#i wanted to talk about phoenixdragon and dabihawks

[transhawks]

Hawks but instead of being a well...hawk, he's a Phoenix!

I actually love this idea because one of the ideas I have for any fantasy-like AUs is that he’s a phoenix like creature... I even requested it for the DabiHawks Gift Exchange and you can see the beautiful result here. 

And more on this, because I like phoenix imagery for him and would totally not be surprised if this is one of the reasons Horikoshi made his wings red, set them on fire (via the High End arc), and further more connects him with Dabi.

Here’s how that one works out - Dabi might be a reference to Ryuutou-dabi, or a proverb meaning anticlimax, which is a very well-known proverb in Japan. Many wonderful translators have already noted this in relation to Dabi, and this is why names with Ryou were popular pre-Touya Reveal. Of course, Hori did manage to sneak the ‘Tou’ part into the birth name of Dabi, but this still very much lines him up with Dragon imagery, which I think is important here. 

The proverb literally translated is ‘head of a dragon, tail of snake’, basically starting off strong, but ending in disappointment. An anticlimax. A subversion. Clearly, Dabi’s sense of humor is very bitter, as we can see in his choice of alias. Why do I bring this up in relation with Hawks and phoenix imagery? First off, when exploring the word Dabi, a really good meta on this word and his name mentioned its Chinese origin. If we’re going to associate Dragons with Dabi, I think it’s important to mention that dragons and fenghuang (phoenix) are often paired off in Chinese culture and the union between them usually signifies balance. This often used to show unifying opposites or, well, marriage, and this sort of imagery really appeals to me. 

Lots of Dabihawks fans tend to note how much they foil each other (and Hawks foils quite a lot of people!) and just how rife the relationship already seems to be with mythic references (mostly Hellenic - the Apollo connection to Dabi/Hawks as either Icarus or as a messenger for Apollo). I this this sort of depiction and imagery also work very well and focus less on Western mythology to boot.Finally on the fenghuang imagery, I do want to also posit something I read in a blog; the wings of the fenghuang are associated with Yi, which is the Confucian principle of moral righteousness.

Given that then fenghuang are associated with the idea of ‘doing the moral thing’, and are also know to embody qualities like loyalty, I just find it fascinating to tie to them with a character whose entire arc in this manga (most likely) is struggling with what doing the right thing is and struggling with the concept of loyalty. 

So, yeah, phoenixes.