#I WANT MORE OF HER (and the story in general) BUT ESPECIALLY HER

[explaintome]

Dear Mouthwashing fandom, explain to me, why next to the incredible fan art, I find a fuck ton of shipping content, especially between characters where this is highly problematic? SPOILERS FOR MOUTHWASHING AHEAD CN for talk about sexual abuse, death, suicide & violence

DISCLAIMER: I do not shame the general practice of shipping at all. I am a shipper myself and I think it makes up for a lot of interesting dynamics and narratives outside the canon. Shipping is an important pillar of fandom communities and I am unable to forbid you to do it. HOWEVER, in the case of Mouthwashing I want to talk about what, in my opinion, feels tone-deaf to the themes and the canon of the game. But let me start with a short summary of the game before I get into it.

Mouthwashing is basically a visual novel that takes place on the Tulpar, the last manned cargo ship of the company Pony Express. The crew, consisting of Caption Curly, Co-Captain Jimmy, Nurse Anya, Mechanic Swansea and his intern Daisuke, is confronted with a crash against an asteroid and the consequences following it. The story is told out of order to reveal the truth bit by bit. What caused the crash, what happened and how the crew deals with the time afterward being stuck on the ship. Revealing sexual abuse, tragic backstories, the horrible side effects of late state capitalism and the neglect of people in command towards the people they are responsible for.

To boil it down we have two men who, out of societal misogyny, hurt the only woman on their crew by assaulting her or not acting as they should have in their position of responsibility. All of this would not have happened if Jimmy didn't rape Anya and impregnate her, and if Curly had disciplined Jimmy in a capacity possible on the ship and in Jimmy's position as co-pilot. To be honest, with the amount of automatization the ship has, I don't think they need Jimmy if it is not a case of emergency, but I digress. Jimmy is the perpetrator of the story, but Curly is an accomplice in putting his aim of finding a solution and compromise over punishing his subordinate as he should have.

And now to my actual point: I am a big fan of the game, the narration style and the utter tragedy of 5 people losing their lives in the isolation of space, with their company not giving a shit about them. Otherwise, they might have been rescued much earlier or at all. Or had enough cryo pots in the first place. Or a nurse with experience. Or any amount of better equipment and not the most cheap shit that somehow made it through a resemblance of regulations. There are probably no regulations.

Being a fan I, of course, looked into the hashtags on several social media sites, and between the incredible art and analysis of the game, I quickly found shipping content, and I have no idea why. I have literally no idea how that narrative speaks to you in a way of shipping characters romantically/sexually. Especially three shippings really rub me the wrong way.

ANYA/JIMMY

Are you fucking kidding me? Literally, what is wrong with you shipping a victim with their abuser? There was not one interaction between them, that suggest that there was consent or affection, that Jimmy has any sympathy for Anya. He knows what is going on, he knows that Anya is pregnant and takes no responsibility. Even worse, his idea of FIXING this was to kill everyone, at least himself, to avoid responsibility! Same goes for AUs where she kept the baby and is somehow okay and happy? I get the urge to fix it, but that is not a good fix. There is no good fix if you are pregnant due to rape.

ANYA/CURLY

A lot of argument I hear for that is that "at least Curly is her friend and was nice to her" and if that is your whole foundation of argument, I want to ask what your standards for a relationship are. Please know that you deserve more than the bare minimum. Another question in that context: Is Curly really Anya's friend? His friend was abused and instead of protecting her, he tried to reason and help her abuser! That is not the behavior of a friend! There is no "but Jimmy is his friend too!". If your friend is an abuser and that does not make you stop being their friend....why?

JIMMY/CURLY

It feels like it is a law on the internet, that two men who look at least averagely handsome will be shipped, especially if they have the tiniest of connection to each other. I am not even sure if I would call them friends in the first place. It appears that Jimmy, whatever his bad life before that job was (thanks to the developers for not giving us a backstory), he is still absolutely unsatisfied with that he has. He is jealous of Curly and his position, seeing how quickly he takes on the Captain title after the crash and only realizes far too late how hard the position actually is. Curly on the other hand feels a bit like a people pleaser to me. He probably had pity for Jimmy, took him under his wing to help him? Fix him? Whatever it is, it made him ignore Jimmy's bad side to a fatal degree. I respect the toxic yaoi but are you sure?

TLDR; I am worried about how the practice of shipping developed, from a way to extend the canon, explore queerness in cis/straight dominated media, into a compulsion of where some people can't look at any form of media or constellation of characters without immediately smashing them together like dolls. If you do this, maybe step back for a minute and ask yourself if it is appropriate. On that note, same goes in case you defend Jimmy. Why?

[aihoshiino]

putting aside whatever other problems there are or aren't with the OnK ending, I think the one thing that really drives me up the wall is that Aqua never really gets a chance to reconcile or meaningfully make peace with his relationship with Ai... not even necessarily in the sense of like, 'this character tragically died before resolving this issue' way but more like, with the hindsight of how much the Movie Arc was wasting time and panel space, it's frustrating that an arc that SHOULD have been about Aqua and Ruby working through that kind of had four chapters of Ruby, exclusively, making a breakthrough and then never touched on it as an idea again.

Honestly, I don't think you'd need to change much! Even just having Aqua call her 'Mom' or at least properly embracing her as his mother in spirit would have done it, especially since 163 emphasizes Aqua's life being his own, not just the dregs left behind by Gorou's reincarnation. He does refer to her as 'my/our mother' at certain points, but he also calls Kamiki 'my/our father' in contexts that are very clinical and not necessarily positive. So... idk!

Maybe him wanting to call Miyako 'Mom' was supposed to hit on that same sort of beat and I can understand if Aqua simply felt more bonded with and connected to Miyako as his mom since she actually raised him, but if the conclusion of that relationship is just that Aqua never really felt like Ai was his mom, I think that's excessively cruel to Ai and just kind of a letdown. But the way the story kind of dropped the ball on Aqua's posthumous relationship with her was kind of a letdown in general lol, so...

[tunglo]

I would so love to watch/read that! Here's my own little bit of personal history with it:

I went in from Gotham after getting a human/android fic prompt based on the game (after which I ended up watching a run through on Youtube in German, a language I hadn't done more than read an occasional news article in since high school, and that was my only actual engagement with the gameplay...), fully expecting to write Hank/Connor, but I just could not deal with Cole's death. Like, it's a cornerstone of Hank's story, but I can't bear to think about losing a child. (Parenthood ruined true crime for me too. Just gotta stick my fingers in my ears and find something where everyone was an adult instead...)

But! There were a few people trying out Gavin/RK900 instead and, now I'm back on my wireplay bullshit, so I figure I'll give that a go. For ages I had been thinking about writing some Paul/MX-43 (Almost Human) fic but, you know, you've gotta get a new characterisation right, work out how an MX would *think*, etc. Here, on the other hand, I can write basically the same dynamic with little to no restrictions on how I want to characterise, backstory, etc, etc.

At the time there were only a few pages of Reed900 fics on A03, and a lot of them were quite heavy BDSM stuff that just wasn't my thing. I like my characters to be kind of sickeningly, adoringly in love with each other after the obligatory enemy stage - so RK900 would have to drop the cold characterisation that had been gaining favour.

Then I read a Hank/Connor fic (cos that was still overwhelmingly the main ship), I can't remember who by, that was genderswap with the idea that Connor's face was fixed into a polite smile and the resulting restrictions that placed on her.

That! That was the answer. RK900 just had extreme resting bitch face. He's not created to be public facing, it really doesn't matter to Cyberlife whether he can express emotion or not. The more android the better, in my book.

Re. the name. Nines was already widely used (this was late July 2018) but I didn't particularly like it. The designation was nine hundred. It was early enough that I didn't feel compelled to use it though, especially as what I wanted to write wasn't going to fit with much of the existing fic, so I shortened to RK instead.

I didn't really expect to get much response because, like I say, the 'norm' for the ship seemed to be pushing in a different direction and, more to the point, I'm essentially playing in a sandpit with OCs. But, to my delight, my Tumblr inbox quickly filled up with all kinds of prompts for me to write and I churned out nearly 200k before exhausting it and moving onto the next thing.

I was already on that when the first short film was announced, but I had to come back to watch that and the follow ups. It was so wild to see how much the general characterisation, etc, had changed since the beginning. I feel like, if he had the ability, the ruthless RK900 I started reading about would be sick at the thought of the character he became - even if I infinitely preferred it! xD

I need someone to make a 3+ hour video essay about the history Reed900

The origins, where it came from

The first art, fic, other fan content made for it

The most popular head-canons, Nines getting a name, different interpretations of the personalities

How the most agreed upon quality of Gavin Reed, loving coffee, comes from a scene, where the importance of him asking coffee is minuscule and it is not even confirmed that he even likes it, and it leading to the other super popular head-canon of him having insomnia

The mods and modding community

The most influential fics

The comics, and the shear amount of dubbed vids of them on youtube

The movie, the short film and the behind the scenes stuff for it. Neil Newbon engaging with the cast

It becoming the top DBH ship, with basically nonexistent characters

[inariele]

Dragon Age The Veilguard - Final Gameplay Thoughts

Here are my general thoughts on the game. I will gather some more regarding Solas and my Inky for later. I have lots of them but I need more time for that, they are all scrambled in my brain.

Playthroughs: I’ve completed three runs totaling 150 hours.

Romance Preferences:

Lucanis: I romanced him first but gave up halfway because the romance was too slow-burn for me.

Davrin: I romanced him next; it was okay but felt somewhat vanilla. I prefer Davrin's death scene over Harding’s, so I’m unlikely to romance him again.

Bellara: I romanced her in my third playthrough and enjoyed it. She’s a bit like Merrill, and I plan to stick with her for future playthroughs.

Roleplaying and Expression:

I often felt limited by the game’s restrictions on expressing personal opinions, especially since I’ve played suppressed elf characters in previous games. I feel I should have had the option to express strong opinions on the elven gods. Especially as an elf.

Tevinter was not explored enough. I thought we would at least see the male divine or more from the magisters.

No renegade option is very disappointing.

the Inky should have been playable similar to Ciri to walk us through the destruction of the south...the one we spent 3 games saving.

Not utilizing the Keep was definitely the wrong choice.

Rook seems to have a pretty set personality, I prefer my wise and marvelous Inky. Inky as NPC however had pretty much the personality I chose for her so it was not very jarring for me.

Solas’ Memories:

It feels tragic that I can’t talk with Solas or the Inquisitor about Solas’ memories. There’s a bit of irony, though, since in a sense, the Inquisitor has learned about Solas' background. His personal quest describes how he came into the world, so in a way, the Inquisitor knows part of his story without knowing the full truth.

Exploration and Combat:

I really enjoyed the exploration and combat in Dragon Age Veilguard; they’re my favorites of all four games.

Ending with Solas and the Inquisitor:

While I didn’t like the ending execution with Solas and the Inquisitor, the romance ending comes close to what I imagined, including the idea of them going back into the Fade.

I believe Solas, as the protector of the spirits, ties in well with Mythal staying in the waking world as its protector, and with that ending their connection.

I don’t think the prison is holding them forever.

Graphics and Hair Physics:

The game is visually beautiful, and the hair physic is amazing.

I will never get tired of the hair.

THE HAIR! I want it for inquisition

[chloesimaginationthings]

The death of Vanessa and the birth of Vanny in FNAF

(Inspired by this art by Yuto Sano)

[egophiliac]

redesigning my headcanon for Sebek's parents, based on important new information (SCALES)

(you can't see it but they're both wearing crocs)

[the-badger-mole]

If that's how you interpret Mai, that's fine. I've read some really great stories where Mai is written as someone who has a cold, prickly exterior, but is all warm and fuzzy on the inside. Some writers really make that work for her. I don't think the show really bears that out. The way Mai is written (or underwritten) leaves a lot of room for people to take her in different directions. For me, it's less that I don't like her, and more I don't see her as a good person, so her ending made no sense to me.

The Beach is the only time we really get to see the softer side of Mai, and it's so much at odds with what came before that I, and a lot of other people, truly believe it was added at the last minute because they needed a reason for Mai to turn on Azula and save Zuko. Because that's not who she was until then. I have (and still could) go on, and on, and on, and on....blah, blah, blah about why I don't like Mai, or rather prefer her as a villain, but I don't want to bore you with it, so I'll give 3 reasons, and I'll be brief.

Yes, absolutely that moment with Zuko on the balcony is bad, and that's where I decided I hated Maiko. Actually, that's where I became certain that I was supposed to hate Maiko. After everything he's been through, for that to be her reaction to him opening up was vile. Especially considering that she got with him specifically to manipulate him into doing what Azula wanted.

She treats people terribly in general. I've brought this up before, but the fact that it's made clear that she takes joy in ordering servants around for fun and then it's never addressed in her "redemption" is maddening. The show is using so much short hand to prove that Mai is not a very nice person, and it's never walked back. That's just who she is, and she's very unapologetic about it.

This is more of a meta complaint about how Mai was written, and then hastily rewritten, but the show failed to make me believe anything Mai says in Book 3. When we meet her, she goes out with the guards to find the rebels who attacked her family (of colonizers). She's clearly been taught to fight, and those knives probably don't come cheap, either. Mai doesn't hide her bad attitude from her parents, who react the way most parents would when they have a child who didn't want to move for their parent's promotion. So how am I supposed to by that her parents were these emotionally distant, cold, repressive jerks who didn't let Mai have fun? I also don't believe she fears Azula. She doesn't even hesitate when Azula comes and asks her to help her hunt down Zuko, who she has feeling for, even though the best outcome for him at that point was imprisonment. This was the same episode, by the way, did such an amazing job setting up how terrified Ty Lee was of Azula. The same episode. They could've added some hint that Mai was afraid of Azula here, but they actively chose not to. That made her about face in Book 3 look really weak, especially because she only turned for Zuko, not as the culmination of any internal work on herself. If Zuko had stayed loyal to the Fire Nation, so would she.

I've already gone on longer than I meant to. I can't speak for anyone else who doesn't like Mai, but if I had to sum up my feelings, I like Mai better as a villain. To me, she works better as a hedonist who is here for a self-indulgent good time and a loyalist who upholds the status quo. Or as Maleficent. Give me a Maleficent coded Mai.

i actually can't process why people don't like mai. is it because of the "i just asked if you were cold" scene. is that it. okay LISTEN i will go to bat for her. she says it herself in the beach episode, she's been raised to not share her opinion or like. care about anything. she probably deflects in that moment because it's obviously an emotionally heavy conversation and she's been told her entire life not to share her feelings. or share other people's feelings, tbh.

she's ngl pretty incompatible as a match for zuko, who is constantly full of feelings, and needs someone who can help him work through them in his life, like iroh or katara. but that does not make mai the stone cold bitch y'all haters want her to be. i promise she's fluffy on the inside, the stone cold bitch is but a thin outer shell that protects all the love and care she contains within herself

[artsycooky13]

top 3 fave bbys in the burrito show (bonus SUPER LONG tags on how i feel bout the characters)

[aj-thegreatest]

thinks about Falin Touden for more than a millisecond: I’m gonna rip all my fucking hair out (affectionately)

[mc-critical]

1.10 / 1.09

[arolesbianism]

Thinking abt Sif Odile duo looping au again and I wanna be able to plot everything out more coherently but act 5 eternally looms overhead and boy I do not wanna look up

[wisheswagered]

read the ganji letter leaks... trying to decide how i feel.

[astranauticus]

idk what is it about that one throwaway line from han sooyoung about her writing 10 chapters in one day that finally broke me but oh my fuckin god i love her so much

[cathalbravecog]

i love wanting to detail everything but also knowing nothign abotu what businesses and ppl working there Actually do like ah yes heres my cog oc they work here uhm they do uhm

They Do Some Kind Of Paperwork...!!!!

[xawkward-ariesx]

There was another wince on the other end as he settles on what sounds like one of the parlour couches. "We can only deal with one problem at a time brother, and right now the witch is an actual risk while Saint Caroline is only a probable future problem."

Future fic, You feel too much and nothing at all.

[hecksupremechips]

Listen I don’t really care about this play anymore and I haven’t interacted with it in ages but in Be More Chill I think Jeremy and Christine were good together and I won’t STAND for everyone in that fandom trying to convince me otherwise!!!!!