They Could Never Make Me Hate You - Blog Posts

Rei Todoroki: The Unintentional Enabler

TodoFam Discussion, you know what to expect. Pardon my rambling.

We know Enji Endeavor Todoroki is bad and abused his family, which includes Rei. Nobody is arguing that. Rei Todoroki, as the mother of the family is no better; NOT because she had ill intentions, but because being not good enough runs rampant in the entire Todoroki family. Rei Todoroki, for all her good intentions, failed as a mother.

As she takes and accepts her share of the blame in the story, I want to explore that! Rei is a really interesting character that is martyred by the fandom (understandably) but I want to explore her wrongs and shortcomings more. I love to do that with Enji, so his better half gets the same treatment.

Unreliable Narrators; throughout the series, the kids give their insight on the situation of their parents. All of which unreliable, because kids never know the full story. Least trustworthy of all is Dabi, a liar who will do anything and everything to get back at Endeavor, at the expense of his own siblings. He’ll twist the truth into something that benefits him (Hawks killing Twice) and hurt everybody in the process. The only person, therefore, that I am going to take at face value with what happened to Rei is Rei herself. The kids' perspectives are valid of course but they’re not Rei, so she’s the only one I’m listening to.

“Eugenics”; People love to throw the word around without realising what it actually means when referring to Enji wanting a child with both ice and fire, but let’s run with it for this thread. Rei comes from a family of, by this logic, eugenicists who have tried to keep the bloodline pure, at least since Quirks made an appearance because of their distaste of heteromorphs and general superiority complex. The concept of marrying people for status, genetic reasons and money is the norm to her, every corner of the Himura family does that. If she hadn’t married Enji, she would’ve either married the next person fit for her or be married to a distant relative. Thus, she is just in as much fault for agreeing to a Quirk Marriage as Enji is for even thinking of it.

“She had no choice”; Incorrect, Rei says as much. She had every choice, and Enji was the best choice when it comes to the Himura standard. Powerful Quirk, self-made high status as Endeavor and a lot of hard-earned money to provide a financial comfortable life. Rei was fully aware that she was agreeing to a Quirk Marriage, and had absolutely no problems with it, despite them being frowned upon by society, because all the Himura do this sort of thing. Rei and Enji had a miai/omiai, which is incorrectly translated as an arranged marriage. It’s a formal, traditional way of meeting someone with the serious consideration of marriage, which includes the parents/guardians. Like matchmaking. It is NOT a forced marriage, it’s a cultural difference that the west doesn’t have, so this set up is NOT coercive/weird. There are different steps to it, and one of them is ‘kotowari’, a refusal. Rei had that option but she didn’t take it “for the sake of her family”. Enji never forced her into it, her family did pressure her, but at the end of the day, it was her choice to accept or refuse.

Rei too wanted a child for a purpose; A second child was her desire that Enji agreed to, so that Touya and Fuyumi could support each other. A natural desire for siblings of course, but in the end, Fuyumi was conceived with the intent to be a child for her siblings to depend on her, which led her to being the older sister desperately trying to fix a family she once had, something she takes from Rei (‘smile through it’). Just as Touya, Natsuo and Shoto were conceived for a purpose, so was Fuyumi, and as unintentional as it was, Rei placed that heavy burden on Fuyumi, which Enji acknowledges and apologises for.

“Rei didn’t want more kids”; We don’t know if she didn’t want more kids, but we know that she was worried that more kids would negatively affect Touya because he now knew what Enji was aiming for. You can still want more kids while not acting on that want for various reasons. All we know is she was worried (rightfully so), but she saw that Enji wasn’t thinking rationally anymore (yippee mental health).

“Enji raped Rei”; I see why people think and interpret it that way. I don’t, for the simple fact that Rei herself never accuses him of such. Horikoshi is VERY show AND tell (emphasis on tell) storytelling style; if he doesn’t hold back on showing little kids getting beaten up (Deku, Tomura, Toga, Shoto, Shoji), he’d have no qualms in making Rei say that that’s what Enji did. Again, the kids are unreliable narrators and don’t know what happened between their parents, Natsuo doesn’t even know Enji as a father or person. Enji became terrifying to Rei because he was spiralling into insanity, and anybody who’s had a mentally unstable relative in their household will tell you, that’s terrifying. You end up walking on eggshells unless you’re willing to confront and deal with the problem, and until after Shoto’s birth, Rei simply didn’t.

Smile and pretend it’s all okay; Rei, seeing that her husband was spiralling into insanity because of Touya’s injuries, his inability to beat All Might and general stress, saw that emotion was taking over his rationality (yippee mental health). Instead of pushing back against Enji and try to make him see reason (cough cough like Touya cough cough), she decided to fulfil her duties as a mother and wife best she could while smiling through it. In her desire to keep her family together instead of confronting the problem at the very beginning (very hard but necessary thing to do), she enabled Enji, and by the time he started training Shoto and things got violent, it was too late. That’s where Fuyumi gets it from.

When Enji couldn’t do it anymore, neither could Rei; Up until Touya’s attack of Shoto (who Rei was holding), it seems and is my interpretation that only Enji ever tried to dissuade Touya from using his Quirk. Enji is always the one shown to try and talk him out of it, encourage him to make friends, and Rei never seems to be the one having those conversations with Touya. After Touya attacked Rei and Shoto and Enji had to stop him, he decided to seclude Shoto from his siblings. Rei (rightfully) points out that he’s running away from his fatherly responsibilities. Touya just wants Enji to look at him, but Enji is scared of enabling his behaviour further. All Enji knows is the hero world, he only knows what he's self-taught ever since his father died. He has no knowledge on how to deal with this situation. He can’t deal with it anymore, so he tells Rei that he’ll hire someone to help her with the house and kids, and to keep an eye on Touya. The one single time we’re shown her trying to do this, she fails horribly, which was always going to happen; Touya calls her out on her bystanding, enabling and being complicit in the entire thing (a reoccurring theme in MHA) but is incorrect about the details of what happened (as kids typically are). Nonetheless, Rei is unable to stop her preteen son from harming himself, and after that single scene, we have no idea if she tried ever again. Rei never had a chance to stop Touya. Unlike with Shoto, Fuyumi or even Natsuo, we are never shown a scene of Rei being tender to or holding Touya, not as a baby, not even growing up. The most tender we see her is when he’s Dabi and literally burning them all to death. Enji was and always will be Touya’s entire world, and Rei quite simply never could replace him. If Touya wasn’t going to listen to Enji, he certainly wasn’t going to listen to Rei. This is its own topic, but Touya is never shown smiling at nor looking for Rei’s attention, only ever Enji’s.

Always at home, yet never there; Rei is a stay-at-home mother, an important and demanding role that's severely overlooked and underappreciated. However, in that, even with help from the matron, she fails at, especially when Shoto is born. Enji is the breadwinner; he needs to be out and doing his job as a Pro-Hero because that’s his responsibility and that’s what how he provides for his family. And considering that he’s never around (shown by how Touya says he’s always waiting for him to have a day off) if it’s not training Shoto, Rei is the primary influence on the kids. But because she was always focusing on Shoto (like Enji), she ended up unintentionally neglecting Touya, Fuyumi and Natsuo (just like Enji). In School Briefs, Natsuo even reflects on how he started disliking Shoto for taking their mother away (because he’s a kid and didn’t know what was going on) and wanted his father’s attention too, who is a stranger to him. Just like Enji, Rei unintentionally neglected her other kids because she was focusing on Shoto (for obvious reasons).

“Enji was always violent and beat his family”; Again, no. He started becoming violent at home when beginning Shoto’s training. No other instance is shown. Still absolutely horrendous, let’s not minimise that. In the early days, Rei watched Enji and Touya train, which was their way of bonding, and she’s peaceful. He only got brutal with Shoto, and by this point, it was too late to make Enji stop. The one of two times we’re shown Enji hitting Rei, he’s pushing her out of the way that turns into a slap because she’s trying to make him go easier on Shoto. Different topic but, “he’s already five” in my interpretation is because Touya was further ahead than Shoto by this point. Rei was blindsided by Enji’s brutality with Shoto, because he wasn’t like that before. She tried smiling and going with the flow until it was too late. Based on the hospital scene after the Touya reveal, it’s clear that they never spoke in a way that mattered. The two times she tried, Enji was already spiralling and it was too late.

No communication; Enji is a mentally unwell man with heaps of unresolved trauma and issues. Rei was born into an old money family that had lost its influence and prestige a long time ago, that comes with a heavy sense of duty. They’re also traditionally Japanese to a fault. I remember seeing a thread discussing how the Todoroki are a criticism of the traditional Japanese family. Point is, both Rei and Enji leaned into their gender roles so heavily that instead of being a team, they had absolutely no communication, to the point that when Rei was unable to stop Touya, she didn’t even tell Enji. Understandably so, she would’ve been afraid of his anger and his blaming of everyone around him for his own shortcomings (inferiority complex go brrrr). Due to that, as far as Enji was aware (not at all), Rei was being successful in stopping Touya from training at Sekoto Peak. He could just focus on being a Pro-Hero and training Shoto. So when he realised that Rei had failed (like him), he snapped and projected his anger unto her for failing as a mother (like he failed as a father). His frustration is valid, his anger and violence is not. His anger would be valid if it was healthy and correctly managed, but it’s not, so he slaps her in front of Fuyumi, Natsuo and Shoto. That’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, and after that, the incident with Shoto happens.

“Rei should’ve left with the kids”; Rei was never going to leave, with or without the kids. Rei was brought up with a sense of duty as a wife and mother. She didn’t leave until Enji literally sent her away for injuring Shoto (which she instantly regretted). In her desperation to uphold her family values, she stayed. If she tried to leave, the only children willing to go with her would maybe be Natsuo and Shoto. Touya would rather burn alive than be taken away from his father, Fuyumi would be desperate to keep the family together even at that young age, and if Touya and Fuyumi aren’t going, Natsuo wouldn’t. Shoto is shown to desire a happy family as well, and he’s the only one at this point in time that Enji wouldn’t let be taken away. I’ve already talked about before if Rei could’ve left (I think she could’ve, but Enji would’ve been angry at her while letting her leave), but she simply never would have.

Too little, too late; We don’t know Rei's relationships with her parents. It’s distant for sure, and based on traditional values, she was most likely brought up by her mother more than her father (thus she tried to do the same). When she realised that she couldn’t deal with the kids anymore because they were all looking too much like Enji, she called her mother. We have no way of knowing if her mother knew what was going on or if this was the first time Rei reached out to her. Based on what we’re shown, I’m assuming she never spoke about it. But it was too late at this point. Just like Enji, Rei didn’t notice herself spiraling until this very moment, and it ended up with her reacting to Shoto and hurting him, just like how Enji reacted to Rei’s failure and hurt her (although Rei instantly regretted it, and it took Enji a whole freaking decade to realise; mental health is weird like that).

Gone for an entire decade; This was the best thing for Rei so she could get the help she needed, but her being gone for a decade with little contact with the kids, as necessary as it was for herself, made them feel abandoned. Shoto and Natsuo rightfully blame Enji, Touya kinda, well, died, and Fuyumi filled Rei’s role by ‘smiling through it’ and sweeping the problems under the carpet. The kids were never barred from seeing Rei by Enji as far as we’re aware, probably the hospital let the family know when they’d be able to visit her, which Fuyumi and Natsuo do, Shoto doesn’t until after the Sports Festival, and Enji does very often to bring her flowers but never visiting her (obviously). Only then, distanced from the fire, can she reflect and attempt to understand how all of this happened without getting hurt. That’s why the hospital scene is even possible.

“She recognised Touya during the reveal”; Personal pet peeve. She did not. Nobody did. They all thought him dead (even Enji who had obsessively looked for him; again, lots of telling, Horikoshi, not much showing), he looks and sounds completely different, fire is a common Quirk. Rei realised it was Touya after he LITERALLY SAID THAT’S WHO HE WAS. Neither Rei nor Enji realised he was their firstborn until he revealed himself as such.

Conclusion (it’s just me rambling at this point); Rei is half of the problem.

Take her out of the image and the TodoFam timeline doesn’t happen. It takes two to tango and Rei enabled Enji by knowingly agreeing to a Quirk Marriage and the two never getting to understand each other. Rei says as much, she doesn’t understand how his mind works, they never talked about their pasts or got to know each other on a deeper basis. Rei was in an impossible situation, and there’s a million ‘she should’ve’ statements, but none of them are relevant because she simply didn’t. She’s a victim as much as she is an unintentional abuser and enabler. The road to hell is paved with good intentions while the road to heaven is paved with good action; Rei tried her best, but like with the entire TodoFam, it wasn’t enough.

Rei is such a fascinating character, and the western fandom doesn’t allow her the depth and nuance she deserves. There’s no such thing as a perfect victim, and Rei is by no means perfect. She tried, but in the end, she wasn’t a good mother. She wasn’t present (for obvious reasons) until the Touya reveal, and even then, she puts the weight of being the family’s hero on her youngest. Enji was absolutely terrible and an abuser, Rei was one of his victims, but she unintentionally enabled him and became an abuser in her own right.

That’s why she takes her half of the responsibility as one of the two parents, that’s why she stops having good intentions and ACTS instead by trying to cool Touya down from exploding. Enji didn’t want her to die, and she didn’t want either of them to die neither. Instead of avoiding the problem like she and the family had for years, she finally ACTED when she was needed, her and Enji finally working together as the parents for a moment in their direst moment. Enji knows he’s the problem, that’s why he builds a new house for them to live in while he stays at the Abode, that’s why he always has that dream where his family is happy without him, and he wants them to be happy. And despite that, despite telling Rei she doesn’t need to bear this, she makes the choice to be present and strong, just like how Enji has stopped running away.

TL;DR, Rei is a deeply flawed, imperfect character that is wonderfully nuanced, like the rest of the TodoFam.

Trying her best but never good enough.

the internet acting like rachel zegler is the spawn of satan but she’s just out there like this

The starscream brain rot be hitting hard. And I have another song idea that fits him which has turned into a character analysis as well.

'The Mind Electric' with the bits that goes

"Someone help me understand what's going on inside my mind" could be the change of Starscream's mentality due to the normalisation of his abuse and how he views it as -normal-. And if it's Skybound it could be whatever the hell Megatron did to force Starscream to kill the prisoners when he first joined.

"Doctor I can't tell if I'm not me" literally the post war Starscream being paranoid he's not the same person at all as he was before like a clone maybe and the fact that he can't form connections with anyone. And again in Skybound it's the gap between Ulchtar and Starscream.

"See how I laugh at you" resembles Starscream constant undermining of others to make him feel better due to his insecurities and also the fact that his whole life he was laughed at so he does it back similar to the "abuse cycle".

"No you'll never understand" right after that bit shows how nobody has been in his situation and nobody tried to understand or reach out to help him mentally without blaming him for it or even just completely brushing it off. Also highlights how nobody believes him when he tries to talk about the abuse (Hashtag did tho even said how she believes Megatron who she looked up to a bit ig hurt him, a complete 180 of what everyone else does and the fact that she is close to Megatron but isn't brushing it off says so much -nobody has mentioned this from what I've read which is weird cause it just shows how clear Starscream's PTSD is (also fuck Hasbro for taking it away from us)). Saying how he brought it upon himself and that he kept trying to usurp Megatron meant he deserved it. And again shows how he can't grow attachments cause nobody views him as a victim only a failure who deserves his punishment so they don't find reason behind his actions. Not trying to "understand" why he hurts people or in the songs case "laugh" at them because they don't see him as a product of abuse that needs to be cared for. Only a bot who's worse than Megatron ever was.

Or this version

Its been a few days, my interests did a full 180° and I am obsessed with superior octopus/spider-man

I also screwed with the spiderverse and semi-realistic art-styles

HOW ABOUT KILLING MYSELF, LORD

son.

anyway i wanted to draw a short comic about jason

Ima be so fr I forgot this scene existed so when I rewatched s1 I genuinely felt so bad for Inho like this scene convinced me that he most definitely is not some big bad guy but instead a very broken man who’s lost so much.

this scene 🙏

No actually like when I kept seeing s1 clips on tt I decided to rewatch s1 because of how much I forgot and he was such a sweetie 🥺 like he smiled a lot more and overall was so high energy it hurts seeing him now like he’s so serious and he barely smiles MY SHAYLAAAAA

Sorry me again I have a follow up thought about the rewatch: I completely forgot about how sweet Gi-hun was in S1 :,(((( like the comparison between the two breaks my heart

I know right!! He still is kind and all, but all of that trauma took away his energetic charm. I miss that he was a lot less traumatized and happier, even though his life sucked then too.

Watching him change is heartbreaking. I am just thankful we still have him with us and that his personality still shines through his trauma.

MAX VERSTAPPEN YOU FUCKING LIVING LEGEND. I WILL LITERALLY GIVE YOU THE BEST HEAD OF YOUR LIFE RN TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF RIGHT FUCKING NOW. OH MY GOD. EAT MY SHIT FIA

and my pierresteban heart is just bursting in flames because holy fucking shit they did THAT!!

Crystal Palace they could never make me hate you.

Yes she was a total colossal bitch BUT it was purely circumstantial. She’s as good as she can be now okay. Also yea she’s a little crazy SHE CAN SEE GHOST AND SHE HAS VISIONS.

Anyways love her and I think she liked Niko.

This bitch better not die in s2 I love her sm (I already made this mistake with Tim.)

every time simon cries, i cry

but genuinely- i love how they’re writing his character. that he gets overwhelmed, with stress, with grief, with everything. and they let him cry. they let him get upset. he doesn’t just bottle things up- or, well, he does, but we get to see the fallout. it makes his character feel so much more real. simon i love you

THIS. THIS. THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN TRYING TO ARGUE SINCE. ZUTARA STANS WILL BE CLAIMING THAT AANG WAS WEAK AND SHOULD HAVE KILLED OZAI WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING HIS CHARACTER AND MOTIVES. ESPECIALLY THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF WHO HE IS AND HOW IT WOULD AFFECT HIM.

It’s time for people in the fanbase to finally accept that Aang was in complete control of the avatar state in that battle with Ozai. He was furious and his rage is clear as day, and he had every right to be. It’s tired to see people crediting Aang’s anger to Kyoshi or whatever all the time. The jokes are funny, but not here, not in this battle.

Aang enters the avatar state right after Ozai says this to him: “You’re weak, just like the rest of your people. They did not deserve to exist in this world, in my world. Prepare to join them—prepare to die.”

Aang reaches out from under those rocks and grabs Ozai, and then when Ozai tries to burn his face in the face place he burned his own son, Aang smacks his hand away and then blasts him into a rock pillar with airbending, the first element he uses against him once in the avatar state is the same element Ozai just called weak. There’s a reason Aang surrounds himself with an air bubble, and there’s a reason Aang’s airbending is so violent and unrelenting in this fight. He literally airbends so violently that he erodes a rock pillar all the way through in like 2 seconds. It’s a blatant display of the power airbending actually possesses, a big fuck you to Ozai who starts running away like a coward.

Aang is coming face to face with a man whose family line is directly responsible for wiping out his entire race of people, his entire culture. They took everything from him. He had nothing but Appa and the clothes on his back and his glider. That was it. That was all that was left of their genocide, a genocide justified by the view that Air Nomads were undeserving of life, that they were the weakest of all the nations. Imagine how full of rage he must have been. And still, he does not kill him. Not because he can’t, but because he won’t let the Fire Nation complete their genocide against the Air Nomads, he won’t allow himself to be robbed of his own culture, a culture that exists through him only, now. I feel like people really just don’t understand Aang’s character, and they definitely never give him the credit or praise he deserves.

UGHHHHHH KOSAME IS SO MUCH LIKE KLAVIER AND THE MENTOR/MENTEE THING DOESN’T HELP OHHH MY GOD

- Striving to be “perfect” or “good enough” to impress someone. (Klavier with Kristoph and Ei in later life, Ei with not only Miles, but Akari, his brother Salem, and even MVK, his mentor.)

- Immense admiration for their older brothers, even though they are both aware that they are bad people. Wondering if they also could have “fixed” this from happening.

- Ei’s hesitance when first meeting Kristoph, having a similar feeling to his brother, yet somehow vastly different at the same time. Observing him to not make a mistake, but seeing his quirks easily. // Klavier asking Ei to be his mentor because he *in theory* has the same mentality and ideals as Kristoph, but he’s a prosecutor.

- Their little musical stims! Klavier’s air guitar and Ei having his little piano tap stim!

- The obvious uncertainty and self esteem issues after their support leaves. Kristoph leaves and Klavier feels lost. Ei witnesses everyone he knows leave or become someone he can not defend anymore and masks how he feels, eventually having it get to him and isolating from everyone.

- They both had a rocky relationship with their sibling, where they would lash out and felt guilted into apologizing.

Ei shares a lot of similarities with Kristoph as well, but that’s due to them just both trying to be seen as “refined” and “perfect”. When Kristoph first meets Kosame, he wants to peel off that mask and see who he is, but once he does, he may notice only notice how Ei is a better person than him, but how he finds him similar to his brother, and may want to use him to his advantage

After Kristoph’s downfall, Ei seems to only let Klavier check in on him. The guilt of trusting too many people just to let them be against his morals hurts. I think Klavier feels similar with Kristoph and Daryan.

The Apprentice becomes the Master, as they say.

Is this too much?