#But it's something I do to see if I'm just hating het ships

[the-invisibility-bloke]

can you spare tumblr and save your incest brother fics for ao3 or something? why all of you doing incest suddenly it’s super cringe and on top of that it was SA

Spare Tumblr? Tumblr, the freakshow site? Have you seen some of the shit on here, ​m​y friend? Nah, but I will spare my followers the rest of my rambling.

I tagged my post saxloch and saxon x lochlan. I warned for nsfw and incest so anyone who had those tags/keywords blocked wouldn’t see it. I very deliberately did not include any broader TWL tags, nor did i tag the characters’ names as an extra measure of sensitivity, and my bio explains I am pro ship. I did my job. Your job is to curate your online experience. Tumblr makes it very easy to block tags and keywords you don’t want to see, and tons of folks have been posting about these bros for months, I'm no pioneer, so I really wonder how someone could run across something they hate unless they’re trolling those tags or failed to use the tools available.

“All of you doing incest suddenly” uh the Bible did it first, so take it up with that god. Or at least take it up with Mike White, the queer man who made it canon. Second of all, incest ships have been around as long as I’ve been in fandom (20+ yrs) and beyond I’m sure. Back then it was Starcest. Wincest popularized it, then there was GoT, which didn’t bother anyone because it was het and I guess because there were dragons or something. Feature films have romanticized incest. Nothing sudden about it, either way. As for its increase in popularity, that’s partly because fandom as a whole has increased in popularity, and more pointedly, because people are realizing (this just in!) fiction is not reality and it’s okay and normal and even healthy to explore taboo/toxic/problematic things in a fictional context because it isn’t real. People are tired of policing and censoring their imaginations and fantasies. Our thoughts have no moral standing. Real-world choices are all that matter. Actions should be regulated; imagination and art should not.

“Super cringe” is probably the most subjective description in the world. Mpreg is cringe to me, I find violence and noncon nauseating. You know what I do? Shut up, keep scrolling, and let people enjoy what they enjoy. We’re all just playing with dolls here.

As for the SA, I find it interesting you call that out but not the grooming that led to it? You are welcome to interpret what happened as SA, but given the deliberate ambiguity of the narrative, to claim it was definitively one thing or another reveals a lack of critical thought. Mike White is known for (and proud of) creating subversive queer sexual content. He is a brilliant storyteller who developed a storyline intended to confuse, distort, spark debate, and challenge our perceptions of sexuality, abuse, and the human psyche. This storyline hinges on its ambiguity. Each line of dialogue, each editing choice, each frame was meant to leave us wondering. As an audience, we were intentionally not given adequate information to make irrefutable claims about what happened. You cannot analyze this story in black and white, and in trying to do so, you've misread the entire creative intent. We have no idea what transpired between the kiss and the infamous handjob, nor do we know what happened after. That was a total of maybe, what, 60 seconds of severely intoxicated flashback content? And the incredible vagueness of the brothers' final conversation afterwards? That was all intentional, man. We were intentionally deprived of further clarifying footage in order for the narrative to uphold ambiguity. For all we know, they could've engaged in other sexual activity before and after the handjob heard 'round the world. The point is we don't know, so no one can definitively claim it was or wasn't SA.

But none of that matters because it's fiction, and ships can be as fucked as we like. :)

Please be sure to block me because I'm not done "doing incest," thanks!

[ahoyakosi-kape]

EDIT: Seeing all of this pointless nonsense like "a lot of people hate het ships because they aren't willing to engage with fictional relationships that involve women" gives me headaches. I hope you can acknowledge that mlm ships are still important because THEY'RE QUEER, THAT CONSERVATIVES ARE SEEKING TO CENSOR. While also noting that certain "fujoshis" are presenting sexist trash. After decades of heterosexual ships being the norm, it's now "if you hate het ships, that's because you hate women" instead of "hehe, het ships are awesome when they're bi4bi / t4t." The idea that watching men kissing men wears you out is simply embarrassing. Especially if you complain about it publicly. You suddenly sound like a right-wing jerk who hates Pride Month updates on games, even if they have been around longer than their ejaculation. If you see mothers in their 80s watching gay porn, you guys would faint. And no, whining about White homosexual guys cosplaying as Black women isn't the same as being "uncomfortable" with the amount of mlm fanfiction—the former is a real problem because it hurts Black women and the community. It's also a serious situation that White gay men would evoke their Whiteness first and last. Women drawing gay porn should be the least of your problems. If you told me that gay men aren't legitimate because they're males, I wouldn't be surprised at all. Stop propagating radfem talk. As a girl participating in fandom like millions, I acknowledge that it can be challenging to see female characters examined engagingly. It just stings that all the focus is placed on male characters with similar motifs. There are harmful clichés thrown around, like "disposable girlfriend" or "jezebel." It's evident in Arcane fandom. "They make the woman be a fujoshi/cuck so it's accessible to ignore them" is something I've read, and I agree. It's questionable; it's unwarranted. Nonetheless, it's simple to overlook half of their content without coming across as hostile. I know it's absolutely tempting to educate them, to lash out, to call them a "stupid bitch"—but if they're that idiotic, nothing can be pursued. You do not want to waste your IQ. I block some fujoshis that piss me off because it's just common sense. Yet, I keep wondering if there's an appropriate solution for it. Unfortunately, everyone's answers include "ban BL content so fans would be put to shame!" and the fact that it tolerates conservative and puritanical discourse, which backfires into endorsed homophobia (yes, it always does). You struggle to ensure civility in the face of your hatred for yaoi—yaoi that incels and dudebros despise—and are prepared to eradicate it because it is "woke trash." How much are you willing to redefine fictitious heterosexuality as a "feminist empowerment" concept? Is this not insane to you? Are all the discussions about heterosexuality being 'a tool of patriarchy' meant nothing to you? Are all those repugnant comments from dudebros in a Facebook anime fanpage that fuel your spite to create gay shit—gone? Are you really gonna woke-ify heterosexuality? The same material that's weaponised to hurt queerness? It's exasperating that many fans are driving fictional women/of colour away from romance just for White men's yaoi to be the spotlight. I know the problem, it's not for nothing, and we want to provide solutions. But, I'm begging you, with clasped hands and kneeling, there's a suitable method to talk about this without coming out as your reactionary grandfather who despises communism. Don't be soft, but be stern. Don't insinuate yourself with tactless bullying. Be clever. It's not an excuse to indulge homophobia. You have to know when to recognise intersectionality. Some fans are rancid, I know, but queerness is still queerness. Fiction and reality. Saying something like that is literally anti-gay with progressive language. Performative activism has hurt you enough.

Anyway, I think we should all just inject fentanyl into our veins for progressing like this. It's really embarrassing. I think queer people in the 90s would have a stroke seeing us with this behaviour.

[moliathh]

people accusing alutegra shipper of homophobia and lesbian/aroace erasure are so funny because ONE, as a fan, i cannot make or remove a queer representation of a media, that act can only be done by the creator/producer/corporation/ institution themselves, the fanworks you make for a ship does not held the same weight as official materials. It's a bit insulting that you are comparing fanworks made out of love (that could very much be made by queer people) to a phenomenom driven by hate and bigotry and was a contributing factor to the oppression of queer people. Throwing around big words, accusations, that were meant for something very serious and harmful to refer to something unharmful just because you dislike a ship is not a very LGBTQIA+ friendly thing of you to do. Do you think of homophobia so lightly? Accusing REAL queer people who are being subjected to homophobia on a daily basis because of something they love?

SECOND OF ALL, let's assume that your headcanon is true (i haven't speak of the fact that its basic fandom etiquette to treat headcanon as something personal and not universal and don't harass other people over unharmful difference in opinion). Let's say, Integra is a lesbian, which is a headcanon. Did we collectively forget Alucard is canonically genderfluid? Yet you're referring to Alucard/Integra as a "cishet" ship? Does a queer person get stripped of their queer identity when they participate in a relationship that is male/female presenting? I thought we are about "queer rep"??? How convenient it is to deem him a cis het man and headcanon Integra as a lesbian to make the shippers look bad. Oh, and on the way of watering down queer identity into a caricature, you are also claiming ace people cannot have sex and it's disrespectful to depict ace people having romantic/sexual relationship. As if asexuality isn't a spectrum ranging from "little to no attraction" and the definition of sexual interaction is very loose, especially for queer people. Do you even care about queer people at this point?

And before any of yall jump me, i am queer myself how can i be homophobic my bitches are gay I AM GAY. I'm so sick and tired of yall justifying hate by pretending to care about the alphabet mafia. DO YOU REALLY? It was never that serious, just say you hate the ship and get tf going. I think its perfectly fine and cool to hate a ship just because you hate it, i do! I have headaches and want to vomit when i see ships that i hate but i dont feel the need to moralize it nor do i have to bring it to the face of the shippers or bad talking them. What really piss me off is how you drag real QUEER people through the mud for some fucking little pixels. Go outside, have some empathy. When fascism and censorship comes to wipe us out none of us gonna be spared because you are "one of the good ones" so stop fucking eating at your own community omg if you dont like something and its unharmful then BLOCK

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/765221485179731968/writing-about-my-favorite-characters-as?source=share

I'm really sorry to hear you're going through this, anon. I'm even sadder that it's not an uncommon story.

As another trans writer (trans woman, in my case) that's stumbled into other people eviscerating her works for "fetishizing" and being "het in f/f's clothing" I really sympathize with you, dude. The way I look at it is that you cannot try alter who you are for these people. They will always find a way to dislike you because you are their ideological enemy. They dislike seeing trans men in what they see as their ship tags, not yours, so they will always find something they view as a flaw and flog you for it until you either conform or leave.

I've had a similar experience to yours, though not a literal thread dedicated to me. Ouch. I write f/f and sometimes that features non-op/pre-op trans characters because I am personally non-op after many years on E, and I'm always astounded by how it obviously upsets people that otherwise claim to be progressive. I also tag things extensively and I even include some terminology clarifications at the beginning of smut fics so that everyone knows what they're getting into. It doesn't matter to them. It'll never matter to them what you or I do, so why bother trying to coddle them?

There are readers that like my works, but after walking into a fandom Discord's NSFW fic channel, I saw how many people assume that my fics are written by a cis person or the fabled Dirty Fetishizer. It's one thing to intellectually know this happens and another to see your own work - something that you as a trans person created to talk about some part of yourself - ripped apart as this nasty tripe that no "real" trans person would write or read.

To make matters worse, I saw all that after I went through a rather nasty spate of transphobic anons when the fandom was very young. It was so tiring. I was exhausted. Seeing virulent hate in the real world and then having it thrown in my face for writing characters in a way that people disagreed with was just too much for me.

My way of dealing with this was disengaging from my own fandom, turning off anons on tumblr, and blocking anyone I even felt slightly annoyed by just in case it boiled over into something else. It sucks, but it's how I continue to have fun with writing for my ships. I basically never go into my ship tags on Tumblr now, I curate whose fics I read carefully, and I only hang out in one Discord server that's very small. I still read and comment on others' works when I have the mental bandwidth for it, but I avoid most other writers, especially those I don't know just in case they're part of that -phobe segment, and keep the most vocally unpleasant authors permanently muted for my own sake.

Frankly, it is what it is, as thought terminating as that phrase can be, and I gave up trying with these people/this fandom. You could keep trying to interact with the greater fandom, but you should block the assholes that disregarded your lived experience for your own mental health.

It's an isolating process for sure, but that's why I supplemented it with seeking out other fandom friends, most of whom are trans. Maybe we disagree with headcanons, and in a lot of cases we're polar opposites, but we all stick together because otherwise we're all thrown into isolation. That, and I always try to focus on the folks that do like what I write.

--

[miraamio]

Hellooo there was something abt your post that kinda got me thinking. The mha fandom has always been populated by mostly fem and general queer people, which is probably the reason why these toxic brodudes were SO pissed whenever anything queer looking would happen in the story, and why their reaction to 430 was so bitter and vindictive. They hate when they see the queers feeling like they have been catered to, and they hate having to be creative by themselves.

I watched a video by a yt named Shaun, abt a fake outrage that the same kind of brodudes instigated, but with the difference being that it was abt video games. He said something that seriously makes sense even in the context of mha and various other mangas.

"They don't want to be a part of diversity, they want to be superior to it. They don't want a game with the option to cater to them, they want to be the ones who the game solely caters to".

And to me, that is exactly what 431 is.

Now i'm gonna be honest, my opinion of Hori wasn't the greatest before, and after that it just became really sour. But i recognized his capabilities and his passion. So being as chariable as possible coming from me; i think he just got angry that he had to see people criticizing the previous ending in such a humiliating way. It wouldn't be surprising, since the the fuss they made wasn't just in one place, it was everywhere. Everyone was spreading misinformation to hell and back and even attacking him personally.

He tried his best to counter all of what they were saying, by making everything they wanted a possibility at the very last minute. But, as you know, the things they wanted were absolutely nothing but the bland, underdeveloped het ship becoming canon. And for that, everything had to be dumbed down, forgotten, or forced in a shoddy way. Now all the same ppl who were pissed are praising him for "fixing" his ending.

He'll probably try to do damage control if the backlash of now gets to him, by like, idk making family/romantic illustrations for Iz/och? Which to me personally will just mean that he really is that lazy or weak willed. But maybe he will just show cool illustrations and stay quiet.

I think you are sooooo right about dudebros wanting a piece of media to only be catered to them. Your quotation is also so on point.

The biggest problem with mha is that it’s debut, and the initial few years of its publication, it mainly garnered a very dudebro like fanbase. Even during the first half of 2020 when it blew up, it catered heavily to dudebros with fan service and power scaling. The issue is that eventually as the manga transcended to become something that was much more inclusive, it stopped catering to these guys.

I have always said this but a man’s biggest enemy is women and queer people. So when a fanbase garners a massive female and queer audience, it becomes a job for these guys to shame said consumers who actually heavily heavily contribute to the popularisation of said media. I’m not sure if you have seen the video of that woman on tiktok who went viral for crying over chapter 431 and how aggressive these “normal” guys were towards her. I believe infiltration of fandom spaces mainly happens when the author tries to cater to EVERY side of the audience, the dudebros, women, queer people. And it simply cannot work that way. This is something i have always critiqued on Hori’s part, that despite that sheer density and strength of his story, he becomes directionless when it comes to appealing to certain sides of the fandom. Which is why we get sm fan service, sm forced izcha crumbs, its Hori’s attempt at keeping both bkdks and izchs happy. And it simply does not work that way.

However, i truly truly thought his choice of ending 430 the way he did was groundbreakingly beautiful. It was the most amazing open ending we could’ve had. But his choice to publish 431, which, he too, seemed unwilling to, really undid 430 chapters of his hard work because not only did it fracture the narrative and corrupt the characters but it also dismantled everything he had built. In a way, it also very much ruined mha in multiple ways.

I hadn’t seen a relationship as beautiful as tgchk and bkdk in shounen before, it was so raw and jarring in so many ways. And as a bisexual woman, Toga’s conclusion felt very dear and personal to me. But sadly, the ending really left a hole in my heart. So when i see these dudebros violently trashing ships and calling them senseless I cannot help but feel super sad because in a way, after chapter 430 the number of these aggressive dudebros had significantly reduced maybe because they were forced to come in terms with the finale. But 431 really resurfaced them in the worst way possible.

[stillness-in-green]

What do you think about Horikoshi ending the manga without a canon couple? Do you ship or used to ship MHA characters? Did you see romantic potential? Do you think Horikoshi might confirm a couple later?

No canon couple?  Au contraire, my dear anon!  The manga ended with the most important canonization of all!

(Everybody give a huge hand to The Only Hets Who Matter, Gentle and La Brava; they deserve it.)

As to the ships people actually care about or were expecting some word on (e.g. the stuff with the students), my reaction there is overwhelmingly “lol gj hori”.  I’m glad he ended it with no canon student couple to speak of!  While I do sympathize with the position of certain people on Twitter who contend that Ochaco’s arc about repression really needed her to actually confess to Deku, I hated what her crush on Deku did to her arc anyway, so I don’t have it in me to be too annoyed.  Anyway, I don’t think it’s possible to do the Iron Might 2.0 part of the epilogue if Deku and Ochaco[1] have been dating the entire time, so I’m perfectly happy to run with the headcanon that she did confess at one point and it didn’t work out for whatever reason, so by the time the last chapter rolls around, they’ve just been friends for years.

1: Or Bakugou, for that matter, but with all due respect to the BakuDekus who haven’t been seeing Shonen Jump battle manga come and go for twenty years with nary a confirmed gay MC amongst them, that was never in the cards.

I remember posting once ages ago about a Japanese fan’s hope that Horikoshi, who the fan perceived as being at least somewhat progressive about women, could manage to end the series without a bunch of timeskip romances showing up at the last minute.  While I have some deep reservations about Hori’s progressive cred at this point in time, and am not tremendously impressed with his writing of women, either, credit where credit is due: he did end the series without any timeskip romances.

As to there being any confirmation of couples in the material we have remaining, I imagine the last train station[2] for that is going to be the final volume release in December, as, on top of the usual volume extras, Horikoshi should be considerably more free to include expansions that his schedule and exhaustion kept him from in the weekly publication.  I could even see a bonus chapter of some sort, maybe something post-epilogue so we can see the power suit in action or something silly and fourth wall-breaking to celebrate the series conclusion.  There’s also going to be one last fanbook released in January, which I have been assuming will be a data book like Ultra Archive.

2: Or harbor, I suppose, since we’re talking about ships.

Now, do I think any of that stuff will confirm ships?  Eh, that’s not really in my analytical wheelhouse.  The farthest I’d venture to guess is that I would a) not be surprised to get some clarification on Deku and Ochaco, and b) definitely peg the volume release to have material like that over squirreling it away in the fanbook.

For myself, my shipping habits are somewhat erratic—it’s not really where my primary engagement in media lies, and certainly not for this series!  But that’s not to say I don’t have ships, or that I’m not happy to talk about them, so if you’re curious about that, do feel free to hit the jump.  I’ll order them by general sphere first, then by how passionate I am about them compared to ones I just think are kinda cute or funny for whatever reason.

DISCLAIMER: While I have not explicitly stated as much here before, I am a 40-year-old asexual proshipper, proshipper here meaning I'm in favor of curating your own fandom space and not harassing people about their fictional ships under any circumstances.  When I say I ship something, that does not mean I’m idealizing the relationship, want it to be canon, think it would be cool in real life, or am mentally putting myself in the place of one the characters.  It’s solely because there’s something in the dynamic I think is fun or interesting, and “interesting” can very much include the same kind of interest one might have in watching a building get demolished. 

That is to say, there are a handful of Too Problematic For Tumblr ships in here—one age gap but otherwise wholesome, one age gap and tacitly abusive, and one that really hits the Tumblr Trifecta by being age gap, abusive and incestuous. I've put all three at the very bottom in their own section in descending order of Most BadWrong, but if you’re one of those people deep into The Discourse about how ships need to be Morally Correct otherwise the shippers are terrible people who should kys, this is not the post for you.  The block button’s there if you need it—and be advised that it’s there if I need it, too, and I’m not afraid to use it. (I grew up in dark fantasy shoujo fandoms; I am not litigating my ships with anybody.)

~~~Stillness’s Dubious and Delightful BNHA Ship Opinions~~~

Villain-o-rama-rama:

Spinarakiya, ShigaRD, Spinaraki: Alas for my short-lived OT3!  I was really, really pumped for this in the stretch between MVA and the early stages of the first war, what with there being such interesting possible angles between all three parties, only for Re-Destro to get arrested and never seen in person again, Spinner to get snatched up by Gigantomachia and never look back, and Shigaraki to get lost to the possession plot for, at least as far as scenes with his allies were concerned, basically the rest of the series.

Not exactly great material for my shipping heart, though I’ll refrain from the rant comparing how long the PLF members were living in close contact with each other compared to the League of Villains and why that should have meant they developed stronger relationships than what we got.

But canon being what it is, I do still ship the hell out of these three in a canon divergence situation, or any number of potential AUs.  I love the connective tissue there, with Re-Destro + Shigaraki having some startlingly strong background parallels and lasting injuries courtesy of each other, Shigaraki + Spinner having the gaming and the emptiness themes, and Spinner + Re-Destro having their Big Gay Feelings About Shigaraki as well as an appreciation for patterned fabrics some shared early frustrations about Shigaraki’s seeming lack of plans or direction.

It's a good dynamic, and I think they could all do a lot for each other, though certainly not in ways that are good for the continued survival of Hero Society.  But fuck Hero Society anyway.

As to the component parts, I don’t ship Re-Destro and Spinner without Shigaraki being at least an invisible part of the dynamic (though I would read the fic where he wasn’t with considerable interest!), but I’m also very much on board with ShigRD and Spinaraki individually.  My constant refrain about Shigaraki and RD is that they have a lot of common ground but very little common language, and I’m fascinated by how much of that they could recognize in each other and how much of it they could then recognize back in themselves, versus how much you’d get one of those cases of, “This guy is a freak and I’m so normal.”

It's so, so, so important to me that Re-Destro is the first ally Shigaraki won entirely on his own merits.  He's got no borrowed reputation from Stain, no monsters on loan from Sensei, and no help from people on Sensei’s payroll, yet still, as a result of his efforts (both in his own fights and in making the League his own, even if it didn’t start that way) he wins himself an army and a follower who never saw a light that wasn’t his.

I weep for the Shigaraki/Re-Destro relationship we could have had if Horikoshi didn’t decide that Shigaraki in the endgame was to be nothing but a pawn, and therefore couldn’t be allowed to keep any of his markers of independence and growth.

As to Spinaraki, man, what is there even to say?  The relationship so clear and obvious that it had even the mhatwt bros out there saying, “Spinaraki but at what cost?” in the last chapter!  I will admit that I liked them better when their romance had that apocalyptic tinge than when it suddenly started getting painted as primarily about them being Gamer Bros, but at least that melancholic “beauty at the end of the world” shading came back when Shigaraki talked about destroying Mount Fuji for Spinner (be still my heart!).    

They will meet and be close in every world and I will hear nothing else.

RiKoku: I don’t think I truly understood the appeal of ex-lover ships until these two.  They snuck up on me in a big way, pretty much entirely a result of my realization when I was halfway through the (first and only, sadly) MLA Week event that Trumpet was pretty free-roaming and independent from Re-Destro all the way through Deika only to be glued to his side from there on out.  Together with the Spinner parallels (the subordinates who fought each other and then came together to the crater to see their worlds remade) and my jokes about wanting to see the MLA heads during their stressed-out, over-achiever college years, all the pieces fell into place for a Rikiya and Koku who had dated for a few years and then broken up when Rikiya realized that his authority as Re-Destro—and Koku’s strong subordination to that authority—meant that he could not responsibly stay in the relationship.  (This also presents several good explanations for why a man in Rikiya’s situation isn’t married with at least one child already.)

Anyway, to me, they never really fell out of love with each other; Re-Destro just couldn’t justify overlooking the power dynamic problems once he realized how extreme they were.  (This does make for a fun alternate angle on RD’s personal life post-Deika, wherein Trumpet watches RD pass the mantle of leadership to Shigaraki Tomura and then more or less immediately pounces on him because now he doesn’t have the power dynamic excuse anymore.  Look up the great Whatever Is Spared by @leftofrevolution on AO3 for more on this.)

Overhonest: I just like Nemoto much more than I like Chrono, and thus my Overhaul ship of choice follows suit.  I like the idea that their feelings are wildly unbalanced but not totally one-sided—Overhaul has more baggage than a freshly loaded airport carousel, but he does like the Shie Hassaikai, as proven by them being mentioned in the Likes section of his character page. Nemoto in particular is someone whose presence we know Overhaul finds reassuring and we know it because he told Nemoto so directly when Nemoto asked, which means it can’t be anything other than the plain truth.  He relies on Nemoto enough to make demands of him, he expects (and gets!) effectiveness, and he even bothers to take the time to justify out loud why it would be okay for him to merge himself with Nemoto physically (because Nemoto would say yes if asked, right? of course he would) rather than just doing it with no thought to Nemoto’s feelings about it because why should he care about that.

And Nemoto, for his part, is of course an obsessive weirdo who’s totally smitten with the first person he’s ever found who legitimately wants him around, so smitten that he’ll happily overlook the fact that Overhaul primarily wants him around because he’s useful.

Moving away from what’s on-the-page canon, I enjoy (and write) the take that Overhaul is sex-repulsed, not because he’s fully asexual, but as an extension of his mysophobia.  This makes his sex life extremely fraught, but not non-existent.  When I dabble with writing them (and they’re by far the ship I’ve written the most explicit material for in this fandom), I write him as basically a sex-repulsed demi (not that he would know or use that terminology!) who is attracted to Nemoto but has been largely left aggravated and sexually frustrated by their periodic experiments in non-traditional ways of getting him off.  (Nemoto, for his part, is more than willing to keep trying!  No kink is too weird for this guy if it means finding something Overhaul would actually like.)

(To get real here for a second, if Spinarakiya is meaningful to me as a person who’s comfortably poly, Overhonest is meaningful to me as an asexual person who's only ever had allosexual partners.)

AFOUji: Truly the Evil Husbands of all time.  I wish the shift from Final Boss Shigaraki to Final Boss AFO hadn’t left Ujiko with a few truly inexplicable characterization beats,[3] because I truly do love these two as just the worst pair of mutually enabling monsters making the world worse and more dangerous for everyone while being 100% supportive of each other’s passions the entire time.  Here’s to 70 years of Dark Lord/Mad Scientist domestic bliss.

3: For the record, I consider these to be his, “I've only been living for the boy's sake,” line in Chapter 269 and his clear reticence and dissastisfaction with Shigaraki getting the surgery in Chapter 240.

DabiSkep: Skeptic is the only man Dabi has ever thanked for his contributions.  Dabi goes out of his way to kidnap him.  I’m 90% convinced that they’d been working on the video together prior to the Villa raid.  The combination of Skeptic’s deep and abiding neuroticism with Dabi’s swings between lazy malice and manic pushiness is extremely funny.  What can I say; it’s just about the only Dabi ship that really clicks for me.  I enjoy leftof’s take that Skeptic had a goth phase he never completely exited and so Dabi appeals to his inner Hot Topic teen, which he is 100% aware of and 150% embarrassed by.

   

School Environs:

Mirio/Tamaki: Tamaki literally regains consciousness at the exact moment Mirio loses his quirk.  Other than cases where there’s some actual explanation for that—a magical connection, psychic powers, etc.—I have never seen that kind of beat happen outside of a shoujo manga.  The bit where one romantic lead just mysteriously has a Bad Feeling in the same instant that something Bad happens to their love interest is so shoujo-coded.  Jesus Christ, Tamaki is so moe.  And Mirio so clearly thinks the world of him, too, as evinced by what an over-the-top sobriquet he dubbed Tamaki with.  They’re great, end of story.

Monoma/Shinsou: I’ll admit I liked this somewhat better when I thought there was any chance at all Shinsou might end up in Class B—I kind of loathe that he wound up in Class A for the self-evidently terrible reason that it’s The Main Character Class, when it seems so obviously a conflict of interest for Aizawa to be teaching him.  But eh, it’s okay; it just means Monoma will have to nobly learn to look past it after a lot of time spent being completely obnoxious about it.

My annoyance with Shinsou’s class placement aside, Monoma is one of my favorite students, and I like that he immediately latches onto Shinsou as a kindred spirit.  And, like, if that were 100% one-directional, I would probably shrug it off, but Shinsou, despite trying to play at being aloof, does actually get invested enough that he gets pretty bothered by the idea of Monoma needing help, even in something as inconsequential as a class exercise.  It’s just a much, much more interesting dynamic than Shinsou has with Deku or especially Kaminari.

Also, as someone with a bit of a Thing for mind fuckery, the way Copy and Brainwash can play off each other is Good.

MomoJirou: The fanart is cute and I like Momo better than Kaminari.  And the culture clash thing is fun.

Shouto/Inasa: The fanart is cute and I like Inasa better than Deku or Bakugou.

   

Professional Sphere:

Hawksdeavor:The age gap adds flavor.  The fact that Endeavor is still married but deeply unhappily so makes it even spicier.  The difference in what they represent (or could potentially represent) to each other is the best part, with Hawks, for Endeavor, being someone who represents a totally clean page, while Endeavor, for Hawks, represents a lifelong adoration.  Finding each other’s reality in all of that would be an interesting relationship arc and could be extremely fulfilling and strengthening for both of them.

The spoiler is (or at least should have been, if I’d been writing the series) their divided feelings on Dabi.  Honestly, I really wanted to see them clash over the matter of Touya and how to deal with him, with Endeavor wanting to save him but not knowing how and Hawks just wanting him gone but not knowing how to get away with it.  A certain pair of facts is glaring to me: first, that Hawks was a chief architect of the second war’s battle plans, whereas we never saw Endeavor involved with them at all, and second, that, when the big day came, Endeavor was slated to fight All For One with Hawks at his side despite at least some guilty protests from Enji that he really ought to be facing Dabi.

It smacks strongly of Hawks making some profoundly selfish decisions under the guise of clear-headed strategy and I really wanted it to blow up in his face when Dabi found his way to their battlefield anyway.  Pushing Endeavor into a place where he had to choose between them and ultimately chose his son (say, by protecting him from an attack coming from Hawks) would have been validating for Touya, done a lot to lever Endeavor’s arc out of the reactiveness and passivity that drag it down so badly in the canon, and also handed Hawks a real consequence for how dismissively he treats the lives of Villains and how much he’s tried to avoid reckoning with both Endeavor’s abuse and Enji’s own attempts to do said reckoning!

In summary, Hawks and Endeavor could be very good for each other, and the incredible amount of baggage they’d have work through first would be key to either making that good ending feel earned or lead to them dramatically and deliciously imploding.  Either one works for me, and either one, even without the romantic angle, would have been more interesting than the pablum we got.

NightMight: Speaking of could-have-been-good relationships that dramatically imploded!  I love Sir Nighteye as the most visible cost of All Might’s lifestyle, the one he lost because he couldn’t step away from the path his ideals had set out, and how that ideal inevitably took him full circle so that he found himself standing, for Deku, in the same place Nighteye once stood for him.  And of course by then it was too late and Deku wouldn’t listen to him anymore than he himself listened to Nighteye back then.

But Nighteye didn’t give up on caring about him, even if he had no avenue left to express it but throwing himself into finding a successor All Might would accept, which led to Nighteye's own (wonderful) relationship with Mirio.

Just great, difficult, adult stuff about irreconcilable differences that never stopped them from caring about each other even as those differences forced them to their parting of ways.

Mount Lady/Kamui Woods: They’re cute and I like the idea that they both have trouble, for opposite reasons, with cameramen.  I like that he calls her just Lady when he thinks she’s in trouble.  And not to put too fine a point on it, but I like that they’re kinda the most explicit Pro Hero couple and yet she’s the more prominent and important character with the more visible arc, which is a nice contrast to most of the other hetero relationships in this benighted manga.

   

Other/Cross-faction:

Togachaco: The yuri ship that could.  My god, the canon divergence I want to give these two.  You know why I want Deku and Ochaco to not be together in the end?  Because I want Ochaco to realize that she did everything in her power to save her Villain while Deku—after all that talk on the cliff!—just killed his, and triggered Toga just before he left to do it, meaning Ochaco had a harder time with Toga than she might have otherwise.

But, I’m not here to talk about No. 2 Green; let’s talk instead about the canon divergence where Toga survives (shove that absurd death-via-blood-transfusion right into the incinerator) and then Ochaco has to come face to face with a system that does not want to let her be anywhere near as kind as she wants to be.  The canon divergence where Ochaco realizes that her forgiveness is immaterial to justice, where she watches the system she fought to defend gear up to try Toga as an adult because Japan needs a scapegoat for the destruction of the war and all of the people who are actually most responsible are already dead or dying.  Where Ochaco realizes that she has to do something drastic if she doesn’t want to live the rest of her life haunted by the knowledge that her compassion got a 17-year-old victim of emotional and psychiatric abuse executed by the state.  The one where she decides to take a fucking stand, and it forces the rest of her class to confront that need as well.

“The cutest girl in the whole world,” my god.

Kotarou and Nao: I’m not as big on it by the time we’re seeing them in the Tenko flashback, though I certainly wasn’t pulling for some mean-spirited, allegedly feel-good “Nao slaps Kotarou and the whole family walks out of him” thing like you see in fanfic sometimes.  No, what I really like with Kotarou and Nao is thinking about them when they’re both still young, in the stretch of years where they really think they'll be happy together.  That her being with him can make all his problems go away, that him being able to bury his past and be better than all the people who hurt him (and there were so many people who hurt him) will be enough, that love is the answer to everything. Sure, the cracks are there, but they’re thin, and they can be hidden beneath all the days when things are good, when the two of them hold each other and feel safe and loved and sure.

The cracks are still there, and love isn’t enough when love becomes a band-aid and a blind eye.  But the love is still there too, and it’s so fierce and so desperate, and it still won’t save them.

Sorry, everyone; they make me emotional.  They are beautiful in the way of sparks dancing above flames, or early flowers blooming right before a vicious cold snap.  Ah, me.

StainMight: GOD, All Might really needed to grapple more with Stain’s side of his legacy.  Like, StainMight is really a victim of the way the story looked like it was setting up to criticize All Might’s methodology as well-intended but not sustainable long-term, but then, like every other aspect of the series that was about systemic critique, that criticism just evaporated and Stain became an All Might cheerleader with nothing to say about the system All Might supported for thirty years.  Maddening!  But for real, All Might should have been badly hurt in that car attack and then rescued by Stain, both to give Deku some stress about how All Might could be in danger after they parted on bad terms, and also to really make All Might have to sit with this opinionated zealot all-too-prepared to talk about how no one else is really living up to his example.

And there should be UST the whole time.

Yoichi and Kudou: I am almost entirely negative towards the OFA Collective these days, especially Kudou’s role in the endgame, but I still have some fondness for what he and Yoichi could have been.  My god, the first One For All transfer really should have been because they kissed.  More beautiful, more tragic, more profound, and preserves the Yoichi that had some actual fucking agency in the life he lived instead of just constantly being AFO’s or Kudou’s trophy princess there to talk about how respectively terrible and awesome they are.

TogaTsuyu: I just think it would be interesting if Tsuyu were actually allowed to be more present in the Toga plotline, rather than only arriving as a spoiler to avert major shifts every time.  Toga says she likes Tsuyu, too, after all, and Tsuyu is so different from both Ochaco and Deku, so much more thoughtful and considered.  I dunno, I just wonder how things might have gone if, for example, it had been Tsuyu that Toga managed to draw away in the Jakku fight.  Given that side story with her snakey friend Habuko, evidence suggests that Tsuyu is a good deal more observant and intuitive than Ochaco, and I wonder if she might have been able to suss out what Toga was actually asking there better than Ochaco did, and how that might have changed things.

   

.

.

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THE TUMBLR PROBLEMATIC ZONE:

Gentle Criminal and La Brava: I was willing to follow the canon’s initial vagary about these two, but I also like them quite a bit together, so if canon wants to put them in wedding rings at the end of the series, that’s fine by me!  Yes, I’m aware that there’s a pretty significant age gap there, which would have been at its most apparent when she first sought him out, but I don’t for one single instant believe that he’d be anything less than a total gentleman to her.  Indeed, it’d be entirely plausible to mount an argument based on his behavior that they were not at all romantically involved circa the Culture Festival arc,[4] and only become so after Gentle’s imprisonment and subsequent release.  But in general, what I’m more concerned with is the dynamic—I regard a power differential in a relationship as a reason for both parties to be cautious and mindful of that differential, but not as an immediate game-ender.

4: Most obvious is that when she says, “I love you,” he only says things like, “Thank you,” in return.

In that sense, Gentle and La Brava are great—they click together perfectly and obviously make each other tremendously happy after a lifetime of rejection.  La Brava, in Gentle’s theatrical attention-seeking, finds someone who accepts her overflowing way of showing love; Gentle, in living up to La Brava’s feelings, finds a reason for his skewed heroism beyond satisfying his pride.  To whatever extent their life together was heading anywhere bad (and there’s no evidence of this at all save that Heroes were always likely to catch up to them eventually, making La Brava’svery extreme response to Gentle’s defeat likewise inevitable), Deku’s intervention got them off of that path and back onto one that let them be accepted by the world, which they seem to have capitalized on marvelously.

They’re the only Villains I can think of whose turn to Team Hero in the endgame works for me without any significant quibbles.  Good for them!  I hope they are so, so happy together, because they deserve it.

AFO and Kotarou: MEANWHILE, IN MY OTHER KOTAROU SHIP.  I love AFO knowing Everything about what he’s doing here while Kotarou knows absolutely Nothing about what AFO is doing here.  I love an AFO who is self-amused in being friendly and reassuring and distractingly attractive to Kotarou, an AFO who knows that his toying with Kotarou would make Shimura Nana sick with terror and rage, and even if she isn’t alive to be so anymore, the fantasy of it is satisfying enough, especially since Kotarou is himself a very handsome young man, one whose hurt and resentment AFO finds beguiling to sometimes prod at, as if unable to leave a bruise alone except the bruise isn’t on his own skin.

I have an AU I’m never likely to write where Kotarou winds up successfully knocking out Tenko on the night of the accident before going on the run with him, only for them to get picked up by AFO a few weeks later, and let me tell you guys, that’s where all my guilty pleasure AFO/Kotarou really lives.

That said, I liked this one much better before we got the opening for it in canon, and not just because AFO’s disguise persona was doofy-looking instead of devastatingly handsome.  It was always one of those ships that tickled my inner hedonistic wickedness fancier but that I never wanted to be canon because my affection for the ship's vibe was not more important to me than the integrity of Shigaraki’s arc, and Shigaraki’s arc was far better served by his early childhood being as free from AFO as possible.  Alas, the reveal is very AFOtarou but at what cost.

Dabideavor: Sorry not sorry everyone, but all the people screaming about how this is SICK FILTH seem to have missed the point that it is indeed, absolutely and completely, sick filth and that’s part of the appeal.  Personally, I like it for two main reasons.

Firstly, I want Endeavor to have as hard a time as possible, and times don't get harder than this. I enjoy it when he's frozen and helpless in the face of the son whose life he destroyed because I have a long history of enjoying stoic male characters being made vulnerable through suffering.

Secondly, and more importantly, I like it because I like the version of Dabi you see in it, particularly compared to the Fanon Dabi who made so much League of Villains fan content un-fucking-readable for years.

I'm going to try to keep the hot fandom tea to a minimum here, limited to the upcoming footnote, but I hated Fanon Dabi.[5] He was an incoherent mash of a character designed to be a vehicle for the unabashed revenge fantasy of bloody murder against Bad Dads while also presenting no danger whatsoever of splash damage, a Woobie Big Brother who was completely harmless except to the father whose organs he was planning to paint the walls with. Every excuse that could be made, would be made, for Dabi's more questionable or even outright nasty moments, even if it meant minimizing or outright erasing the harm we saw Dabi do, right there on the page in literal manga monochrome.

5: There's a particular type of flanderization that goes into Fanon Dabi, the same kind of flanderization I saw attached to Steven Universe's Lapis Lazuli, and which informed the absolute umbrage certain people took with Rebecca Sugar for describing Spinel, the SU movie's villain, as toxic. There is a portion of fandom that loves abuse victims who get angry and lash out, but which will go absolutely ballistic at the slightest suggestion that abuse victims are themselves also capable of harm, that lashing out has the potential to hurt innocent people. In a perfectly executed DARVO, it becomes "victim blaming" to confront an abuse victim about the very real abuse they're inflicting on others. I only specified fictional characters here, but it's a dynamic you see in real life, too. Some people hunger for nothing so much as an acceptable target and abuse victims are not exempt from that statement.

The Dabi I thought was fun was the high-energy maniac who doesn't give a shit about anyone else getting caught in the crossfire of his revenge. Both that version of Dabi and the Endeavor who's paralyzed with guilt and despair are facilitated by Dabi’s father-obsession having a taboo sexual dimension to it that Dabi is all too ready to shove in the face of absolutely everyone who would think worse of Endeavor for it.  That means Endeavor himself, of course, but also all the good little civilians who Endeavor keeps telling to watch him.  Watch this, says Dabi, as he makes lewd hand gestures on force-streamed national television.

It's not about Dabi healing as an abuse victim, and it’s not about Dabi having a fulfilling arc—covering that stuff was canon's job!  It's about the fact that I, for reasons both personal and related to fandom spite, am personally entertained by Dabi being pedal-to-the-metal deranged about doing whatever it takes to seize Daddy’s attention and never let him look away again, which also means acting to ensure that no one is capable of or willing to save Endeavor from that fate. Like, if you want someone who would spend ten years plotting the most agonizing possible way to torment his abuser, then it’s sophistry to suddenly declare some agonizing torments off-limits.  Dabideavor is just committing to the bit.

[soraya-snape]

Harry Potter characters/ships and the Taylor Swift song that reminds me of them:

Tedoire

She said, I was seven and you were nine

2 years age gap just like Teddy and Vicky

I dared you to kiss me and ran when you tried Just two kids, you and I

Vicky and Teddy growing up together because through Harry, Teddy is part of the Weasley family and Vicky developing a crush on Teddy but him only seeing het as a little sister

Well, I was sixtWell, I was sixteen when suddenly I wasn't that little girl you used to see But your eyes still shined like pretty lights

And then Teddy suddenly not seing her as a little sister but falling in love and them getting together when Vicky is 16 or 17

And our daddies used to joke about the two of us They never believed we'd really fall in love And our mamas smiled and rolled their eyes And said oh my my my

This is so Bill + Harry and Fleur + Andromeda/Ginny

Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle Our whole town came and our mamas cried You said I do and I did too

Just imagine Fleur and Andromeda as well as Molly and Ginny crying at Teddy's and Vicky's wedding and the whole weasley family being there for the first Weasley grandkids wedding

Newtina

But something happened, I heard him laughing I saw the dimples first and then I heard the accent They say home is where the heart is But that's not where mine lives

Their first meeting was so chaotic but also cute

He likes my American smile Like a child when our eyes meet, darling, I fancy you

The way they acted in the second movie when newt talks about her eyes being like the ones of salamanders, they were so akward and I love it

So I guess all the rumors are true You know I love a London boy Boy, I fancy you (ooh)

I mean everyone else saw that they like each other before they did

They say home is where the heart is But God, I love the English You know I love a London boy

My American girl and her London boy

Just wanna be with you Wanna be with you Stick with me, I'm your queen

This is so them, they literally can't be without the other

Snily

Please picture me

Please picture me In the trees I hit my peak at seven feet In the swing Over the creek I was too scared to jump in But I, I was high in the sky

This reminds me so much of the first memory Harry sees in the prince's tale. Lily actually did jump

Cross your heart, won't tell no other And though I can't recall your face I still got love for you Your braids like a pattern Love you to the moon and to Saturn

Sev loving Lily even years after she died...

And I've been meaning to tell you I think your house is haunted Your dad is always mad and that must be why And I think you should come live with Me and we can be pirates Then you won't have to cry Or hide in the closet

Sev's father being abusive towards him and his mum and him hoping it will all be better in Hogwarts together with Lily (it wouldn't be)

Passed down like folk songs Our love lasts so long

Sev "passing" down his love for Lily and protecting Harry for her

Tedromeda

I just learned these people only raise you to cage you Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best Clutching their pearls, sighing "What a mess" I just learned these people try and save you ... cause they hate you

This is so Andromeda being raised in the Black houshold and Bellatrix and Narzissa as well as the rest disapproving of her love for Ted

They slammed the door on my whole world The one thing I wanted

She loved Ted so much

Now I'm running with my dress unbuttoned Screaming "But Daddy I love him!" I'm having his baby No, I'm not, but you should see your faces

Just imagine Andy telling her father she loved Ted for the first time, Ariel style. And she was actually having his baby.

Dutiful daughter, all my plans were laid Tendrils tucked into a woven braid Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all He was chaos, he was revelry Bedroom eyes like a remedy Soon enough the elders had convened Down at the city hall "Stay away from her"

Again so much Andy being raised as a Black and Ted just coming into her life with his "bedroom eyes" and everyone in her family disapproving but her going against the whole Black family becuase he is the one for her.

Thinking it can change the beat Of my heart when he touches me And counteract the chemistry And undo the destiny

Nothing could change her love for him

Now I'm dancing in my dress in the sun and Even my daddy just loves him I'm his lady, and oh my God You should see your faces Time, doesn't it give some perspective No, you can't come to the wedding I know he's crazy but he's the one I want

Her dad did in fact not love him so I actually don't know who came to their wedding but I still think it was a perfect

Romione

And in a blink of a crinkling eye I'm sinking, our fingers entwined Cheeks pink in the twinkling lights Tell me 'bout the first time you saw me I'll drink what you think, and I'm high From smoking your jokes all damn night The brink of a wrinkle in time Bittersweet sixteen suddenly

This is so Romione and you can't tell me otherwise. Just remember the first time he saw her...

Are you gonna marry, kiss, or kill me? (Kill me) It's just a game, but really (really) I'm bettin' on all three for us two (all three)

Ron did all 3. I mean he obviously did not actually kill Hermione but I think in 6th year he got close.

Truth, dare, spin bottles You know how to ball, I know Aristotle

No explanation needed

I feel like laughing in the middle of practice Do that impression you did of your dad again I'm hearing voices like a madman

Reminds me of the moments in the movies where Ron made her laugh

I'm going to add more...

[c-e-d-dreamer]

I'm feeling spicy and hot-take-y on this fine Saturday morning, so I just need to get this off my chest.... I fucking hate Emorie. If Emorie has no haters, then I am dead.

In my opinion at least, it's one of those lazy ships you often see. Because, that's the thing, it's something that exists across multiple fandoms and frankly across media in general. Where two queer characters are shipped together or end up together simply because they're queer.

Like honestly, why do Mor and Emerie make sense as a ship? What is it they have in common? Other than them both being warriors because literally everyone in these books minus Elain is one at this point. Why are they a perfect match? Genuinely asking.

Is it just because Mor is openly queer and Emerie is queer coded? 🙃

Because that's what always happens! It's like oh well these are the two queer characters, so they have to end up together. That is the unfortunate trend. And that's just insulting to any and all queer fans and like I said, it's LAZY! You would never do that to het ships.

I mean look how many essay long, color coded posts for whatever configuration of Az and Elain's ships there are! Do you ever see those for Emorie? Ever see anyone touting out all the contextual evidence of why they're a perfect match?

The only actual contextual evidence we have is Mor saying how much she hates Illyria. In fact, she literally tells Feyre that she wishes someone would burn the whole place to the ground when they visit Windhaven. And you want her to be with Emerie? What in the John Smith and Pocahontas BS? Be so fucking for real. Is Emerie going to teach Mor that not all Illyrians are brutes? 🤮 Spare me!

While I have literally -5 hope in SJM, I would love to see more queer characters introduced! Characters that actually make sense for Mor and for Emerie. Maybe one of the mostly unnamed priestesses? Another Illyrian? Someone new from the Winter Court since we know Mor has spent time there with Vivianne? Like please please please give us more genuine representation! Because both Mor and Emerie deserve happy endings and the type of romance their het-co-characters get! They deserve color coded essays on why this fae is actually The One for them. Ya know?

I just wish that fandoms and media as a whole would stop reducing queer characters to just their queerness. Them being queer is not in fact their entire personality. And that's my soapbox 🫡

[billerak]

Bumble that Bee or something idk

I recently finished RWBY (catching up after years leaving it aside) and I have thoughts and feelings and, as I am me, a lot of those are about the canonical WLW couple (sans the secondary wives in V6). So I put my thoughts into a rant. It's not as negative as the word 'rant' would have you believe but I don't wanna call it an essay or whatever. It's still pretty negative tho, so be warned. Anyways on with it:

RWBY is a mess.

Sometimes, it's a wonderful mess. Others, it's a terrible one.

I could spend a few paragraphs explaining what I mean, but I think anyone who watches RWBY with a critical eye knows what I'm getting at. Love RWBY, hate RWBY, just don't try to tell me it's good.

So, once that's established, let's get to the meat of this rant: Bumblebee.

Or should I say Fumblebee? Eh? EH?

Alright you can stop reading, have a good day.

Let me start by making a sharing something about myself: I'm Agender and Bi/Pan. I make a living out of writing yuri/gl/wlw or however you wanna call it. I watch entire seasonal fucking anime on the off chance it may be yuri and most of the time I hate myself for it by the end because they never fucking deliver.

All of this is to say, I like the concept of Bumblebee, the problem is it was treated like shit.

In this rant or whatever the fuck I should call it, I'm just going to talk about the things this ship makes me feel. As established I make a living out of writing romances like the one this show tried to depict—and in case you're wondering, I have written slowburns so slow the first romantic interactions between characters didn't happen until 300k words into a fic. I did it twice, fyi—so I believe I have fair grounds to judge this.

So let's tackle this from the beginning. Was it planned from the start?

No, I don't take the writers word for it. It's painfully apparent it's not the case. I'm fairly certain BlackSun was gonna be a thing until they decided to write him out of the story in V6. Or perhaps they decided on Bumblebee and so they wrote him out of the story. Either way, everything prior to V6 I call into question.

Sure, Blake and Yang have their moments. But it's important to point out they're not romantically coded. RWBY isn't subtle about romance, and it starts pulling the same sort of obvious romantic tropes as all the het stuff going on in the show for Bumblebee going into V7. Prior to that? Nothing. Not a single blush or any explicit show of romantic attraction.

And before any disingenuous bastard tries to say something like "oh but blushes aren't always romantic" or "no you don't need blushes to show romantic attraction" allow me to say you are fucking wrong. Blushing is the universal language for embarrassment or love related things. And RWBY uses this shit all the time. INCLUDING Bumblebee past V7.

So yeah, while the writers probably did draw from previous material—and I think the VA's shipped them since the start?—I do not believe this ship was planned from the beginning.

But that's ok! I don't think it's a huge issue, really. Sure I'd have liked to see actual development but I don't need it to work retroactively if it makes sense from the moment they decide to go for it. So, 3 volumes and a half of development. Lots of time to put in the work, add the details, and-

Oh, no. Wait. They spend most of V8 separated. Hmm. K' so, 2 volumes and a half-

Wait. Oh. Oh they… they really have that little screentime together in V6, huh. Wow. Just. Huh.

Ok, the Adam fight is good. It's a strong setup! After fighting and making up for what Blake did after the Fall of Beacon, they finally come together to beat the demon that drew them apart in the first place. They hold each other close after beating him and it's good and I'm gonna say this is when they both actually fall for each other. We can argue about budding feelings or whatever, but I mean this is the moment they become aware of it one way or another.

So Volume 7 has them kinda being together? Honestly, they act like a new couple. Which is weird in retrospect. I think revealing they'd started dating after V6 would have made more sense than, uh... pretending this was a slowburn? Through V7 they stick to each other and fight in perfect synch and blush and all of that romantic stuff. It feels like… well, like they're kind of already an item but the show has other shit to worry about atm.

Then v8 is amazing really. Split the characters over an honestly kind of nonsensical ideological split, keep them apart most of the season, make Yang to be kiiind of an asshole in that one conversation with Kyle (<- my name for the post-v7 Generic McGenericus haircut Jaune. Yes this unironical, the friend I ranted to about this while watching the show can confirm).

To add insult to injury, the split doesn't even accomplish anything for the ship. The only two characters that get development out of being apart are Ren and Nora. These characters were CLEARLY in love last season why are they not having appropriate amounts of angst over this? Like, at this point we're not arguing whether they were planning on making Bumblebee canon or not, the point is asking why it feels like they weren't trying.

And then, Volume 9. For some context, I like V9. I think I'm in a minority, at least in the places I frequent about this stuff. Always comes with the caveat of 'it's still RWBY', of course, but I appreciate it. After the initial whiplash, I think making a fairy-tale season for a show that was born out of the concept of "what if Red Riding Hood had a sick scythe and used it to mow down hundreds of bad wolves" is actually a really fucking good idea.

That being said, the way they do Bumblebee is really strange.

They're basically back to their V7 selves. It feels like they're either already dating or on the verge of dating. I need to stress just how comfortable they seem to be around each other with the sole exception of that one time Blake didn't grab Yang's hand, but it didn't feel particularly awkward.

Then BOOM mind storm thing and while Ruby, Weiss and Jaune talk about like, actual issues, Jaune implies Blake and Yang had 'something more important to deal with'. And that something is RWBY's version of the room you can't leave unless you have sex.

Sans the sex I guess.

In the void, I think the scene(s?) is good. It's nice, the music is evocative, it's well framed and paced. In another story, it would really have been a perfect climax for a budding relationship.

The problem is this is not another story. These two have NOT seemed like two people awkwardly in love too scared to tell it to each other. In fact, it kinda felt like the exact opposite. If they kissed at the end of any episode for any reason, at this point, it would've felt correct. A simple quiet stare while sitting close and them just finally leaning in to take that final step would've been just as good if not better.

The bridge thing? It's the climax to an arc that didn't happen. Relationships don't need to be slowburns for me to like them, but if you're gonna pretend you were making a slowburn, at least do it right. Why did they need the bridge thing to finally get together? Come on! There was plenty of opportunity during V9 prior to this episode to at least make a show of them being awkward. Make it clear they were finally on the verge but were holding back on the final step. Make it actually cause some conflict, preferably between them as their fear grows into uncertainty and doubts.

Then the bridge would've felt cathartic. Force them to resolve said conflict, and the only way to do it is through admitting their feelings. Sure, it would've still been few episodes, but fuck man I'm sure they could've scraped a few minutes here and there to make it somewhat competent.

I like Bumblebee as a concept. I think the avid fans of this ship look at the concept, not at what the show did, and say "this is canon" and run with it. I don't blame anyone who is a big fan of this ship but… I just can't like it in its current state. I'm sure there's fanfics that fix it, I may give some a read.

Hell, just compare Bumblebee's development to Renora. Those guys have been kind of obviously in love from second one and Nora's entire character being focused on Ren was made into an actual plot point by the end.

Anyways that's about it for bumblebee. Here's some extra thoughts on shipping in RWBY in general.

If we look at the earlier seasons, I honestly think you'd have a stronger argument to make for White Rose being a couple. If we look at the later seasons, Nuts n' Dolts has a stronger impact. I already mentioned it but Blake/Sun had obviously a thing going on that didn't pan out. I hope chameleon girl whose name I don't remember gets a gf at some point tho.

I pray to fucking god they're not building up fucking Oscar and Ruby cuz they had a few awkward scenes here and there and they make me feel wrong in all sorts of ways.

Given how little interaction Ruby and Weiss have had despite how much time they've supposedly spent together, I think the writers are making an active effort to discourage White Rose. I'm not gonna get into the author's self insert being a love interest for Weiss at one point but let's just say the writers seem invested in making extra-sure Weiss stays het. I've made my peace with that. And Penny is fucking dead again so Nuts n' Dolts is a no go (canonically I mean I may read a fanfic or two about them they're very cute).

If they're gonna give Ruby a relationship by the end (which I kinda hope they don't at this point), I think it should be Kyle. They've had nice moments together and seriously shipping Oscar with Ruby just feels fucking weird. Like I assume Ozma's gonna be fucking gone from Oscar's body by the end of this story but even then idk that guy had a centuries old man is his head, it's fucked up.

Anyways that's enough. Why did you read to the end? Thanks for reading anyways.

[mylittleredgirl]

Hello friend! A friend of mine is doing a Stargate SG-1 rewatch and lamenting the slim pickings of fic on AO3. Do you know where she can find fic that perhaps is still on some old archive of yore? Or have any recs? She's mostly interested in Jack/Daniel and Jack/Sam. Ty!!

oh my. with all the love in the world to your friend visiting us from a very different fandom tax bracket than i have ever had the fortune to participate in (those two pairings have well over 6k fics each on ao3), i'll see what i can do!

[several hours of looking around later] bad news!! not much!

most of vintage sg-1 fandom was wiped out by expired domains, struck-through livejournals, ff.net's porn ban, yahoo lists, etc. some pages are still preserved in the wayback machine for heliopolis, the massive het-and-gen archive, and area52, the slash counterpart, but with the search and directory functions pretty much toast, they're almost impossible to navigate.

fanlore has an old list of archives (including plenty of jack/daniel ones). some smaller archives might yield wayback paydirt, especially if they were hand-coded. samandjack.net is still alive!

and, hate to say it, this was peak era for ff.net and they have like 30k fics over there... but all the explicit fic is gone.

i recently learned some people are still doing het-reccers (user-submitted fanfic recommendations, LJ archive is here). i don't know if any slash equivalents are still around (and i haven't looked at this site for genuinely fifteen years, so i can't speak to the quality of recs).

some sam/jack recs of mine; some of these authors multi-ship:

nanda: her resolution series especially should not be missed and i can't stress that enough. smut and action. fics great fics across the board.

it's kind of difficult to express how popular Salr323's fics were (under a different name) back in the day. i'm told that archive servers would crash when she posted something new. low on smut, high on PINING. rec: it was admittedly 1 am but as i recall this one made me feel like i'd just seen the fanfiction mona lisa

there are quite a few multifandom wonders who cut their teeth in this fandom, including missparker (rec: a small crime)

this cassandra fraiser fic dealt me some damage: nobody dies tonight by isawet

someone who's still in touch with her please harass splash_the_cat for writing 99 sg-1 fics and then walking away without cracking 100. lots of fun little snacks in there including this one

everything anr touches is gold <3

starting to get stressed out about who i'm missing!!!!

if your friend likes D/s this one is fun by tremontaine

lol read my stuff (i never wrote smut for sg-1 though)

hey everyone, please add recs in the notes/reblogs, especially jack/daniel recs because that's out of my wheelhouse but we aim to serve

[gellavonhamster]

Realizing some funny things about the early years of my involvement in fandom, that is, when I was 13-16 years old or or so. You know how some people claim they can't make themselves care about female characters and/or f/f ships because women and relationships between them in media are usually badly written, and then you take a look at what these people watch/read and it's exclusively something that barely has any women in it? I kinda used to be like that, but with m/m. I read and wrote gen and m/f and f/f but just couldn't care about m/m. I remember that at some point I used to explain it by saying that I just can't connect to it because while I can imagine the feelings a man and a woman can have for each other and the feelings two women can have for each other (now that's interesting, 15-year-old Gella, do you have anything to share with the class?..) but not the feelings two men can have for each other, and that's why I'm not interested. Now, I definitely moved away from relatability as a metric for compelling fiction as I got older, but I don't think that was the root of it.

The real reason? My first fandoms were two Russian fantasy series by Dmitri Yemets, Tanya Grotter and Mefodiy Buslaev. (For the context: the first one is a Harry Potter parody that started doing its own thing after book 2 and eventually devolved into heteronormative patriarchal slop, and the second one is an urban fantasy about angels and demons that eventually became too saturated with Christian morality for my liking). Neither of these had much going on in terms of slash potential except for the classic "make two boys who hate each other kiss", which I considered boring then and still consider boring now. Then I switched to HP, where there was, obviously, a lot of slash, but none of it interested me because I wasn't into the most popular characters and ships. I never really shipped Harry himself with anyone, I never liked the Malfoys, I was never into the Marauders era, I never understood why everyone considered Snape shippable and hot (the guy with greasy hair who is horrible towards his students? That's the opposite of sexy to me). I dabbled in Dean/Seamus a little because secondary characters and friends to lovers are two of my usual niches, but never really was too invested. Sure, I read some slash written by my friends or when a summary intrigued me or when I knew the author wrote well no matter the ship, but all my favourite ships still were het and femslash.

And then I started watching some TV shows popular at the time - not Superwholock, never watched those, but, like, Teen Wolf, for example. Various Marvel stuff. Other things where I actually could see some subtext/potential for m/m ships, and it was like wow, apparently slash isn't always about characters I don't care about who don't have any chemistry whatsoever. Who could have thought. And then I took a turn into historical/period drama/classic lit stuff, and lo and behold, started having m/m OTPs as well. And now I just ship whatever dynamics I find interesting without caring about the genders of the characters involved. But there was a time when I didn't feel that way, and specifically towards the kind of fic that usually constitutes the bulk of most fandoms. Not like other girls moment.

[aegonssswifey]

Stormborn, Firebound

Chapter 9: A Month of Fire and Duty

Summary: In the heart of the Targaryen court, Saerah Velaryon, the bastard daughter of Lord Corlys, is drawn into a web of power, desire, and duty. She and Aegon II Targaryen share an undeniable pull—a battle of wills, a slow-burning temptation neither can escape.

Masterlist

Previous chapter

A\N: I'm back guys!!

Pairing : Aegon Targaryen x Bastard!ValaryonReader

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: Light Fingering, Cum play

It had been one month since Saerah Velaryon became queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

And already, she had begun to reshape the court in her image.

The Queen’s apartments, once quiet and filled with whispering ladies-in-waiting, were now alive with power.

Saerah had formed her own council of women—not just noble ladies, but the wives of generals, ship captains, and key court officials.

She spoke with them daily, discussing alliances, trade, and the realities of ruling a kingdom.

“I will not be a queen who merely smiles and nods,” she had told Alicent one morning over tea. “If I am to rule beside your son, I will do so with purpose.”

Alicent had merely studied her for a long moment, then finally said, “Good.”

Saerah knew not all approved.

The court whispered of her Velaryon blood, her bastard origins.

But none could deny the way she commanded the room—or the way the king watched her.

A Marriage of Fire

Her marriage to Aegon was not one of love.

Not yet.

But they had found something that sustained them.

A balance between lust, companionship, and duty.

Most nights, Aegon still drank himself into oblivion.

Most mornings, he still woke in her bed.

And though they fought like wildfire, there was something unspoken between them, a pull neither could deny.

One night, when he came to her, half-drunk and smirking, she merely raised a brow.

“Tell me, husband,” she murmured, tracing a finger over his bare chest after he had made her come undone with his mouth a good 3 times. “Will you seek another tonight? Or do I still amuse you?”

Aegon’s violet eyes darkened as he pressed her against the wall, his breath hot against her throat.

“You consume me, wife,” he murmured, his lips brushing her skin. “And I hate you for it.”

Saerah merely smirked, dragging him down into a searing kiss and like many nights since they’re bethroval Aegon proceeded to demonstrate just how much.

After what seemed like hours Saerah lay beneath Aegon, her body slick with sweat, her breath coming in soft gasps after relentless burning pleasure.

But unlike all the times before—Aegon had not pulled away.

Saerah felt it immediately.

His release still inside her slowly dripping out of her cunt, his body still heavy against hers.

For the first time, he had not been careful.

For the first time, he had not held back.

She blinked up at him, as his fingers trailed down to het wetness to gather the evidence and slowly pushed back inside her..

“Aegon,” she whimpered.

His gaze met hers, his cock swelling again at the Meer thought of getting to see her swollen with his seed.

And for the first time, there was no smirk.

No arrogance.

Only something raw.

“Perhaps it is time,” he murmured.

Saerah’s heart pounded.

They had never spoken of children yet even though expected from the realm, the Queen Dowager especially..

Aegon had always been careful, avoiding the obvious consequences of his indulgences and his infatuation for his new queen.

But now—

He had made a choice.

Saerah’s breath hitched.

“You wish to give the realm what they want,” she murmured.

Aegon’s lips brushed her ear.

“I wish to give you what you deserve,” he whispered as he slowly removed his fingers form her centre.

Saerah’s fingers curled into his back.

In that moment, she let herself believe him.

Next chapter

[edenprime]

if u haven't read it a lot of liara's more action-oriented shift was told in the comics. the shadow broker DLC didn't quite capture how much effort she went thru to secure shep's body and how big feron's role. i personally welcome the change and while i like archeologist liara i think her ME1 characterization is so superficial. she's mostly just a fan girl. the shift is abrupt but it's nice that in ME2 she has her own thing going on outside shepard cos i believe the writers wrote her as the canon love interest in mind so her character often suffers from the fangirl disease. i think a lot of people in the fandom dislike how the game shove her to us so much. which is funny since another famous shepard ship is garrus, who's equally as pushed as liara and is just as much of a shep fan. it's just that he's a guy so he doesn't suffer sexist hate.

I haven't read/seen anything outside the games, no! I've been thinking of getting into that, but first I'd like to sort out all of my feelings wrt the main event - the games. I feel like if I got into the "peripheric" media, it could maybe influence how I view the games and i want to analyze those by themselves (i'm thinking i'll finish this playthrough + another one in which i might or might not play as mshep) and then see about everything else. Thank you for the rec, though! I knew there was extra stuff about tali and garrus but this is the first i'm hearing about liara <3

And well... let's be real, most of the squad is part of the Shepard fan club, even those that can't be romanced, like Grunt and Wrex. The fact that Shepard gets a breeding request in Tuchanka after completing grunt's loyalty mission is like the most Mary Sue thing ever (and I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way). The asari, sex symbols of the galaxy, are throwing themselves at them left and right (Liara, Shiala, arguably Sha'ira, Morinth...). Shepard is the main character, everyone wants a piece of them. It's one of the entertaining parts of the games (or at least I have a lot of fun with it, if maybe a little bit ironically).

I suppose people might single out Liara because she's the one whose actions are the most extreme, and thus it crosses the line from "cute" to "creepy", but she's not the only one. Legion literally wears the armor off their dead body. As I said in my post, maybe her actions and/or attitude aren't 100% justifiable, but they are understandable.

I'm not sure about the game pushing Garrus as a love interest (I think the game itself is skeptical of the player making this choice, like when Shepard says she "can't believe she finds comfort in the arms of a turian" or something like that), but I do think he's definitely meant to be one of the characters that's most influenced by Shepard, regardless of gender.

Personally, I think him being so popular a choice (at least on Tumblr, which has a mostly female userbase compared to other social media) is due to him being a man, yes, but not necessarily because of sexism (or not always), but because het ships are farrrr more popular than femslash. Also, it's very clear how much he respects Shepard in basically every aspect, and it's incredibly fucking rare to see a het relationship in such equal ground, especially with a """bad guy""" lmao. (though ME in general does quite good in that regard I think, the romances in general are not toxic™️ or unequal) (mostly... ignoring that Shepard is basically everyone's boss... lol).

I completely agree that there's a double standard in how female characters are expected to behave vs male ones, and from what i've seen Liara is 100% a victim of this (I had the very bad idea of reading some threads on reddit...yikes). I don't know the fandom enough to know how it compares in relation to Garrus in particular, though, or if there's a correlation between Shakarian fans and Liara haters.

[friend-shaped-but]

I like to think Hidimbi was jacked af

YES SHE WAS AND I LOVE THOSE TWO SO MUCH. FAVE HET SHIP APART FROM IG SHALAKA X SHIKHANDI(which imo is more homemade)

Yk a cool thing I do? In his head, Bheem refers to hidimba as his lover. And Draupadi as his beloved.

Listen I have 2 hidimbaa wips no scratch that I have 3 and I'm gonna take this ask as an excuse to talk about them.

Beginning era, where it's just them falling in love. Age gap trope. Bheem is younger. Dogri Hidimbaa. Eldritch Hidimbaa. Hidimbaa so jacked bheem is smol and pookie by her standards. Starts crackily, Ends angstily. She wolf whistled. He looked back only once, only to see her tired smile as she held ghatotkach in one arm. She waved at him. "Don't shed tears for me, pretty boy!" she shouted. She was not following her own advice, bheem thought from her tone of voice. He swallowed the lump in his throat and waved at her only once before disappearing into the valley.

Hidimba and Draupadi meet. No cannibalism arc bcos we hate that shit. Gharjawai ghatotkach who stays with mauravi. Mauravi is suspiciously like bheem. "You'd like your brother, I think," Bheem said. "How old is he?" "He was fifteen when I had to leave," "And now?" "Must be about twenty two or so," "Baby!!!" Ghatotkach squealed.

Bheem visits hidimba in the forest after the war. Slowly, the crowd dissipated, only Hidimba left before the dying fire. She didn’t scream or cry or weep. He thought she would curse him, but even that would have been preferable compared to her icy calm. He thought she would wail, and he deserved it. He deserved everything she threw at him, and it still wouldn’t be enough to absolve him. He finally felt brave enough to approach her.  Sitting down beside her, he picked up a stick, trying to poke and rekindle the fire with it. But before he could, a hand on his arm stopped him.  “Let it be,” She sighed. “There’s no use trying to rekindle something that has already been extinguished.”     “Forgive me, Hidimba, I-” “I have, Bheem,” She said softly, her brown eyes boring into his soul. “It is the only reason you are alive,”

[ravensvirginity]

Hello, I really really want to know what kind of relationship you prefer for Raven, why am I asking because Marv Wolfman has a bad relationship for Raven, but I’m interested, I’m defending that Gar is a good guy for Raven, he’s the first person in Raven’s life who influenced Raven well, look at Eric Forrester for Raven had a bad life and I'm glad that now she has a good man

Lmao Gar is not the first person in Raven's life who influenced her well. You could literally say that about every Titan. Gar probably less than some of the others, actually. When you look at Raven's earliest stories, it's more so Vic, Kory, Joey, and Donna who she was especially close with. If you read the Eric Forrester arc specifically, you'll see that it's Joey who helps Raven and comforts her after it happens, not Gar.

Also, why does Raven need a man? I hate that attitude that she has to end up with someone. She can be perfectly happy on her own, and I'd argue she needs more time to find herself before she can think about having an actual relationship. That was the 'moral' of the Eric Forrester arc, honestly. That he was a bad guy and Raven needs family more than she needs a man.

I'm just not a huge shipper. If I do ship Raven, it's usually with another female character. I like her with angsty enemies to lovers (or sometimes just enemies) with Tara, and for something tamer but still tumultuous I like her with Kory or Donna. I think Joey/Raven is okay as far as het ships go but it's not my favorite ever.

Really, at the end of the day, I want stories that let Raven shine on her own.

[kill-vonkarma-again]

hmm i make one too. don't have any crackships sorry. i'd write on the picture too but i have WAY too many specific thoughts on these shits to be able to cram it in with my shitty built in photo editor. more under the cut

nrmts and klapollo: self explanatory greatest of all time. maybe they're boring choices but idc they mean da worl to me

lanamia is definitely up there for me i just don't have the rfta galaxy brain like exaltedfuzz so i tend not to think about them much...... but they definitely had something going on. (if i'm being honest most of my brain power for both lana and ema go to their familial relationship because those always make me way more emotional and insane than romantic ones. same for mia and maya)

franmaya is a huge one but i think i kind of agree with the assertation that there's not a lot of canon backing for it... they don't interact much at all which is really really sad 😔 they're absolutely perfect foils for each other

gumworth VERY cute. i love edgeworth and his giant gay lap dog who wants him to take better care of himself

krisnix is something that 100% happened and they went insane over each other in only the way you can when you need to kill that other man /x but i don't give it as much brain space as i think i should. i'm sadly not the biggest on toxic yaoi lol

LARRYNIX WOULD BE FUNNY... i don't think i have much more to add here tho

dickbutz is conceptually really fucking funny and i think they would get along if given the space. come on gummy dick butz down

gumdot.... my eyes have been opened i think gumshoe could fix him. he has a good shoulder to cry on

blackquill/sahdmadhi + fullbright: i dunno these guys very well but apparently they're doing some crazy (sometimes evil) gay shit to blackquill. good for them. get that emo hunk

phoenix/mia: ehhhhhh. i'm not gonna say that you're wrong but i very much think that the boss/employee thing would make it awkward. and it'd be kinda one sided on phoenix's side imo. maybe in another life

trucy/pearl: there's nothing especially wrong with this one per se but 1. kinda feels like a pair the spares ship 2. i personally see their relationship as being closer to sorta-maybe-cousins than i do girlfriends. but that's just me you do you

ema/klavier: i see where you're coming from but ema is a dyke and her dislike of him is genuine and not tsundereisms in my eyes. i think they could be friends if you locked them in a room together and forced them to open up to each other but not much more than that

klavier/blackquill: you're probably right i bet klavier annoyed his way into blackquill's space like an especially persistent small dog with a half feral cat. and blackquill can dish out three times as much sass as klavier can take. i don't think enough about blackquill to think more on it though

godot/mia: don't hate me for this one i just think their writing was really crap. like the one time they try to write a canon loving het relationship and it's just this

narumayo: i've said it before and i'll say it again but this one is less deplorable to me and more just a sign that we are interacting with this story as a whole in extremely different ways. i think it's a really obvious and boring conclusion to come to. yayyy the boy gets the girl. barf

apollo/athena: i think apollo is slightly too old for her. it would be a little weird to me. some people seem to disagree with me on that though so i guess whatever. similar complaints to narumayo too though

phoenix/apollo: don't be fucking weird

athena/blackquill: don't be fucking weird... 2!!!

bonus from my beautiful beautiful mind: