─ ఌ︎.┆ Yume Anniversary ̟ ⊹
Today is my Yume anniversary with Hawks. 🦂💛🦅
I wanted to write something about how I fell in love with him, mostly so future me can come back here years from now and remember where all of this started... And also because many people here don't know me very well, I wanted to talk a little about myself.
I was actually VERY insecure about sharing my yume publicly for a long time.
I've seen how hostile people can be towards yumes, selfshippers and anyone who gets "too attached" to a fictional character. There's this weird tendency to treat sincere affection for fictional characters as something embarrassing, unhealthy or worthy of ridicule, and for a while I thought maybe keeping this part of myself private would save me the headache.
Then eventually I thought... why the hell am I hiding something that makes me happy because some random person on the internet might think it's cringe?
One year ago, around the beginning of August, I was coming out of one of the most difficult periods of my life. A LOT had happened in a very short amount of time, and by the end of it I felt emotionally exhausted and almost completely numb.
After everything settled down, I desperately wanted something new. Something that made me excited about being myself again.
And somehow, I found Hawks.
Which is funny because Hawks wasn't even my favorite MHA character at the time.
It started because of a fanfic.
I was writing a story about my OC Rudá, where I shipped him with Mirko, and Hawks happened to interact with Rudá's daughter, Hadria. It was the first time I actually sat down and tried to write Hawks properly.
And I had SO MUCH FUN with him.
There was something about his personality that felt strangely familiar to me. The humor, the casual attitude hiding something much deeper underneath, the way I could give his dialogue this very recognizable Brazilian flavor without making him feel out of character.
I had recently finished MHA, but my attention had been almost entirely on Bakugo. So I went back and rewatched Hawks' scenes because I wanted to make sure I wasn't exaggerating his personality in my fic.
And suddenly I was like...
How the FUCK did I overlook this guy???
The more attention I paid to him, the more fascinating he became.
So I finished Rudá's story and, exactly one year ago today, started another fanfic focused much more heavily on Hawks.
Hadria was a teenager arriving in Japan to attend U.A., and Hawks became an important person in her story. She developed this very strong platonic attachment to him because something about him reminded her of Brazil and therefore of home.
And I'm almost completely sure THAT was when I fell in love with him.
While writing Hadria looking for him, worrying about him, talking to him, trusting him and slowly finding comfort in his presence, something happened to me too.
Suddenly I didn't care nearly as much about continuing my main MHA storyline.
I just wanted to write Hawks.
I wanted to understand him.
I wanted to explore every stupid little corner of his personality.
And after spending so long feeling emotionally exhausted IRL, I was suddenly excited again. I was writing constantly. I was creating things. I was happy.
Eventually I actually had to STOP writing so much Hadria + Hawks because my own feelings for him were getting so strong that I became paranoid I would accidentally start projecting romantic feelings into their dynamic.
And Hadria is a teenager.
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT. 😭
My brilliant solution was:
So I started trying characters with him.
Different women. Different personalities. Different dynamics. I even tried men.
And eventually I had the extremely embarrassing realization that the reason nobody worked was because I didn't want to watch another character fall in love with Hawks.
I wanted to be with Hawks.
Well... That explained a lot.
And that's where Milo enters the story.
Milo started as a mixture of who I already was and the kind of person I wanted to become. Stronger, sharper, harder to shake. Someone who could protect herself fiercely while still having an enormous capacity for love underneath all that armor.
And when I finally wrote Milo and Hawks together for the first time...
It was like somebody ripped the cork out of a dam.
Every bit of romantic and sexual tension I had accumulated toward this stupid bird exploded at once.
And for the first time I allowed myself to write EVERYTHING I wanted.
All the anger I was carrying from the past. All the affection I didn't know what to do with. Vulnerability. Desire. Fear. Comfort. Obsession. Healing. Stupid domestic moments. Terrible jokes. Sex. Fighting. Devotion.
Through Milo, I could be emotionally raw in a way that had always terrified me in real life.
And Hawks became my safe place.
Today it's honestly difficult to imagine my little universe without him.
Holding one of his figures makes me happy. Getting art of us makes my heart jump. Writing him still gives me butterflies. Seeing that stupid blond bird face genuinely makes my entire body go !!!!!!1!1!!!1🌹💘💖🔥🌼💐❤️🔥💘!!!
And that's particularly funny because I've never considered myself a very romantic person.
I've never cared much about anniversaries. Grand declarations usually embarrass me. Being emotionally exposed makes me uncomfortable.
Yet here I am writing an anniversary post for a fictional blond man with giant red wings.
I KNOW Hawks is fictional.
That's actually part of why the moral panic surrounding yumeshipping is so ridiculous to me.
I'm buying silly little acrylic birds.
I'm creating art about being in love with a character who doesn't exist.
The Earth continues rotating normally.
For a while, people around me would joke that I needed therapy because I liked a character "too much", that it was unhealthy, that I was crazy, etc. And unfortunately I let that embarrassment get to me more than I should have.
Now? I genuinely don't care.
If loving a fictional character makes my real life more creative, more colorful and more meaningful, I'm going to enjoy every second of it.
And ironically, so many genuinely good things have happened to me since I decided to embrace being Hawks' yume.
I've met wonderful people.
I've created some of my favorite art.
I've become much more motivated creatively.
I've learned things about myself through Milo that I genuinely wanted to develop outside of fiction too.
I've built this ridiculous little slice-of-life universe that brings me an incredible amount of comfort.
So when I look back at myself one year ago — exhausted, curious, opening a blank document because she thought writing about this winged idiot might be fun — I'm incredibly grateful that she did.
She had absolutely no fucking idea what she was starting.
Now I have this beautiful blond bird living rent-free inside my head, surrounded by an increasingly concerning amount of merchandise, art and lore.
And somehow he brought new meanings into my life.
New people. New inspiration. New confidence.
And a ridiculous amount of comfort.
In tarot, the Wheel of Fortune represents cycles, turning points, movement and those strange moments when life suddenly changes direction.
It's also the card governing my 2026.
And I think it's very fitting that I associate it with him.
Hawks became my Wheel of Fortune.
One strange little encounter that made everything start moving again.
Happy anniversary to my stupid bird. ♡
Thank you for finding me when you did.
Here's to many more years of me being completely normal about you.
ᝰ. ᴀʀᴛ ʙʏ ᴍᴇ, ఌ︎ᴀɴᴜ ӄᴡᴀʀᴀᴄʏ 🦂⸝⸝
꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦꒷꒦︶
