#I’ll still keep certain tags and whatnot but I’ll be deleting all of my face pictures

[httpghostface]

so I’ve decided to archive this account.

I will be getting a new main account n all my other ones will be up still seeing as I have so many I am just gonna make this like a side one to look back on um I still love this account it’s my first ever one but there’s just too many post and I need to restart something in my life and get ahold of how I’m thinking I won’t put the user out till I’m ready but I hope everyone knows I’m okay n that ily <3

[crazy-grrrl-on-the-computer]

Note: This is a re-upload of a post Tumblr deleted a while back sometime during The Purge. I’m so upset that I lost all the wonderful comments from everyone’s tags, but after accepting that Tumblr can’t return my original post to me, I decided to just post it again so it’ll at least (hopefully) be on my blog once more where it belongs... since this post does meet Tumblr’s guidelines. So, without further ado...

An angsty cliché headcanon (for an angsty cliché character):

When Kurotori was younger, he had a ballet instructor who was very strict, so the reason he’s so hard on himself is because of how she instilled in him the idea that “beauty is pain” and other such things. She very heavily influenced his need for praise and affection for his craft. “If you’re good enough, people will love you. But only if you’re good enough. Only when you’ve earned it.” She also used to tell him he had to be lighter – on his feet, emotionally, and in general – because “heavy things carry no weight with the ladies” and whatnot. (And considering he said that 90% of ballet fans are women… it would be an important detail to him.)

I plan to finish writing a longer one-shot about this idea, but I wanted to share a preview of the part that inspired these drawings. It’s not the complete part and I’ll probably rewrite it later anyway before the rest is finished/posted, but still. ;;v;; 

The Darkest Nights

Firm, graceful hands on his body bending him to their will. Pushing, pulling, lingering for too long. Heavy and simultaneously the lightest feeling his senses were allowed.

Sometimes, when he was in bed, he could still feel it… even when the hands pressed against his skin were someone else’s.

It wasn’t always, but when a certain touch nudging him into a better position felt all too familiar, the memories returned to the surface and the words echoed in his head.

“You must always be perfect, always be beautiful. Only the best earn the privilege of being loved.”

He hadn’t seen her in years, of course, but it was like she was constantly hissing into his ear that he had to be better, questioning if he was really giving it his all. That familiar shiver of anxiety and insecurity rippled up his spine again, and he suddenly wished he wasn’t on his back like this. He felt too exposed, too vulnerable, like there were too many ways to be a disappointment, and yet he felt trapped. Caged. Each touch weighing him down and reminding him of his own shortcomings.

But he had practically been raised on persevering through situations that made him feel unsafe because his passion was greater than the danger. Surely, he could do it now for the person he felt the most safe around. It was his own fault, after all… If he couldn’t do this even though it had been his idea, he really would be as undesirable as the voice kept telling him.

“…always be perfect… always be beautiful… the only love that matters – the love that keeps you alive – is the love you earn from others…”

~.~

“Do you want to stop?” Goura stilled, the sweet concern in his voice suddenly and inexplicably jarring.

“No, it’s alright.” Moteo forced a smile so it would show in his tone even as he kept his head turned. “Please, keep going until you are done. There’s no need to worry about me.” If he could just look away from the problem, perhaps he could ignore it.

Goura sat back slowly, his hands resting lightly on Moteo’s stomach not to apply pressure but only to check that his partner’s breathing wasn’t too shallow. Something seemed notably different from every other time they had done this… Goura was aware that he had a bit of a reputation for perhaps not having the sharpest mind – considering how much of his thoughts he kept to himself – but he paid attention to people, especially the ones he cared about. Moteo had gone very tense so suddenly and then limp as though surrendering to something unseen. And it hadn’t been the first time today that he had seen this pattern. Moreover, after years of raising his brother, Goura had learned to tell when the words people said were a cover for something else. So, he pulled out as smoothly as he could.

Moteo shifted just enough to meet Goura’s gaze, the look in his eyes a worrying combination of confusion, relief, and concern… or perhaps that was fear.

“I can’t enjoy it either when I know there’s something wrong,” Goura explained in response to the unasked question he saw there. “If you’re uncomfortable, we don’t have to do this tonight.”

Moteo hummed chidingly to himself as he sat up and reached out to tenderly stroke Goura’s cheek. He should have known better than to doubt. “You truly are a gentleman.” In every sense of the word.

Goura gathered him in his arms and kissed his forehead reassuringly. “If it was something I did wrong, I can fix it,” he promised. “Was it... my hands? It felt like you were flinching away from me.”

Moteo relaxed into his chest, content to snuggle up to the feeling of their hearts beating together. “I actually love the way your calloused hands feel on my skin.” It felt nothing like her. His touch was gentle. “I suppose I’ve just been having a strange day.”

Goura hummed in understanding and Moteo felt guilty again for being so conflicted. He was so complicated and… heavy… in return to someone so beautiful and light and patient.

“Would you prefer to... top?... instead?” Goura’s quiet sturdy voice seemed almost delicate in the silence. “Next time, I mean. If you want to.”

Moteo leaned back a bit in surprise to catch the earnestness in his features, although the poor man seemed a bit confused over the phrasing and Moteo really couldn’t blame him. “You would be okay with that?”

Goura nodded firmly. “If it would be more comfortable for you to feel like you have more control, of course.”

Moteo had never even considered that he could ask for that.

“You don’t have to say anything now and I won’t ask you to tell me what has been bothering you today either if you don’t want to talk about it. But you can think about it for when you feel ready. I promise no one is going to pressure you,” Goura told him so sincerely that Moteo couldn’t help but believe him even if he had wanted to doubt him in the first place.

And, in that moment, Moteo fell in love with this man all over again. This wonderful man who wanted to see him stretch his wings and fly free, as though he truly was more beautiful than the unhappily caged bird doing tricks for treats that everyone else thought was so pretty in its chains all this time.

“Aaaaaah~ Thank you, my sweet sweet honey!” He threw his arms even tighter around Goura and kissed as much of his face as he could reach.

“M-Moteo, you don’t have to thank me for wanting you to feel safe.”

Of course, for someone like Goura, that was a given. But to Moteo, it was so much more than that.

“I’m also thanking you for being your beautiful wonderful self, so at the very least let me take care of this for you,” he offered, pointing between them, and smiled fondly at the glimpses of a flustered expression he saw dusting Goura’s cheeks in the dim lighting. It was cute. They had just been in the middle of sex and this was what he was embarrassed about.

“Are you sure you want to? Because I can take care of it myself...”

“This much is okay. If you would like me to.”

“As long as you’re comfortable.”

Moteo was sure that, no matter how many bad days he had, he would always feel comfortable with someone so warm and sweet beside him. In the darkest nights sometimes shines the brightest light and Goura was the brightest light of all.

~.~

I used this reference from Pinterest for the first picture and these references from Twitter for the last two illustrations.

[37h4n0l]

1) Don't worry, I (aka the anon who started it all) don't think your reply came off as hostile at all. It's just so tiring when you want to get some things that bother you off your chest and then the obligatory 'but not all xyz do this or that' happens. Yes, I do know that, but it's a generalization. Not all, but enough to make you think it may even be the better part of the fandom. That being said, I agree with all your points against YOI. OK, so the victuuri relationship may be a cute and

(Rest under the cut) (I also hope no one will lynch me for being lazy and putting this out without doing anything about censoring shipnames but I’ll spam it with all the possible anti tags, fear not)

fluffy one that makes you feel good and warm inside or whatever, but is there really a need to write essays analyzing every single gesture or facial expression and then feel proud of your analytical skills, as if you've just discovered a new planet? No, there is not. It's not that deep; it's actually as straightforward a show as it can be. The bashing of otayuri and pliroy is one thing and it has more to do with the general moral poilce anti trend that is spreading everywhere, so I wouldn't attribute it solely to the YOI fandom. Now on the other hand, the bashing of pliroy just because it's contradictory to otayuri, one of the holy doublet of YOI ships, is something that bothers me personally. It's almost as if shipping anything that directly contradicts victuuri/otayuri is a blasphemy in this fandom and generally looked down upon. I've actually seen someone outright ask why would anyone ship pliroy when otayuri exists/is canon/is clearly a better and more healthy option for Yuri etc. So, this and the constant victuuri/otayuri wank, while all the other characters/smaller ships are mostly a background noise to it; it really seems to me as if 5 fanarts out of 10 on my dashboard would feature victuuri, 4 would feature otayuri and there's only one left for other pairings (one-track-mindedness at its finest). And there's of course the fact that most YOI fans seriously think that victuuri is the first canon gay couple in the history of anime, that the anime itself is revolutionary and progressive, that victuuri is a prefect representation, that YOI is the actual anime of the year, because popularity doesn't lie, and if you dare to disagree with all of those, then you're clearly homophobic and whatnot. Plus, there's the invading of the tags unrelated to YOI (not even for the purpose of recommending other titles but to say something along the lines of 'if shit like xyz got a second season, then YOI deserves at least seven' - actually seen something like that with my own eyes) or hijacking of the serious topics (like the oppression of sexual minorities) and making them all about YOI. And that's just the top of the list of what the YOI fandom is guilty of. But hey, it's alright, because it's 'not all' YOI fans. Siigh. Sorry it got so long, but ugh. Sometimes I wish someone would just delete YOI from existence so that we would be spared of all this saltiness. As for 91d, you're probably right about everything but still, I'll never be able to understand why anyone would just voluntarily turn off their thought processes and comprehension skills just because of some personal biases, especially when it comes to a show such as 91d, that requires at least the bare minimum of thinking and analyzing. But whatever, I guess people nowadays are just too used to having everything spelled out to them and handed on a silver plattter (ex. they should've had it explicitly stated on-screen that Avilio and Nero didn't hate each other).

This goes for all the ‘not all’ arguments; the important thing is, as you said, how widespread a behaviour is statistically within a community, but also whether the other members acknowledge that it’s happening or not. I know it’s easy to take it personally when you hear someone complain about a fandom you’re in, but at that point it really only depends on wording (which is deliberately harsh when someone is just venting, it’s just the way it is). 

About meta; yeah, I find a lot of it superfluous as well, as I’ve said before. And by this I don’t mean it should be eliminated from the face of the planet, just that I don’t personally put the 2934892348th detailed explanation on why vn and yk love each other so much in the same ‘tier’ as, say, speculations about the second season or character parallelisms and stuff like that. It’s shipperwankery in the end and I don’t think me making fun of it harms anyone? The only thing I worry about is that it’s hard to separate banter from an actual serious opinion from time to time (could be about how I express myself? Probably yes). No, for the record, I don’t want to exterminate anyone who makes extensive posts about vn’s lustful glare. It’s just... There’s too much of it. Way too much. By the way, the ring controversy and the reaches made there will never not be funny, sorry not sorry.

A bit of a tangent on the otayuri-pliroy conflict; it always seemed so weird to me how similar the two ships are aesthetically? (Considering people keep confusing the two on fanart, I’d say that’s a major fuckup in terms of JJ’s and Otabek’s character design, but that might just be me). I keep getting the impression that they wanted the pliroy bait to go somewhere but then changed their mind for whatever reason and created otayuri as kind of a ‘tamer substitute’. But this is besides the point; it all brings me back to my personal beef with this tendency of positing ‘sugary sweet’ as the only acceptable standard for a relationship because... people are more sensitive nowadays? I can only guess. Viktuuri and otayuri got tied together for some reason, it’s like they come in a package and everyone who ships one has to run with the other as well. 

I grieve for the background characters and smaller ships as well, anon. Just imagine the sheer crack potential; and instead, everything gets pushed in the back in favour of the same things over and over. The things that could’ve been: victurio (the underage ship that tumblr will fucking lynch me for), emil/michele, sara/mila, georgi/yurio (yes I do love my crack), chris/victor, chris/that guy we saw in his room, yuuri’s sister/literally anyone (because I like her) and the list could go on and on. But this is not even always about the ship itself; it’s the dynamics, those are what popularizes things. Even when there are ships in other fandoms that have been popular for a longer time, there’s a tendency on tumblr to make them very mild and fluffy. I’m not saying there’s anything we can do about this, nor that something should be done about it, all I’m in opposition to is people who claim it’s the ‘right’ way to do shipping because it’s ‘healthier’ or something, as you put it.

Because popularity doesn’t lie

Thank you, this is exactly how I’d word it as well. The crux of this issue isn’t yoi being objectively good or bad, it’s whether popularity implies that something is good, or not. Or what ‘good’ even means in this context. My personal (salty) opinion is that there are anime that could be enjoyed just as much as (if not more than) yoi if only they got more exposure. I’m not talking about 91d either because I’ve already explained in detail what the problem with advertising it was in the previous post. And yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re talking about that certain addition to the Chechnya post. I can see it was well-intentioned but it was... well... a little bit out of place, to put it in euphemisms? ‘Too soon’, as they say? But, in the end, I’m sort of glad that yoi exists because if not anything else, it can be considered a massive social experiment, an example of fandom behaviour. And if it made some people happy, then I wish them all the best. The fixation with it will go away with time too, eventually.