could you do a meta on dabi,hawks and endeavor theres something interesting about thoses three there was even a chapter about those three theres a common occurance about them that i can't put into words
There is a connection between all three of them.
So a follow up from my last post, there’s a question of agency between the three of them. [x]
What agency means is essentially the freedom and capacity to live or act in a defined world. In a literature sense, we can interpret this in a few different ways. We could look at a specific character in a novel, and see his/her ability to make choices, act freely, and control their respective lives within the novel. The character is able to engage socially, take action on desired things, and have control of their own life. [x].
Basically, let’s look at it from a different angle than the last post though. When it comes to the connection between Endeavor, Dabi, and Hawks, just as important as Agency, their ability to make choices is motivation.
In literature, “motivation” is defined as a reason behind a character’s specific action or behavior. This type of behavior is characterized by the character’s own consent and willingness to do something.
There are two types of motivation: one is intrinsic, while the other one is extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is linked to personal pleasure, enjoyment and interest, while extrinsic motivation is linked to numerous other possibilities. Extrinsic motivation comes from some physical reward such as money, power, or lust. Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is inspired by some internal reward such as knowledge, pride, or spiritual or emotional peace or wellbeing, etc. [x]
So basically now we’re looking at the characters from two angles, number one what choices do they have room to make, and number two in those limited choices what motivates them to eventually make the choices that they do.
So, I would say the connection between the three of them is that they all chose to pursue being a hero in some way, yes even Dabi who is a villain cares about the idea of becoming a hero.
Now Endeavor’s are the hardest to discern, since his reasoning to want to be a hero is vague at best. Trying my best to discern though, it seems that Endeavor one, worked really hard to be a hero and believed his hard work should have been rewarded with some sort of feeling of accomplishment. It’s the same reason that Bakugo freaked out so badly when Todoroki did not face him at his strongest in the tournament, because his own feeling of accoplishment was wrong because he didn’t believe he earned it.
So, it’s really hard to discern, but the idea of being number one itself was soething that Endeavor was after, and facing the fact that really no matter how hard he strives he would be at his limit and unable to surpass All Might who was just better and stronger than him in any way took a number out on his ego. This is my best attempt at explanation, it’s not really clear what Endeavor wants out of being a hero.
It’s a thematic idea that is explored in MHA at least, the desire to be the strongest. Whether or not that desire itself is a good or bad thing, but also because that strong drive can drive others to do terrible things.
The best way I can explain it though is that Endeavor believes he’s entitled to a certain sense of accomplishment after all that hard work he did to be number one, but because there was such a huge gap in front of him he was never able to reach that accomplishment and thus he took his feelings out on the others around him.
Basically, despite Horikoshi trying to present Endeavor as a character motivated by heroic means at this point, pretty much every bit of his past characterization contradicts this. Endeavor is pretty consistently characterized as an abuser, it’s all about his feelings and his own sense of accomplishment and worth, and he uses Shoto and everybody else in his family to those ends. There’s malice in the way he treats Shoto, especially when Shoto implies he has desires of his own. Basically, Endeavor attacked his family out of a perceived lack of respect from the world, and a perceived lack of feeling of accomplishment which he thought he was owed due to all of his hard work. So, there’s something especially toxic about Endeavor’s motivation to be a hero, one could even call it toxic masculinity if MHA were like… more thematically consistent about anything.
But let’s simplify for a moment and say Endeavor’s motivation for becoming a hero is really in line with the society of quirks we’re presented with in MHA. That he has a strong quirk, and he works hard, therefore he should rise to the top with his strong quirk and be stronger than anyone else, and defeat bad guys and that is what a hero is. Endeavor followed that line of thinkng from society perfectly, but he wasn’t able to become the strongest.
He’s obsessed with quirks and strength the same way society is, and even forced a quirk marriage which was said to be a negative aspect of humanity’s budding obsession with quirks and wanting quirks to be stronger.
So, Endeavor’s motivation for becoming a hero is entirely personal. However, Endeavor had the most agency to make his choice out of the three I’m presenting here. There was no pressuring circumstances for him to do what he did, except for the pressure that Endeavor put on himself. Endeavor was basically free to choose to become anything, and he chose to become a hero. Unlike Dabi, and Hawks he could have just become a hero and been satisfied with that especially due to the lack of external pressure but it was never enough for him.
Endeavor who had the most agency to choose, also destroyed the agency of others around him, his own family. He may be responsible for creating Touya/Dabi (the rest of this post is going to go forward on this assumption) but he definitely used his wealth of agency, fame, money, resources, in order to completely destroy and cut short the agency of both Rei and Todoroki for his own purposes.
Also it’s important to note that villains are usually the ones which limit the agency of others. Villains seize agency in order to act and create the circumstances, and heroes respond to those circumstances. Except the greatest antagonist to Shoto’s own arcs, the one that created the circumstances that he has to respond to, is the hero Endeavor. Then next on the line is Hawks. Hawks also has shaky at best motivations for being a hero, and partially selfish ones but for entirely different reasons.
As elaborated on in the last post, Hawks was raised by the hero system, saved fro a troubled home, and told because he had talent he simply had to become a hero.
So, if Hawks has empty motivations in this case it’s because his own agency is limited. From childhood he’s almost always done what others have asked for him, and his ability to make his own decisions, or be informed by his own motivations was pretty much nonexistant. His name is his hero name, he’s entirely Hawks.
Why is Hawks always resolving things on his own? He’s been taught by the system that there’s absolutely nobody else he can rely on. He’s been used as a tool from the beginning so the best way he can adapt to this is by making himself into the most efficient tool possible. “Well, I’ll still be a tool in the end but at least I’ll be a pretty damn good tool.” with the idea that if he does his job well enough he might be able to break free from the system that he’s become such a vital part of.
Hawks has to work as efficiently as possible, he’s obsessed with saving others and being the best even if he has to do all the work on his own and only stick his sidekicks with clean up. He’s basically tied to the job, and also of the idea of doing everything all on his own, simply because he has the ability to do so.
The irony being that Hawks obsesses over the idea of freedom, he works tirelessly so others can be free, he encourages them to be free and not waste themselves, and yet Hawks has no freedom of his own, specifically because he was born with those wings. The symbol of his freedom his wings, are also a curse to him.
So, Hawks entire motivation is agency, he wants to have agency, to be motivated to do things for his own reasons and not fro the sake of othes. He believes that people who are strong enough to fight for their own reasons are the ones that can be relied on and put people at ease but he is not one of them.
Which would explain Hawks strange opinion of Endeavor, even though once again Endeavor is somebody who created a broken home, a child abuser, the same kind of home that Hawks came from and is responsible for his current situation.
Simply put, Endeavor had agency and drive and he was able to decide those things for himself, something that Hawks is fundamentally lacking in and unable to see himself as able to do.
Hawks is so exhausted he can’t even bring himself to try, and he falsely sees Endeavor as somebody who did try even when it was impossible. So, he envies that part of him. Even after wearing himself out completely to become somebody who saves almost everyone and willingly sacrifices all of those feathers at a drop of a hat, Hawks still does not believe he’s done enough and lacks the energy to go further, and thinks he has to rely on someone like Endeavor with a big flashy power in order to set people at ease. Hawks from the beginning was setting up and manipulating Endeavor to be a symbol. He pretty much says so.
Hawks is more suited for the position, he’s more political, tactical, he genuinely wants to save people, he’s helpful to them and a friendly face, the only thing he’s lacking is being a total powerhouse which is what society thinks it needs right now, so he sets up Endeavor in his place while he works behind the scenes.
So, what Hawks is motivated by is being powerful enough to put people at ease, however the choices Hawks makes in order to fulfill that motivation are completely opposite.
His motivation is to have more agency as a hero, but his choices are always one that specifically limit his own agency. If Endeavor is a character that has all the agency in the world and abuses it to limit the agency of others, then Hawks is a character that limits his own agency over and over again even though all he desires is freedom. Both of these characters are making these choices because they revolve around the concept of being a hero.
Hawks also, was limited in his agency, in what he could become because of the circumstances of his birth and he was born with a body and quirk ideal for becoming a hero, and he still feels pressure and aftereffects of that upbringing even as an adult.
Then finally we bring ourselves to Dabi/Touya.
If Shoto and Hawks were born to become heroes, then Dabi specifically was born not to be a hero. His body would never be able to handle it. Not only to the point of not having an ideal combination of quirks and being a failure like Natsu and Fuyumi, but to the point of being physically disabled. His greater fire actively harms him because of the lack of his body and his own constitution, and the person who decided to make this risky choice to blend quirks was Endeavor, not caring about the child’s well being but rather how the child was born to fulfill his own ambitions. So, Dabi was given a shitty body since birth which limited his choices of what he could become in a really quirk obsessed society, and his father did this on purpose to him and threw him out as a failure when he did not turn out the right way.
So, the person so far born with the least agency in their situation is Touya. Whether or not he wanted to become a hero is not really a choice to him because his quirk destroys his own body, and his father dismissed him as a failure.
He’s also the inverse of Hawks, he was adopted became a hero whether he wanted to or not because he was born with a quirk that was ideal for the job. Dabi was abandoned and neglected because he was born with a quirk unideal for being a hero, and also his body would actively be destroyed if he pursued that path.
So, his response is to believe as Stain did that because he was excluded, that society itself was wrong about him and wrong about heroes.
Dabi’s introduction tells us two things, he doesn’t like people who aren’t dedicated to a cause, and who kill without reason like Himiko instantly being put off by her.
Second that he’s driven the same way that the hero killer is. That even acting as a villain, he wants to make a society where heroes act like real heroes.
It’s even apparent in his taunts to Aizawa, he tells Aizawa to act like a proper hero, to save his students. What’s a better call to action for a hero anyway than a proper antagonist.
He praises Aizawa for acting properly as a hero should. So, of allt he characters Dabi had the least amount of agency, that’s not to say he was forced to doing what he did, but he was the least suited to becoming a hero, and even then there’s still some part of Dabi that wants heroes to act properly, and there’s a cause he acts for that wants to affect some positive change.
Yet, at the same time born with the least agency, still motivated by cause and wanting heroes to act like heroes, Dabi is also of the three the character that burns up the most agency. Villains often have the most agency, because they don’t care whose agency they trample over to get what they want. In order for Dabi to have his current freedom, he had to walk over others and kill them, that became a necessary step to acheiving his goals in his mind.
Let’s say Dabi is acting like a vigilante here and giving him the most benefit of the doubt. That Stain did not like villains that acted without just cause either, so a bunch of low brand thieves only out to steal for themselves aren’t doing anything to improve society so they’re unnecessary, they’re in the way so Dabi burns them. Dabi’s ultimate goal of improving society becomes built on their sacrifice then, his agency comes from taking theirs away.
This is something Dabi is questioned about twice, you’re taking away living breathing people from the world, people with connections, all for your own purposes. No other member of the villain’s league is really questioned on their murders the way Dabi is. Because Dabi is the one who is trying to justify his killings as being for an improvement to society, the most out of anybody in the league.
Dabi’s own life was cut short, and his response now is to cut short the lives of others, for some perceived higher purpose of his. However, even still he differs from Endeavor, because of all the implicaitons that Dabi himself knows what he’s doing is wrong is feels guilty about it, and is actively destroying his own body in the process, Endeavor and Shoto both have one burn scar, Dabi’s entire body is covered in them.
Dabi’s too are inherently selfish and self driven motivation. He wants to correct the hero system yes, but only because the hero system is what created him, and he knows those cracks exist because he’s the one that fell through them. As much as it would benefit everybody, just like Hawks it’s still a deeply personal grudge created by his own circumstances.
So, Endeavor sacrificed the agency of others. Hawks sacrifices his own agency. And in his wild bid for freedom from his circumstances, Dabi is the one who makes the most radical choices. Born the son of a hero, he did the unthinkable and cast away all of society’s restrictions to become a villain instead. In order to walk that path he actively devours the agency of others around him. At the same time, he’s also limiting his own agency because he’s pushing his body and mind to their natural in born limits. Dabi acts both self destructive, and destructive of everything else around him. In order to gain agency, he destroys himself and others to get the agency he was denied when he was younger.
Yet, all three of these characters are still connected by their want to be a hero. They share a revolving motivation though each of them took a drastically different path.
