#get real and start blogging about yaoi before i kill you <- joke

[idlebug]

finding a blog that posts cool art music and fashion: 😁

all the other posts are reminiscent of 2014 "pale blogs", full of "ballet aesthetic" adjacent images, very pale thin women's bodies / exploitative model photography, childish anime girls in sexy poses with meme text over them, and text posts from op talking about dieting and skincare: 🙁

[transhawks]

I got into dabi*hawks because of the potential of rivals/enemies-to-lovers and I thought they could have really interesting interactions and fics involving them could delve into some really interesting areas about morality and the grey areas (and the fact that they’re basically foils, a son of a villain who became a hero blinded to certain shortcomings and the son of a hero who became a villain because that was all he saw, yet they share similarities in their fucked up childhoods and the fact they’re basically going further down ‘bad’ paths in the current chapters, the fact they’re on different sides but in another life in another context in different events they may have been able to relate to each other..)..all to say I basically just started liking it because the idea of them interacting and their dynamic was interesting especially if they’re forced to consider the other’s views and work together (hawks in general I’m a big fan of vigilante or villain fics where he becomes more against how fucked hero society is and decides to take an alternate path to fix it) and I think hawks deciding to take more of the villains’ side is a more interesting plot line than if he ultimately dies trying to make up for his mistakes a hero, but..I feel like with how popular dabi*hawks got people think people only ship it because it’s hot or whatever and the view of it has significantly tipped down to where people get made fun of. (even though I feel hero/villain pairings are popular for a lot of these reasons in basically any media.) I have no idea where I was going with this when I started typing but I wanted to express my appreciation for finding a blog that can both like the content while neither pretending canon events didn’t happen/justifying bad things either one did nor acting like dabi*hawks fans are rabid yaoi fans who “ignore canon for their hot ship” or support abuse (I’ve never understood that one, they’re on opposite sides in canon and of course are going to fight, it’s not an interpersonal relationship in canon, so that’s basically saying all enemies to lovers is abuse regardless of context for no real reason, which is like of insulting as an abuse survivor)

One, the immense popularity, and subsequent lack of quality of shipping (as with everything, not everything made is good, and a lot of it isn't meant to be 'good' as you or I define it) does in fact give people the wrong perception or a very skewed one.

Additionally, some Dabihawks fans are in a bit of a tight spot where very hero-approving Hawks fans, the type who think he did nothing wrong, think the pairing is just a bunch of denial of little substance, meanwhile the other of the spectrum, a lot of hard-core villain stans hate it due to Hawks not living up to a lot of the 'promise' much of us saw early on.

And you talk about that promise; hit it dead on. Hawks's narrative is fascinating due to a lot of the could haves. It's why he is so richly paralleling most of the League. It's why his character is so goddamn complex.

Dabihawks started as a joke you know, I remember it. I was still new in the fandom and skipping ahead because I hate the overhaul arc when Hawks debuted. And at that point I hadn't really focused too much on the villains besides liking Dabi for being very obviously connected to Shouto, but Mirshroom kind of drew a "what if hawks and dabi went to hero school together and knew each other" thing even before we knew Hawks was a spy, and we all started calling it hotwings and thinking of the irony since Hawks was a walking icarus parallel to us...

And then.. The narrative happened.

Suddenly we were embroiled in a spy plot, and an intriguing story of a boy forced to become a hero who looked up to Endeavor, and Endeavor's likely son, born to be a hero but couldn't be one, so he became a villain. And Hawks had to work with him, pretend to be a villain.

It was beautiful.

It is beautiful.

It's gotten so much better: Hawks, the son of a villain, saved by Enji. Dabi, who has ruined Hawks's life, and yet, managed to free his shackles by destroying the cage, and yet Hawks will go back and defend the man he feels created him.

Even people who hate the pairing, and there are many good reasons I can list of stuff I don't care for in portrayals, might find it hard to deny; the setup reads like a Greek tragedy.

It reads like an epic romance novel.

And no one says those end happily, in fact, the appeal is, that they usually don't but so much of what affects us in the end is the knowledge it could have.

The clashing of two different ideologies, two perceptions of wrong and right, of justice.. One boy who was 'saved', one who wasn't.

There's so much richness that can be mined in the dynamic.

And, I guess, many are let down by canon not delivering. First off, clearly whatever this stuff between Hawks and Dabi is, it's still happening. There's unanswered questions and Horikoshi did not choose to end 299 and 300 in the exact same panel for both of them for nothing.

Whatever Hawks's fate is, it's tied to Dabi. It's tied to the Todoroki storyline. We don't know what will happen. There's been so many fics early on of us predicting one will try to kill the other - usually Dabi, and it's happened, but it might happen in reverse. That Hawks might try and kill Dabi.

The more optimistic among us, like me, can hope that Hawks somehow redeems himself by returning to his real origins - not of loving Endeavor, but being the boy who saved people he didn't know. By actually beinf a hero and saving someone who by all accounts shouldn't be saved, even if it means his life.

Even this far, through this much, can't you see how there's still so much ifs and can happens?

That's the beauty of it.

This is not a post, I think, saying other pairings are worse, or lack these qualities. Because that isn't true. But it is a post explaining why, even in the swamp of awful out of character portrayals, or people undervaluing the importance of the League, or ignorant inconvenient truths about Hawks's motivations and character, there is still so much promise and beauty in dabihawks. It's why I still ship it, and why I likely will until the end.

It's not happy. It's not neat. Like most enemies to lovers ships, there is messiness. But canon has provided a framework full of potential and exploration. And that's why it's still here as a ship.

Because we see the beauty in it.

[write-on-my-wayward-author]

Since I am a personal blog now, TIME TO RANT!

THE PROBLEMS WITH FETISHIZING GAY MEN RANT UNDER CUT!

So, I was watching the latest episode of 50% Off which is an abridged series of Free! Iwatobi swim club. Within the first two minutes, I was hit with a cold hard truth of how people fetishize homosexual relationships. Now before I go on a tangent about a certain shipping fandom, I will admit to my own fault here first.  My only gay ship anymore is Mavin. But I ship these two idiots through everything. Whether they are happy and playing video games or screaming at each other because of something stupid. Unlike most gay shippers, I don’t constantly picture them having sex. I see them doing daily life things like arguing over the color of the walls or which game is the best of the year. People can’t just think that gay relationships are all sunshine and rainbows and them sure as hell can’t use the phrase “it’s fiction” because as we have said fiction imitates reality. The whole argument of “well its fiction, so it doesn’t matter”, actually makes it matter even more. You are basically saying that gay relationships in fiction don’t matter because of its fiction. So, in that case, I can ship anyone I want. I could ship siblings for all that these people are saying when they say “it doesn’t matter its fiction.” Fiction is based on real events. You can’t just do something just because. It has to make sense. Without the air of verisimilitude, what is the point of fiction if we can’t understand it? Fiction is a branch from reality that people abuse to ship whatever they want without any reason behind it. This is another reason why when I was in the free fandom I ship MakoHaru. They emotionally supported each other through everything, and I could easily seem them in a relationship because of that emotional support they give to each other. But in the end, they are just super close friends and hey that is okay! Two straight guys can be super close friends and emotionally support each other without being gay! AND TWO STRAIGHT MEN CAN ALSO BE FRIENDLY RIVALS WITHOUT BEING GAY! But they don’t care because if you don’t like it, they call you homophobic for it even though they are homophobic for doing stuff like that and shipping and fetishizing them without actual proof that they could live with each other through their mental illnesses (if they have any) and through hard spots in life. No, they just want to see them fuck.

Now let me talk about what the episode said. In the episode, Nagisa confronts his friend Koi who ships straight men as gay hella hard and sexualize them to no end. He tells her how this is wrong, “fetishizing gay men isn’t actually supportive of the homosexual relationships as something normal. If anything it detracts from their efforts and you can guzzie it up all you want, but you still pervert it with the stuff like sinning.” At this point my eyes were wide. Mainly because in this show three of their main characters in the abridged series are canon gay, actually I think most of them are gay. So to hear him say this was a shock, to say the least. But then he keeps going. “Media involving gay men is hyper-fetishized and marketed mostly to straight women.” At this point, she responds with something I have heard all too often on Tumblr as an excuse to fetishize homosexual men. “But I love gay guys.” Now Nagisa shuts her down again with a hard truth while also bringing in his own past and how he sees it as being a gay man himself. “you can say stuff like all gay guys are the same, and like every other gay guy, I don’t consider myself a gay person. But I am dating another man.” He continues later after making a joke about his boyfriend saying, “gay guys aren’t all heart eyes, cuties ships. They have issues, relationship troubles, mental illness, and things that keep them from being happy. They are people man! Not a commodity.” This hit like a sledgehammer and there was one group of shippers that hit me hard when I first heard this.

This is why I don’t have a lot of gay ships and why McHanzo is the ship I hate the most. It’s just gay for the sake of gay. People fetishizing the two best looking guys in Overwatch together in a relationship. And if you look at most of the people who ship them they are teenage to young adult girls who haven’t played the game. They just saw two good looking men and thought “I wanna see these guys make out.” The majority of McHanzo shippers have no solid relationship ideas when it comes to these two men. They are seen as gay because they look good together and look hot having sex together. There are no cases showcasing McCree alcoholism and possible PTSD from him loosing his arm. There are no showings of Hanzo suffering from depression from killing his brother and doesn’t show the walls he has built up to keep people from getting close to him. Hanzo is portrayed as the tsundere that only opens up to McCree because he is good looking. The biggest case has to be the fanfiction  “Hang the Fool.” It is received as the best McHanzo fanfiction out there when it doesn’t portray them as an actual couple doing couple things and working through problems TOGETHER! It shows them as two men who started out hating each other soon kissing and having sex for gay sake. It is using these two as a commodity for the story rather than a true supportive relationship. Neither of these two men has been seen (in canon and in fandom) supporting each other through their hard times and through their problems that keep them from being happy. And to anyone that doesn’t like the ship, they instantly get labeled as homophobes. But in actual truth, the ones fetishizing them are homophobic as well because they aren’t showing them as a true relationship overcoming their own problems. Again I say, THEY ARE GAY FOR GAY SAKE! 

It is okay to enjoy yaoi as long as people can distinguish the romanticizing from actual romance. I enjoy Mavin and used to enjoy Hijack (Hiccup and Jack Frost) and MakoHaru. But I realized what I was doing was wrong. I didn’t see them as an actual loving relationship that helped and emotionally supported each other. I saw them as handsome men having sex. I have grown from that and make sure to give the proper showcasing of homosexual relationships in my writings. Gay men aren’t a commodity used to show hot steamy sex between two men, they are people with problems. Showcase those problems and them supporting each other. Otherwise, you are just showing them as a fetish for straight women.