#i guess we all know i'm too much of a softie to kill hawke

[superthirstparty]

not me taking 15 minutes to make a decision in a video game because from a lore perspective i should've sacrificed the character i'm attached to, but from an emotional standpoint it would've made more sense to sacrifice the other guy and have him try to redeem the mistakes of his comrades

[grimalkinmessor]

Saw ur post about what fandom characteristics u consider to be ooc for dabi, mido, zawa, etc And I was curious about the yamada and hawks one, could u elaborate on them please? Thanks!

Sure!

Now, disclaimer: I love all the characters I listed before, and acknowledging these traits doesn't mean that I'm ragging on them or dissing them. I've only ever truly disliked two or three characters in BNHA and the ones on my previous post are exactly none of them.

That being said, I'll do Mic first because I have a lot of feelings about him :3

In general, I don't see Yamada as gentle and understanding because in canon, he's not really shown to be gentle or understanding. Now, I haven't read the Vigilantes spin-off, but for the most part it seems like there's a wide gap between fandom Mic and canon Mic. And I love fandom Mic! He's a great teacher, a great dad, a great friend, a great husband, and generally the more emotionally mature of the EraserMic duo.

But canon Mic isn't really like that at all. Canon Mic has some anger issues that make him kind of sadistic. He made violent verbal threats against the doctor that turned Oboro into Kurogiri. And yes, you could use the excuse that anyone would want to do that after learning that their friend had been mutilated, but also—Aizawa, who is known to be a sadistic hardass, was sitting right there and didn't talk about wanting to torture the doctor at all.

When he was pitched against Jiro and Koda for their exam, he was fully aware of what their Quirks were and approached them like villains instead of students, which, while not bad in and of itself (All Might did the same thing), is not how I imagine fanon Mic would handle things. Mic nearly burst Jiro's eardrums and left them almost no way (in his mind) to pass the exam.

Mic is also arrogant. Not in the usual way, but in the way that he's too comfortable in his own abilities and opinions. Stubborn in his own self-confidence, I guess I should say. Which, considering that he is canonically one of the most intelligent characters (yes even smarter than Aizawa), it's not completely unfounded.

Their reputations are switched, almost; Aizawa is the one who's shown to be a secret softie while Mic is the one who's shown to go all-out and offer backhanded compliments. To be honest, if I had to pick a more 'emotionally mature' one between Mic and Aizawa, I'd have to go with Aizawa. Which...is saying something lmao.

As for Hawks—hm, I don't know if 'open-minded' is the word I should've used, but it was the closest to the one I was looking for. I think the word I should've used is 'sympathetic'. Which doesn't sound any better aha but hear me out.

The difference between canon Hawks and fanon Hawks tends to be 1. how he handles his childhood experiences, and 2. how much he cares about the League. Because fanfics aside (be still my Twicehawks heart) Hawks doesn't actually give a shit about the League members beyond his mission. From his internal monologues through his spy phase, we know that he sees all of them as threats, not friends or comrades. There's almost no hesitation when he kills Twice, and afterward he only cares about the other League members' grief so far as it affects their ability to fight. He yells at Dabi for smiling and fighting him and tries to throw him off-balance by claiming that he didn't care about Twice at all, even though Hawks is the one who killed him. And when Dabi reveals that Endeavor abused his family to the point of no return for not just one but two members, does Hawks stutter in his admiration for Endeavor? His budding friendship with him? No, he does not.

The reason 'open-minded' came to mind though, is that Hawks is in no way swayed by the League's message. There is no moment in canon where he stops for a moment and doubts that the side he's on (the side he's really on) is the right one. He thinks that hero society, as it is, is completely fine and how things ought to be run. His only goal is to smother villain activity until he doesn't have anymore work to do, and even then he never says anything about not wanting to be a hero.

Do I understand that his mindset is most likely the HPSC's indoctrination? Yes. Does that change Hawks's mindset in any way? No. Because I'm fairly sure that the way Hawks deals with his trauma is by just,,,not acknowledging that it's trauma. He thinks he's fine. If there's nothing wrong with the way he was raised, the way he was taught and trained, then there's nothing wrong with him, right?

The only time we see him acknowledge that the HPSC might be in the wrong was after Midoriya fought Lady Nagant. At no point before that was he shown to have any solid doubts about their leadership. It was someone that he was close to, that already had a connection to the HPSC and was once part of it, that got through to him.

Again, I don't think any of these things make either Mic or Hawks a bad character. I only consider fanon to be out of character, and to be honest I still love those fics because they're ideal for feels and fluff and angst. Though sometimes I do wish people would write them as they are in canon too, because the reason I fell in love with these characters in the first place is that they were so interesting in the original story.