said opinions, but hopefully I was able to provide some insight and continue the dialogue.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to respond!
I’d love to start a civil conversation about this :)