#and it's just a stupid idea and that's why nobody who's in that fandom overlap has written it

[andiv3r]

Like. I looked on AO3 but no one has written it (I guess because it's specific to the overlap of two fandoms I'm in) and I feel like. It should be an obvious "oh my god put those two characters together" to anyone who's in both fandoms but somehow no one else has seen it and written about it, and I am so pissed. Someone who's better at writing should have thought of this... why me?

I just had the best fucking idea ever in my whole entire life for a fanfiction and have never been more sad before that I'm shit at writing fanfiction.

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/747778548718321664/an-element-of-the-not-enough-ff-fic#notes

tbf, the "not shipping the canon het relationship is misogyny!" thing has escaped containment enough to the dumbest, most homophobic het-onlys that I've seen those people argue that for F/F pairings where there IS no competing M/M relationship, where people genuinely couldn't give less of a shit about the guy and are only in it to put the woman with someone better. Or when the M/M ship they also like is completely non-overlapping.... somehow it's somehow still misogynistic for them to prefer this completely DIFFERENT woman with her female best friend over whatever crappy guy she's with in canon whom they ship with nobody.

My friend has seen this in Bridgerton fandom, where people throw out the "but misogyny!" shit for people who prefer shipping Eloise with women, over her book-canon male love interest (who is a rapist who sucks and she ends up basically just being nanny to his kids, gee I wonder why a lot of people don't want that as the eventual fate of the character who in the show is the Outspoken Feminist). Their claim for why that's supposedly what's going on is these same people sometimes also like to ship her brother Benedict with men.... but like, the "canon" ship isn't Benedict/Eloise. Nobody ships that. They just like both of them in same-gender relationships. And in Eloise's case, it's clearly motivated by a love of Eloise as a character, a dislike of her book husband, and often also liking her relationships with other women in the show and thinking it would be interesting to ship them. What could possibly be misogyny and "pair the spares" about that....?

(Granted, the people mad about this in Bridgerton seem particularly homophobic and stupid and like, new to fanfic fandom or something. They had meltdowns about someone tagging a het ship with its ship tag when they wrote a fic with one of them Rule 63'd..... pretty sure that's standard AO3 practice to do that? The person tagged it as either M/M or F/F - whichever it was - rather than F/M, and put a tag in there about it being Genderswap/Rule 63, they were adequately warned. So there was literally no reason to complain except that you mad that you were reminded of the existence of non-het in your fandom by scrolling through the tag. The horror! Or maybe it's 2024 and especially if you're using AO3 of all fucking places, you need to get the fuck over the idea that "can gay people exist but like, not where I can see them?" is a preference it's ok and normal and non-bigoted for you to have)

--

[hopefull-mindset]

Hello. I had another question. Would you say the way the relationships/interactions are written between the characters in BSD would be considered queerbaiting?

Technically by definition I would personally say yes, however there's usually a negative connotation that comes with queerbaiting that's related to harming the queer community so I was wondering if you had a more nuanced approach to the topic.

Queerbait… ah my worst enemy of a term has struck again. Mind if I add the Queer Coding discussion into this as well? Because when I see one person denounce the idea of Queer Coding in BSD, another person goes “oh yeah, it’s actually Queerbait”. No offense, but nobody knows what they’re talking about with either term and I understand why. I have my hangups about how they've been used and the blur between them causing this confusion.

I didn’t even realize this was something people argued about because I didn’t think there was enough to argue queer intent anywhere. I’m generally used to vague queer representation getting these types of arguments, so I blanked out with confusion.

For those who don’t know, Queerbait is a term coined to refer to marketing strategies that use the “implied” queerness to market their content to an audience who are interested in that to view their content. Of course, they don’t actually follow through on that “promise” for the sake of their viewership not being disturbed. Maybe they'll put some hints in their little show, and then kill them off when the time is ripe.

That’s where most of its negative connotations come from: Taking advantage of a marginalized group’s need for representation to improve their ratings. People use this… very incorrectly, usually when someone is clearly using Queer Coding in their work and get accused of Queerbait when they don’t follow through with an explicit romantic relationship.

Queer Coding is when a creator writes subtextual hints into their writing that a character or relationship is meant to be read as gay to bypass censorship or stigma within the media they’re writing in. Usually with signals that a gay audience can catch onto or romantic references in plain sight. While technically not the greatest example since MDZS is a danmei, the Donghua wasn't exactly allowed to fully present their relationship for what it was. Surprisingly, they added a scene where a move of Wei Wuxian’s colored both his and Lan Wangji’s robes red to resemble Chinese wedding garments.

I only chose that example because I think it's a great representation of details in plain sight. But then there's the other way I've seen Queer Coding get used and that's in queer analysis where we read a narrative or character as gay because of their distinct traits or plotline that resonates with LGBTQ+ audiences. It gets confusing when people use it both ways, but fandom usually uses it the first way.

I'm a bit bitter when I talk about these two terms because of how often the overlap confuses audiences, and god knows how loosely Queer Coding gets used to describe some vague, homoerotic friendship while the other side starts accusing the author of Queerbait. Then you start questioning if the author was really trying to take advantage of the community, wanted to explore sexuality without commitment, or literally didn't realize what they wrote could be interpreted like that because of how it chooses to write intimacy. It gets messy FAST.

Ah, how do I say this… I get the outrage of not having explicit representation more often, but when Queerbait starts getting used to describing the writing itself rather than just the promotional marketing, it starts losing all meaning to me and becomes a scab on my back. It generalizes the intent of the writer and assumes them in this box of malicious motivations. Then there's the whole argument of whether or not real people can “queerbait”, which is also stupid to me.

The examples people bring up don't even hold up (starts using t.A.T.u in your examples for once because… wow) and a majority only apply this to fictional content because of the super-secret rule to Queerbait. Usually, it can't work because then that assumes the sexuality of the person in question and they fully well could just be non-disclosed queer who's exploring their sexuality, but then what makes the writer a problem? What's stopping you from confusing Queer Coding with Queerbait?? It's different when it's obvious that they're using the queer identity for a quick browny point, but Jesus.

The way fandom uses it is not in these really obvious moments, but in ambiguous writing. I don't understand any of this when we start straying into this territory and I'm trying not to get mad when I'm currently talking about this right now. I am already mad, I failed. Maybe it's just a personal feeling, but I really don't like this term for these reasons. It's useful, but kind sucks. I can go on forever about Queerbait and the misusage of it, and even the way I think its used currently is bullshit anyway, but I digress.

Right right, this is about Bungou Stray Dogs. As you could guess from my rant, I don't think Asagiri is queerbaiting us if you mean it in the “queerbait writing” crowd. So what about Studio Bones?

Bones, well… I mean it's really common for animation studios to draw official art like this and since Queerbait is more of a Western concept, this is understood as just fanservice I think. You can technically count this as Queerbait if you'd like, but you should always consider the fact of a different community always having a different relationship with queer concepts.

Studio Bones's official art of Soukoku is hilarious to me. There’s another one promoting some brand and they're at a fountain dating spot. At least these are not as bad as the official art for Mecha animes in the 2000s lololol.

Moving on, the argument for Queer Coding when it comes to Soukoku tends to rely on these arts. I don't recommend doing that because relying on side content that holds no purpose other than to rile up fans doesn't make a strong enough case. Subtext is the most important part to making a point, so if you can't even point in the direction of the main text, then…

Dazai and Chuuya is a bit bottom barrel of what can be considered Queer Coding. I like Soukoku as much as the next guy (maybe not in the same way) and think their relationship is incredibly fun, but one vaguely homoerotic scene in Dead Apple does not convince me anything of the idea they should be seen in a romantic context. Trust me, I've spent a long time back proofing my arguments as to why my long-term OTP should be understood as gay. Soukoku doesn't impress me in these lines of understanding.

I personally think the way some SKK fans approach their relationship from a purely romantic view and are entirely insistent on this one-note understanding of Dazai’s feelings for him ruins most conversation on the topic of Dazai, Chuuya, Age 15, and his inclusion in Stormbringer. They're very important to each other, but some need to step back to appreciate what they have in canon and then apply romance?

I have no idea why people talk as if Dazai joking around and saying “That's what makes me like you” really meant anything. Makes me doubt half the time if it's just people seeing the panel out of content and have never read the actual novel.

Fyodor and Nikolai shippers are like this too. They take the importance they have to one another (at least for Nikolai, idk what Fyodor thinks of him) and then inflate that into just romance. What they have isn't really Queer Coding, it's just fixation that is seen as romantic. They have their official art, but that doesn't mean much since it's anthology art.

Rimbaud and Verlaine hm… sometimes when an author depicts real people who were in a relationship, they avoid that detail by calling them “brotherly”. The relationship of the real authors shouldn't be pointed at as proof at all because the characters are not the people. I would not recommend romanticizing their relationship either since it was um, I don't think chaotic cuts it. The age gap was disastrous, Rimbaud moved in with him and his wife at some point (obviously making the marriage worse), one of them got slapped with a fish, Verlaine tried shooting Rimbaud, etc.

So me saying that there was no Queer Coding shouldn't mean you can't see them as queer, I just mean there's no proof of Asagiri having that intention. That is all. I think Verlaine and Rimbaud had something going on, but that's purely from my own amusement and appeal.

That's my take on that I guess? I don't see it either way. It takes a lot for me to believe there was an intention to write them a certain way. Even if you asked me, “Do you think Akechi and the protagonist from Persona 5 are meant to be gay?” I'd giggle and consider it from what the p5 royal content was like, but I'd tell you no, unfortunately.

[serpenteve]

In most cases when you venture into an anti's profile after they've spewed some nonsense about how shipping fictional characters is supporting ab*se and gr*oming, they're a teenager and you're like well, at least this poor child's brain hasn't fully developped yet so that's something, but when in some cases it says 22 yo or 23 yo on there and you want to fling yourself into the sun, this new wave American centralized puritanism is gonna send back to the 1800s, this time by the hands of women.

As someone who's been in and out of this fandom since 2015, the shifting landscape of the fanbase has been fascinating to watch.

After the trilogy was published, Darklina was the most popular ship (called 'Alarkling' back then and I honestly have no idea why we picked such an unwieldy ship name lmao). Tumblr was much more active because this was before the Infamous Purge of 2018 and most of the fanbase was concentrated here instead of spread out across multiple platforms like it is today.

Mal hate was rampant. After Darklina, the most popular ship was Nikolina (this being before the duology paired him with Zoya) and/or shipping Alina with nobody. There were like max 4 people unironically shipping Mal with Alina, and usually those people were multi-shippers who shipped Alina with everybody. Most fanfics would either pretend he didn't even exist or would include him just to shit on him or kill him off. People would go and edit his wiki page on the Grishaverse wiki to remind people what an asshat he was and I'd be lying if I said this didn't have me in tears of laughter.

The amount of fan art, fanfic, fan edits, fan content about Mal x Alina was embarrassingly low. You could be forgiven for not even realizing he was supposed to be the main love interest based on fandom engagement alone.

The fact that the vast majority of the fandom hated Mal because of how much he reminded us of your run-of-the-mill garden variety toxic fuckboy (at best) was incredibly validating. We didn't fall for the author's failed attempts of excusing his bullshit. We kind of just made our own fanon and ran with it.

Six of Crows got published and while their fandom was much larger than Shadow & Bone, there wasn't a whole lot of overlap in the fanbase. A lot of SoC fans didn't even realize S&B existed at the time since it wasn't prerequisite reading to enter the Grishaverse. Also, SoC was obviously better written and tightly plotted so anyone who went back to read the original trilogy was going to be in for a surprise with the massive drop in writing quality.

Then the Tumblr purge happened and the fandom just kind of died off. This wasn't just something that affected S&B, however. A lot of users migrated to Twitter or just left Tumblr for good. I actually don't even know too much about the fandom history from 2018-2020 because I also left around this time (for other unrelated reasons).

Someone else might be able to fill in the details here but what I *imagine* happened is that the Darklina fandom kind of died off post-Tumblr purge as did a lot of fandoms at the time. Leigh published KoS in which she created a parody cult of Darklina fans and used her heroes as mouthpieces for her anti-Darklina agenda because she was pissed 3/4 of the fandom hated M*l and were shipping Alina with the villain out of pure spite and her terrible writing choices.

A new generation of fans entered the fandom through either Tumblr, Twitter, BookTube or TikTok and saw the chaotic mess of rampant Darkling simping and indiscriminate Mal hate that we left in our wake and then reacted to that. So now new fans starting unironically shipping Alina with Mal out of spite for the original fans who blatantly didn't and probably felt emboldened by the author herself immaturely reacting to her own fanbase and painting us as stupid cult members who read her book wrong.

And thus began the era of the Darkling antis (a phrase that 2016 would have absolutely clowned at) who, like the author, think anyone who ships Alina with the Darkling is an abuse apologist and is somehow too stupid to see his ~evil~ villainy and need to be reminded via anon hate about how dumb we are 🤡

Is it also a coincidence that people are turning around and claiming any critique of the sexist ending of R&R is now itself sexist? Is it a coincidence that new fans are willing take the author's excuses for Mal's shitty behavior? Is it a coincidence that antis are running around and calling Darklina shippers "racist" because...the Netflix adaptation racelifted the characters and they will jump on any half-baked excuse to harass shippers? ☕

[katiebug445]

Small

Pairing: Jean/Armin  Fandom: Attack on Titan  Word Count: 1300  Summary:  Armin looks in the mirror and sees a lot of things he doesn't like. Mid-breakdown, Jean finds him and tries to explain that he loves all the things Armin doesn't. Whether Armin believes him or not is a different story. A/N: There’s negative self talk in this, it’s not nice. Read at own risk. Wrote as a way of venting out some frustrations towards myself. 

“You… You a - are…” Armin stared at himself in the mirror, blue eyes staring back at him as he fought against bile rising in his throat. He darted over every inch of his face, trying to find anything he could say about himself that wasn’t negative, any kind of compliment that he could come up with, even a superficial one. “What are you?” He asked himself in desperation. Armin took a breath, scanning his own face again and pointing out hundreds of things that he didn’t like - his too big eyes, his too small nose, too thin lips… - and felt repulsed. He let his shoulders relax a little, and with defeat in his eyes, he glanced at himself again, and told his reflection with perfect confidence, “You’re disgusting.”

Armin let his hands slip from the sink, and he left the bathroom with what felt like a hole in his chest, and went to sit on his bed. You’re disgusting he echoed back to himself, How anybody could find you as anything other than pathetic, I don’t know. Armin wrapped his arms around his middle, trying to cover himself just a bit more, and swallowed around the lump in his throat. You’re too small.

Too small. He’d always been too small. The other guys in his friend group were all damn near perfect. Reiner and Bertholdt were huge, built for football, and they were good at it. Connie and Eren both played baseball, and were the fastest on the team. And Jean…

Well, Jean was a soccer star. And a damn good one, at that. Jean himself was just damn good, period.

Tears slipped through his closed eyes, and Armin finally allowed himself to cry, trying in vain to be quiet about it so nobody would hear him. He was spending the weekend with the others at Jean’s house, and desperately needed a break from them for a moment.

He’d taken refuge in the taller boy’s room, and was hit with an incredible amount of self-hatred and he nearly drowned in. Then he remembered a technique Jean had told him about months ago: Look yourself in the mirror and say one good thing about yourself. And mean it.

Well, he’d gotten the second part right, at least.

A whimper escaped his throat, and Armin curled in on himself just a bit more, hating himself that much more for realizing that he was still missing from the group. Not like anybody’s wondering where you are, though. He told himself. Armin ended up in a ball, knees tucked up to his chest, and wept.

“Armin?” Came a voice after a moment. “You in there, buddy?” It was Jean. Of course it was Jean.

“Y - Yes?” Armin replied, furiously wiping at his eyes.

The door opened, and Jean was there, in front of him, mouth open as if he was going to speak, but then saw the look on his face. “Everything okay?”

“I -” The blond stopped, thinking better of himself, unable to actually lie to the other boy, and uncurled himself. “No. No, it’s not.”

Quietly, Jean shut the door behind him, making his way over to the bed, and sat down beside the smaller boy. “Talk to me.”

Armin had no idea where to even start. Thousands of thoughts were competing to get out first, all fighting for dominance on the tip of his tongue and overlapping so much that Armin just remained silent. He stared straight ahead, trying to find something to say, and let his shoulders fall. “I… don’t… like myself.” He finally admitted.

“What about you don’t you like?” Jean asked gently.

Another hundred thoughts all flared up at the same time, all wanting to get out, but, again, he didn’t know where to begin. “Is it too cliche to say everything?”

“No, but, I kinda need specifics here.”

You shouldn’t bring this up. He thought. He’s gonna see how stupid you are. Armin took a breath, still not taking his eyes off the wall, and said, “I don’t like my eyes.”

“Armin.”

“I know. But they’re too big. I don’t like it.”

Jean got up and stood in front of the smaller boy, taking his face in his hands, and forced him to look up. “Armin Arlert, you listen to me. Your eyes are fine. They’re big, and bright, and they’re full of kindness for everyone.” Jean swallowed, thinking for a couple seconds about something before leaning in, pressing a kiss to one of the blond’s eyebrows. “What else?”

“My - My nose.”

“That’s total bullshit, but what about it?”

“It’s small.”

“It’s perfect.” Jean argued, leaning down and pressing his lips to the tip of Armin’s nose. “I love your nose. What else?”

“Lips.”

“No.” Jean then pressed a kiss to them.

“They’re thin.”

“Nope.” Another kiss.

“Jean…”

“What else?”

Armin paused, not knowing exactly how to voice his next concern, but not wanting to keep Jean waiting forever. He was hyper aware of how tiny he was next to - or under - the other boy, as he was right then, and it made him feel worse. “Me, Jean. Just me. I’m…small. Too small.”

“Armin, what’s wrong with that? Why is you being small a bad thing?”

“Because… It just is.”

“Why?”

“Because I really, really like you, and the last thing I want is for you to feel weird about being with me, because there’s so much of a height difference, and I’m really small, and--”

“Armin. Calm down. Please.” Jean stood back a little, eyes scanning over the blond’s frame for a moment, and shook his head. “Do you really think I feel weird about that stuff?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because I don’t. I don’t see you as being so much shorter than me, or small in general. I see you as Armin. And I happen to really, really like who Armin is - exactly how he is. I think he’s handsome, and sweet, and god, he has this cute little button nose that always needs kissed, and he’s the perfect size to be hugged at all times, and--”

“Alright, I get it.”

“Do you?” Jean asked, sitting back down beside Armin. “Because it doesn’t look much like it to me. It looks like you’re just trying to get me to stop telling you the truth.”

“Is it the truth, though?”

“Have you ever known me to lie, Armin?”

The blond shook his head. “No. You’re very honest.”

“Then why don’t you believe me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you really not know, or are you just saying that?”

“Both?”

“Well, then I guess I’ll have to keep annoying you about it until you do believe me.” Jean leaned out, cupping the smaller boy’s face in his hand, and brushed his thumb across his cheek. “You really are handsome, you know? Even if you don’t think so.”

Heat rose up into the blond’s cheeks, though he didn’t say anything. Instead, he scooted over closer to the taller boy, wrapping his arm around him, and lay his head on Jean’s shoulder. After a moment, he could feel the other boy’s lips on his hair, and Armin shut his eyes, not wanting to leave that moment for a long time.

Jean always made things feel a little easier. He didn’t fully believe what he was saying, but being wrapped up in the taller boy’s arms, it made it a little easier to think it might be the truth. That Jean really didn’t mind things the way Armin’s mind tried to make him think. Jean made him think, for a brief moment, that his nose wasn’t too tiny, or his eyes too big, or any of the other stuff.

Armin glanced up and met Jean’s eyes, and thought to himself that maybe being small wasn’t such a bad thing after all.