#and I’ve seen what other shippers have been doing

[bloodmoon24]

Mammon: I don’t see how this could get any weird- Aaaaand, here we go

A fanart of Fizzarolli and Mammon were seen cuddling together

Asmodeus: *pissed off* AHHH!! WHAT THE-?! MAM!! THIS IS SO MESSED UP!!!

Mammon: I know, right? I mean, future me wearing sandals??

Asmodeus: I MEAN YOU TRYING TO STEAL FIZZ FROM ME!!! IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE TO “FIZZMODEUS”, NOT “FIZZMON”!! *demonic voice and flames in his mane* YOU HOME-WRECKING IMP EATER!!!

Mammon: 0_0U…And it looks like I didn’t stop at Imps *points and sees an anime versions of Ozzie and Mammon getting married*

Asmodeus: AAAHHHHHH!!! *sobs*

Mammon: I agree. I always thought I’d be the one wearing the pants in this relationship

Asmodeus: What is going on?!?

Mammon: *low growl* This mess has fan-artists’ name written all over it

Asmodeus: How do you know?

Mammon goes up to the Fizz and Mammon ship drawing and points to the edge and shows a fan-artist’s tag name

[seungkw1]

make me — ksy

♡ pairing: kwon soonyoung x afab!reader ♡ theme: smut [18+ mdni], humor ♡ wc: 1.8k ♡ warnings: alcohol consumption, oral (m. receiving, f. receiving implied), handjob, hoshi is obsessed w boobs, hoshi is a simp, i ramble on about star wars for a bit at the beginning ♡ a/n: might have to do a pt. 2 to this one so lmk if anyone is interested in that 👀

“No it’s not.”

“Yes, it is!!”

“Soonyoung. Be so fucking for real right now.” 

Your roommate doesn’t usually drink, and you’re starting to see why. Two Jack & Cokes and he’s fucking gone already.

“I’m telling you y/n, The Rise of Skywalker is so fucking good. You should stop being a haterrrr,” he says, inches away from your face as he leans over to you, nearly pushing you off the couch. You’ve never been this physically close to him, though you’ve certainly thought about it (more than once). Your heart flutters from the proximity of his lips to yours, but you have more important matters at hand right now.

“I didn’t say I hated it, it’s just not that good compared to all the other Star Wars movies!”

He picks up his drink again. You stop him before he can take a sip, handing him a glass of water instead. 

“Well how would I know? I haven’t seen the other movies.”

“WHAT?!”

He takes a big gulp of the water. “I’ve only seen the new ones,” he admits with a shrug.

“Oh my god,” you mumble, resting your forehead against your palm in exasperation. You grab the remainder of his beverage and drink it all in one go. 

This argument isn’t that serious of course - you just need to calm your nerves a bit, considering Soonyoung has now placed your hand on your thigh as he blabbers on.

“Besides, seeing Kylo Ren and Rey finally kiss was great. I cheered.”

“You’re a fucking REYLO SHIPPER??”

“A what?” He blinks at you with heavy eyelids. “I don’t speak that language.”

“Kylo Ren and Rey made a terrible couple, it’s literally toxic. The plot between them should’ve never been a romance.”

“But I like romance!” he practically shouts in your face. You’ve always enjoyed bantering with Soonyoung for fun, but the alcohol in both of your systems is definitely upping the ante. You’ve seen him act ridiculous plenty of times before, but he’s on another level today.

“It’s fucking Star Wars, it doesn’t need romance!!” you shout back.

“Well I think it does!” he states indignantly.

“What do you know?? You haven’t seen the other movies!!”

“So I can’t have an opinion??”

“NO??”

“Why are you being so mean to meeeee,” Soonyoung whines, making big sad puppy dog eyes at you. “I’ve never done anything wrong in my life.”

“You’re literally insane. Get off of me!” you shout as he leans over onto you, practically clinging onto you in his drunken stupor.

He ignores you, getting even more up in your face. “You’re just mad because I have better taste in movies than you.”

“Will you just shut the FUCK UP???”

“MAKE ME!”

You pause, staring at him for a few moments too long. He stares back at you, confusion spreading across his face. Then-

You kiss him.

Your lips press softly against his for only a few moments. You pull back, looking at your roommate eye to eye, watching his inebriated brain trying to process what just happened. As if a lightbulb goes off above his head, it suddenly clicks. He swallows nervously.

“What was that for?” he hesitantly asks, barely more than a whisper.

“I…” you start, but quite honestly you don’t know where that came from. Sure, you’ve found Soonyoung attractive since the day you met him - and sure, living with him has led to a few domestic fantasies here and there. But you are friends, nothing more - your boundaries are unspoken, but clearly established. 

Or so you thought.

Soonyoung’s dark eyes stare into yours. Panic alarms are going off in your head. You fucked up you fucked up you fucked up oh god you fucked up big time…

“I’m so sorr-”

You don’t get to finish that sentence. Soonyoung’s mouth aligns with yours, kissing you hungrily, his hands grasping onto your arms. Shock reverberates through your body as he makes out with you, his hands sliding to your back, pulling your body close against his as his tongue pokes at your lips, requesting entrance. You let him in. He squeezes you even tighter against him as he kisses you like his life depends on it.

After what felt like about a thousand years, you break apart, barely - his lips hovering mere inches in front of yours. The look he gives you is one you’ve never seen him make before - he gazes at you like you’re the most delicious thing he’s ever seen, and he wants to devour you.

You try to speak, but nothing comes out. You’re simply dumbstruck.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been wanting to do that,” he mutters as his hands drop to your hips, still holding onto you for dear life.

“You… like me?”

You silently curse yourself at how dumb you sound. Asking him if he likes you, as if you were in fucking middle school.

“Yeah,” he replies emphatically. “I really really really like you.”

Your head spins, the intoxication doing nothing to help you process this information.

“Um… since when?” 

Soonyoung is still drunk as hell, but he speaks clear as day.

“Short answer, since we moved in together.”

You wait for him to elaborate. He doesn’t.

“And the long answer?”

He shifts awkwardly, doing a very poor job of trying to hide his boner.

“Middle of July. It was hot as balls. I woke up that morning to you making pancakes. You were wearing a light blue tank top with nothing underneath, and-” he trails off. You raise an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to go on.

“And my god, your boobs looked perfect. The pancakes smelled good, but all I wanted was your tits in my mouth.” 

His hand delicately trails up to your breasts, where he is currently staring, taking one of them and squeezing it. He lets out a soft groan as he does.

“Fuck, even better than I imagined.”

“Is that why you took so long to come out for breakfast that day?” you say as your fingertips glide over his thigh, moving toward the very obvious bulge that has formed in his pants. You grab his cock through the fabric. He practically yelps as you begin to caress it slowly.

“Y-yeah,” he answers, his voice going up an octave, practically melting under your touch. 

“So you’re saying that you went and jerked off while you thought of my tits.”

“Um,” he tenses up nervously, realizing what he’s just admitted to.

Before he can say anything else, you take your shirt off, leaving you in just your bra. If his eyes could physically pop out of his head on a pair of springs, they’d be doing just that right now.

You unclasp the hook, removing the undergarment and tossing it aside. He gawks at you - his cock twitches under your palm. You begin to stroke his length, but he immediately grabs your hand to stop you.

“I’ll cum in my pants if you keep doing that.” He’s still staring at your chest.

“Where would you rather cum?”

“I- what?” He looks up at you, his eyes darting between your mouth and your eyes, then back to your boobs, then back to your mouth. 

“Okay then,” you say as you slide off the couch.

“What’re you-” he asks, but freezes as you position yourself between his legs. His body tenses as you undo his belt, quickly unfastening the button and yanking the zipper down. The rock hard bulge protrudes through the fabric of his underwear, begging to escape. You pull the band down, freeing his already-leaking cock. You take the length in your hands, giving it a few slow strokes. He sinks into the couch with a loud groan.

“Oh my god,” he mumbles, your touch sending him to another planet. 

With a swirl of your tongue you lap up the precum dripping from his tip, causing him to let out the biggest whine. You wrap your lips around the head, slowly taking his length into your mouth. 

“Fuckkkkkkk, y/n…” 

He lets out a gasp as you swallow him to his base. He places one hand softly upon your head as you begin to move your mouth up and down his cock. Within seconds he is a moaning, blubbering mess.

“Feels so good baby, oh god don’t stop. You’re so fucking hot oh my god… fuckkkk…”

You increase your pace. Between moans he continues praising you, whining and whimpering, begging you for more. The man simply cannot shut up about how good you’re sucking him off.

And it’s making you so incredibly wet right now.

You want to touch yourself so badly, but your priority is pleasuring Soonyoung. And judging by the way he is wriggling under you, bucking his hips and fucking his cock into your throat, unintelligibly babbling as he moans your name - you’re doing a pretty damn good job.

“Oh fuck,” he cries out. “Fuck, y/n, gonna cum…”

The words are barely out of his mouth before hot white ropes are hitting the back of your throat. He grips onto your hair as he cums, cock pulsating in your mouth as he rides out his high. As he comes down, he collapses into the sofa - you slowly pull your mouth off of him, making a show of swallowing all of his cum.

“Jesus fucking Christ, y/n…”

You climb back up onto the couch. He immediately leans in and starts kissing you.

“Thank you,” he murmurs between kisses.

“Are you seriously thanking me for sucking your dick?”

He shrugs as he wraps his arms around your waist. “You just gave me the best head of my life, least I can do is say thanks.”

“Actually,” he corrects himself right away, “I take that back. If you’ll let me, can I… may I please eat you out?”

You burst out laughing. He looks at you, puzzled.

“Sorry, if you don’t want-”

“No no no,” you tell him, still laughing. “It’s not that, I’ve just never had anybody ask me so politely like that before.”

His face lights up, hopeful. “So can I?” he pleads enthusiastically. “Pleaseeeeeeee? Please please please?”

You lean your head into his shoulder, giggling like an idiot.

“Soonyoung, you are truly one of a kind.”

He gently grabs your chin, tilting your head up until you are eye to eye. His nose presses into yours.

“Is that a yes?”

You smile as you kiss him.

“Yes, it’s a yes.”

He practically leaps off the couch, startling you. He grabs your hand, pulling you up and directing you toward his bedroom.

“Wait,” he says as he pauses. He looks at you very seriously.

“My room or yours?”

“Don’t care,” you respond eagerly.

He grins. “Yours, then.”

—

[0-therw-0-rldly]

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not really a shipper. I just enjoy canon couples on TV Series/films.

Terms I’d like B*ddies to remove from their vocabulary because they don’t know how to use them correctly:

Media literacy: For a group that uses this term a lot you sure do misinterpret everything in this show.

Queerbaiting: Going to expand on this one. A show that’s already been pre established for having queer characters simply cannot queerbait.

Ship baiting: While sometimes you can argue that they could be doing that, that’s only if you look at the show in a very biased manner. You might think this is the case but the general audience doesn’t think the way you do.

Ship war: This isn’t a one tree hill situation where there was Team Brooke Vs. Team Peyton where the middle guy (Lucas Scott) had canonically been with both women. This is people not understanding fanon vs. canon and not being able to just watch the show. It’s like playing quarterback on Madden and thinking you could be better than Patrick Mahomes.

Plot device: everything’s a plot device. Move tf on.

Predator: You sound like crazy MAGA supporters calling everything regarding the LGBTQIA+ community as predatory. Sit down.

Co-parenting: I know this is a big one and discourse was brought up during the hiatus. Oliver and Ryan have loosely mentioned this years ago but it was never to be taken this seriously. Do y’all even know what co-parenting is or are you that big of a donut? Buck is someone who loves his best friend deeply and by extension, his kid too. Him taking care of him frequently does not make him a co-parent. Maybe he is a parental or uncle figure, but he isn’t a co-parent. Also, I swear y’all need to learn how a will works. He is a GODPARENT, not a GUARDIAN. Stfu.

Hag: This especially applies to women, but to say that someone 25-30+ is a hag for still being in fandoms or enjoying tv shows/films is inherently misogynistic. Men are never held to this much criticism for enjoying fictional media, but women aren’t allowed to?

Queer Coding: people of the same sex “looking at each other”, hugging, or having intimate moments all together doesn’t make them queer coded. It could mean that they just love each other that deeply platonically. While representation is amazing and just because you interpret a character as queer coded (just like my ship baiting comment) doesn’t mean others interpret it that way as well. In addition, network TV has stipulations, and also actors are allowed to decline storylines. Ryan has mentioned his character is heterosexual an abundance of times which means (at least for now) that he isn’t willing to go for this storyline.

Dead naming: Y’all construing the fact that Buck wants people like coworkers and some of his former love interests, to saying Evan is his dead name is inherently transphobic because do you even understand what a dead name is? Evan Buckley is shown as being fine with being called Evan by both Tommy and his sister. I’m pretty sure some of his love interests have called him Evan as well.

Fetishizing: You guys saw two hot guys who “looked at each other” and for 6 seasons have wanted nothing but to see those two make out with each other. Those of us who enjoy Tevan saw Buck giddy at the thought of Tommy and have wanted domestic fluff for them since.

Anything to do with racism, homophobia, and misogyny: I’ve seen the way you guys have conveniently weaponized Henren and by extension Aisha/Tracie when you didn’t get the Ryan/Oliver interview, don’t try to act like you’re morally superior. Not to mention wanting a canonically gay man to die in a show and not even holding those who use your ship name to write CSA fics accountable because you’re petty and want to throw hissy fits. Anyone looking at your comments as an outsider would think you’re homophobes and yes queer people can be homophobic.

I do hope you can expand your vocabulary. 🤍

[elodieunderglass]

I'm not as familiar with LOTR as you are, so I wondered if you could tell me if my wild theory is completely off-base.

No one knows where the Hobbits came from, except that at some point they diverged from the line of men. No one knows much about the Entwives' appearance, but we do know that they fucked off a long time ago.

Could the Entwives have been dryad-ish and hooked up with the hobbits' ancestors and so be the foremothers of the hobbits?

Ah I think I saw that post! The concept has a lot of charm, and when the Tolkien estate loses its corpse-grip on the property in 2050 or so, I think you should write it and sell it 😤 I’ve definitely read some good takes on entwives in fanfiction that both leaned into canon and moved away, and I think that sounds like good fun to explore. A common theme in the fandom is playing with Yavanna, the Green Lady, being the mother or patron of hobbits. This isn’t canonical, but she’s a “green goddess” archetype and is married to Mahal/Aulë, the father of dwarves, which shippers often leverage to their advantage. You could do something quite charming there with Yavanna if you wanted to. We also know that Entwives loved gardens and orchards rather than forests.

Some things I would explore with this include:

what is going on with all these consistent ideas of people, races, women disappearing. We know that a lot of it is how Tolkien processed an almost OCD-like Catholic framing of “the fallen world is getting worse and can never be repaired”, war experiences, romanticism and other stuff stewing in his old man head. What are some ways you could show what’s stewing in your head? What does “people disappearing” mean to you? and why is it especially healing that they disappeared in order to make new families?

I think “they disappeared from their old kin and made new kin” is an interesting and weird thing worth wondering about!

- this would possibly make hobbits a more recent race than is implied. What does that mean to you?

- why are hobbits teeny tiny?

A very good starting point, that Terry Pratchett used a lot, is taking some grand statement in fantasy fiction, and making it reflect a different political reality. “Most dwarves are girls actually.” “Wizards parody academia, but, like, FOR REAL.”

I personally have a different take because of my own political feelings and framings! I have a lot of complex feelings about Tolkien chickening out of hobbits. For various political reasons I personally have to take the stance that they are fully human, fully indigenous, and have their own native language. and that their disappearance is less “teehee we lost them” or “O, the Catholic guilt of the Fallen World, how far we have fallen from the light of the two trees God’s sinless light” and a lot more “oh yeah I’ve seen THAT pattern before.”

If you have a political sort of lens on, someone telling you “yeah… hobbits came from nowhere 🤭 and then disappeared 🤷‍♀️ sad!” is a story that can also invite the response of “OHhhhh you wanted their LAND real bad, huh.” Like, we know what that means, right.

It’s a political stance for me. Hobbits have to be close enough to us to touch, and we have to be able to face that, and the fact that 5,000 media properties will chew on tolkienelves and sell them to you before even admitting to the 🤭 just makes it even more of a 🤨. To me.

…But I have literally just been elbow deep in my own demented fanfic thing that involves inventing a language just to swear in, to enable my standing on a box shouting HOBBITS OUGHT TO RESIST GOING EXTINCT ACTUALLY, based entirely on, I think, spite. Why do multiple authors publish orc football games (Terry Pratchett) and orc coffeeshops (Legends and Lattes guy) and do every damned thing with every bit of Tolkien’s corpse but refuse to look directly at hobbits. I am feral over this and wrote 59k words so far to damage and harm my friends

In conclusion I see a great story shape there about kindred and I think you should explore it and it should be about evolutionary biology and women and divorce and nobody being wrong.

And if anyone argues you with some podcast boy “well actually”, just bite them and do more character work and sit on their heads

[cheesecakeluvrs]

It frustrates me how many people misunderstand my girl

While I’ve definitely seen it more on TikTok and not so much Tumblr it is still quite prominent. All of the “Gambit girls 😜🤞” (Gambit is literally my favorite character but just those new fans who like him because of the crop top) are coming out and saying that Rogue is to be blamed for Gambits feelings being hurt but what they don’t realize is how much both of them were hurting. We see Gambits pretty clearly but guessss Rogues we’re a little harder to catch even though I think it’s pretty obvious

What I feel like a lot of people don’t realize is how much suffering she was going through because of her feelings for Gambit. He would tease her and flirt with her yet for her it was just a constant reminder that she can’t touch him. His whole existence is just a constant reminder of what she can’t do. She thinks that because she can’t touch him she could never make either of them fully happy in a relationship

Plus that makes perfect sense because the closest romantic relationship she has to her are Jean and Scott who constantly love and kiss each other. We see her multiple times in the original just stare at them as they touch, just another reminder of what she can’t have

On top of that her literal first experience with her powers was with a person she had feelings for. She has been obsessing over the ability to touch since she was thirteen years old. People get mad at her for not realizing that she valued her feelings over the ability to touch sooner but that is literally everything she can think about. To her a happy relationship ‘needs’ intimacy so she thought that the only way she could be in a happy relationship was with Erik

That’s why the dance is so important because she finally got that intimacy she has been looking for. She put off the fact that she didn’t have feelings for Erik and thought that she would be alright plus if it means helping Genosha

I mean she’s just weighing out feelings and intimacy and since she’s been idolizing the ability to touch since she has been thirteen years old that’s obviously what she’s going to choose. Then of course she was faced with grave disappointment when that thing she has been searching for her whole life wasn’t enough

I know a lot of the Gambit and Rogue shippers felt relief because she realized she valued feelings over touch but I just can’t get over the amount of disappointment she probably felt in that moment. She finally got what she had been searching for, what she thought would be enough for any relationship, but she still wasn’t happy because she didn’t have feelings for him

I would also like to mention her relationship with Erik before because that is probably the biggest comparison to her of all. She had both feelings (no matter how healthy or unhealthy they were) and intimacy with him so in her head if he didn’t have those struggles that would be the perfect relationship. It’s also likeee the only happy relationship she had had intimacy but that was also only because she thought that a relationship needed intimacy… if that makes sense

Anywaysss I know I kinda rambled off but it’s important to understand how much she has been idolizing the ability to touch someone and how complicated her feelings were after the dance because she realized that intimacy is not even good if it’s with someone you don’t love

[charmingradiobelle]

Debunking all the reasons Charlastor is “wrong”

(and I’m going to be brutally honest because I’m tired of y’all’s bullshit)

“Alastor sees Charlie as his daughter!!” No the fuck he does not. He said that to get on Lucifer’s nerves. That’s it. Infantilizing Charlie—a grown ass woman—to make him appear as her father figure is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen a fandom do, like ever.

“Charlie is a lesbian!” Correction; she’s bisexual. She likes women and men. Careful babes your biphobia is showing

“Charlie is with Vaggie!” So? I don’t care. I can ship her with whoever I want. Canon does not dictate what you ship and it’s getting ridiculous how people think otherwise

“Alastor is aroace!” He’s just ace. And ace people can be in relationships and believe it or not they can have sex. It’s not your place to define someone else’s asexuality. (Also it’s a bit sus how I never see anybody bring this up in any post about literally any other Alastor ship…)

“The age difference is-“ let me stop you right there. This fandom does not give a fuck about age gaps because if they did, they wouldn’t be shipping Alastor or anyone else with Lucifer—who is older than the earth itself. Charlie has like maybe 100+ years on Alastor but he’s been dead for almost a century now and he died a full grown man so it really doesn’t matter

“He’s manipulating Charlie!” He’s manipulating everyone. That’s his whole personality. Why is it ok to ship him with other people but not his narrative parallel?

“They have no chemistry together” are we watching the same show..??

“Well it’s just not a good ship!” That’s your opinion. If you don’t like it that’s fine. My feelings will not be hurt if you unfollow me for what I post. You do you, idc. Just keep your negativity away from me, and other Charlastor shippers. Our content is not for you so stop interacting with it.

Oh yeah also these characters aren’t real, so like stop being so offended over a goddamn ship. I promise you your daily life will not be affected by it

Anyway that’s all.

[myobsessionsspace]

Hello! Now that we've seen all eight episodes and Jimin and JK didn't take a single opportunity to "bro" up their relationship, no "when we get married to women I hope we're still friends" conversation, do you think AYS was a soft launch? Or did it just feel like one because that's the natural by-product of seeing Jimin and JK together without (much) third party interference?

Hi lovely,

Thank you for sending this in.

I haven’t done any write ups on my feelings after each episode like many have. There’s been much said that I agree with, so Ididn’t really have anything new to add.

Tbh I’ve done a Masterlist for all things AYS also including the write ups of 2 bloggers here that I pretty much agreed and enjoyed their write ups. Both @akookminsupporter and @jmdbjk (thank you two again for agreeing to have your posts linked🥹)

Do I think the show was a soft launch? Sort answer no. Long answer mmmm no?lol😅🙈

⚠️Looooonnnnnnngggg essay of an answer incoming⚠️

I think with this show and all that it has around it has to be looked at through the eyes of Koreans and the type of shows they have in Korea. How the ‘bromance’ genre is generally accepted and the types of shows celebs and idols do in Korea.

Did you know many idol groups do RUN BTS! like shows, In The Soop and Bon Voyage like shows, shows where they become parents for a period of time to kids, shows where they get ‘married’ etc. Koreans see celebs and everything they do as entertainment for them. Two idols from a group of 7 travelling ‘alone’ sure, bromance, sure something BTS hasn’t done before but…

Tbh it’s not that unique. It’s not that outlandish.

I posted this previously

Close friends and famous actors going on a trip to Jeju, meeting with other friends and fishing together.

Tbh people may not view the show the same way that jikookers are. Jikookers have the added knowledge of everything in Jikook spaces that have previously been highlighted. So we see the inside jokes and know that this just adds to the long saga of Jikook and inside jokes, we see the hyung/dongsaeng dynamic get flipped on its head and we add it to the years long knowledge we have of Jikook and their unique bond.

I think there was some ‘bro’ energy. To be honest above anything else they’re goofballs and dudes. For as much tenderness as there was, there were ‘bro’ moments too, they are BFFs and young men after all. I think the show served different things for different viewers.

For casual viewers, those who know of BTS and we’re just interested in watching BTS content. Cos let’s be real, this isn’t a show you just are channel surfing and happen across. You have to search for this show, know of its existence, be recommended it or have been waiting to watch it. For those casual viewers, maybe or maybe not identifying as army, the show was just a fun, more adult, more slow paced BTS show. With two members that after watching the show, the viewer now realises are close close friends with more of a chingu friendship and would be shocked that it’s actual a hyung and dongsaeng (if they didn’t already know).

For these reactors, they kept verbalising ‘how close’ Jikook must be ‘good friends’ ‘close friends’ and ‘cute’. (click here if you want to check out the full thread on twit/x)

For army watching it, again it’s just to them, an opportunity to watch more BTS content. To enjoy the members travelling, eating and having fun, more of the in the Soop/Bon voyage that they’re familiar with. More of the skinship, playful, one big happy family that army know BTS to be.

A paraphrased collection of what was seen from army on twit/x

Jikookers having the time of our lives with all the tender and also sus af moments.

For Jikook shippers, the show is just a reaffirmation of what they already felt they knew about Jikook. More of an opportunity to see Jikook’s dynamic that they saw in bits and pieces from lives, fan cams, Bangtan bombs, memories and other BTS shows.

The show tbh isn’t really earth shattering in unveiling anything about Jikook to any of the demographics mentioned above casual fans, army or jikookers.

Depending on what sub group a viewer fits into, their perception of the show fits that.

I don’t think anyone really honestly, apart from exuberant jikookers truly think this show is Jikook’s soft launch.

I think by Korean standards the show isn’t outlandishly gay.

It’s got sus moments here and there like the majority of Bangtan content has had over the years. But on the whole, it is content that other groups have done in one way or another, other celebrities have done, were yes they do tease and flirt and joke about the ‘homoerotic’ atmosphere some setting bring, but due to the dominating culture of homophobia, none really honestly mean it or believe it to be gay or involving actual gay people. I don’t know if that makes sense what I’m trying to say?

I’ve written thoughts before on the show, how it made sense for it to happen for Jikook, how it’s not so out there for them to be filming a duo trip etc.

Musings

Thoughts

Pondering

👤“Everything comes back to GCF with you Jikooker🙄”

Me: Yes, Yes it does 💅

If you’ve got this far in the answer trust me, bare with me I’m going somewhere with this, it’s not just another opportunity to gush about GCFs😅🙈

Remember that Jimin loves travelling with Jungkook, he loved being GCF’s main model (no matter how embarrassed JK was at Jimin verbalising it to be the case and his denials😂)

Jimin made his little vlog of their Tokyo trip before he knew the kind of production Jungkook was making himself with his first ever GCF. They’ve always like travelling together and always like sharing it with army. They just didn’t have much opportunity.

Jungkook tweeting this whilst editing GCF Saipan.

Namjoon tweeting this whilst they were in Saipan.

What is AYS then?!!

I think AYS was just a matured continuation of Jikook jikooking. Their numerous selcas they’d share on twitter, their joint YouTube logs they’d do in the beginning, their back and forths they’d have on weverse every now and again.

This show was to me, I think, is just Jikook reaffirming everything they’ve always shown about themselves to army, that’s they’re intertwined, how many times have they said they are ‘you are me and I am you’.

They couldn’t do a subunit together, they had no time to do a cover song together, something I’m sure they would have loved to do in chapter two.

I just feel like they wanted to do something together in chapter two, because since the beginning of their careers, they’ve always made sure they carved out something within that highlighted the two of them. That was for the two of them.

Everyone had their own documentaries, appearances on shows or their own YouTube shows etc. Jikook too had their own docs, but they were the only to have their own show for the two of them.

I don’t think the show was a soft launch. I do think the show was another part in the long history of Jikook showing us, rather than telling us, they’re never to be divided. That the other is their source of joy, happiness and home and wherever they start, they’ll always end it with the other. Like we noticed FACE ended with Letter feat. Jungkook, Jimin’s doc ended with Jungkook, Jungkook’s doc ended with Jimin, they ended their free time travelling with each other before enlistment together and they ended their solo releases with Are You Sure?! capping it all off. Their show playing their solo songs whilst showing the two meeting together after it all.

That’s what I got from the show.

If the show was a soft launch, then enlisting together, their portions in their autobiography, their section in their monument’s documentary, GCF Tokyo…all those were soft launches too

Ultimately I think Jikook are intent on making one thing clear. Not the romantic state of their relationship. But the importantance of it full stop.

That they are important to each other AND the closest to each other. Anything else they aren’t (to me) addressing. But they are with this show and with every stage in their career, making sure it’s known that Jimin is of the utmost importance to Jungkook and Jungkook is of the utmost importance to Jimin.

Since the beginning

Thank you for this ask lovely. I don’t know if it was the answer you wanted but it’s what makes sense to me.

Thank you for anyone else that made it through this huge answer in its entirety 😩

It’d be great if anyone else wanted to give their view on this so we’re can share and discuss

💜

[littlemisssquiggles]

Why did no one tell me about the little “omake” chapters of DandaDan?

I was today years old when I learned the existence of these little extra omake or bonus chapters of Dandadan that expand on what’s going on with some of the other DanDandan characters like the Aira and Evil Eye Jiji one for example.

I thought it quite cute that Evil Eye cared enough about Aira to help her with getting her old friends to start talking to her again. That was actually oddly sweet of him.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the Evil Eye might secretly have a widdle crush on Aira. Doesn’t have to be true. I mean it’s just me spitting here.

But I’d be lying if Evil Eye crushing on Aira is definitely feeding into my thoughts on Aira and Jiji eventually being a couple.

I DO LIKE the Jijira ship. I mean Dandadan got me wracking up new ships to love like Uno cards with each new arc.

Already I’m Team Momokarun - obviously. Otherwise why am I even here if not to suffer at the hands of Yukinobu Tatsu as he proceeds to write the most beautiful shoujo romance love story disguised as a shonen battle anime that the world has ever seen and taking his sweet ass time doing it too. That magnificent romantic bastard.

---

I’m Team Jijira - I just think they’re NEAT okay? Our secondary BAKAS IN LOVE potential couple next to Momokarun.

No seriously, I think these two can actually work really, REALLY well together if Aira would just come to her senses of seeing that Okarun is OBVIOUSLY in love with Momo and NOT her, get over him and redirect her interest to the guy who is actually always by her side more than Okarun. Meaning Jiji.

As for Jiji and where he stands on love and romance. To all the people who keep saying that Jiji is in LOVE with Momo, I raise you one important question? Where? Where is this love you keep insinuating that Jiji has for Momo?

Believe me, I have watched the anime. I have read the manga up to date and all I’ve seen so far is a good boy who just simply cares very deeply for his childhood friend and is very protective of her. Nothing more.

I mean Aira is more obvious with her feelings for Okarun than Jiji is for Momo.

I dunno man. The Momiji ship and its shippers is giving me Zutara from Avatar vibes. Ya’ll up in here painting this magnificent love story between these two characters and telling everybody who would listen about it but when you actually read the ACTUAL canon content, there is nothing to insinuate anything like that at all.

Then again, I might just be biased because even IF Jiji DID in fact have a crush on Momo … that means shit because WE KNOW Jiji will NEVER end up with Momo BECAUSE SHE IS IN LOVE WITH OKARUN AND HE LOVES HER TOO!

Not unless Tat-Tat writes an arc where there’s an alternative universe/ reverse time line type shit where Momo ended up with Jiji instead of Okarun due to weebly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.

And now thanks to Aira omake chapter with the Evil Eye, I have more reasons to believe that Jijira could be a possibility. Either way, my Jijira shipping heart has been fed.

---

I’m Team Vaminta: or Kintola? Whatever the official Vamola x Kinta ship is called. Doesn’t matter. Vamola is (literally) a queen and Kinta is her king. Nuff said!

My goat and baby girl deserve each other!

---

And finally; I’m Team Rinuma - yes, yes, I KNOW Rin and Zuma have yet to actually officially interact in the story but how can I NOT ship them prematurely. The girl with gravity powers making people float and the boy with the umbrella? C’mon it’s like poetry. The ship practically writes itself even if Tat-Tat hasn’t gotten there yet. I see the vision and I’m embracing it while I can; dagnabbit!

---

So yeah, those are my current favourite Dandadan ships. Returning to the omakes, I also enjoyed the Chiquitta one.

Did not know Chiquitta was attending school on Earth. I mean it would make sense since his father is currently working on Earth so that Chiquitta can get all the milk he can get to keep himself healthy and strong. Yeah makes perfect sense actually.

Loved the chapter showing Chiquitta protecting his classmates from older bullies. Like father, like son. Chiquitta got hands man! That’s our favourite kappa son!

Also Chiquitta imitating Jiji of all people when interacting with a girl is insanely cute. Of all the people for Lil Chiqui to copy, why Jiji of all people? Then again, better him that Kenta, am I right?

There’s also speculation now that the little girl that suspects Chiquitta to be an alien is actually related to Okarun.

Like she’s his little sister and that Okarun comes from a large family where possibly some of the background characters we’ve probably overlooked throughout the story may allegedly be related to our favourite Yokai speedster.

Personally I’m down for this theory since it’ll actually confirm Okarun as being from Earth instead of my crazy theory of him secretly being a member of a humanoid alien race who was abandoned on Earth at birth and raised by a human family or someting like that. .

Because we have yet to glimpse into what Okarun’s home life is as yet, it’s got me wondering if Okarun even has a family. I mean surely he has to have a home because in spite being a loner/outcast for most of his school life, Okarun is always well-clothed, well fed and stocked up on occult-related magazines.

So outside of the alien heritage theory, it wouldn’t surprise me if Okarun actually comes from a pretty wealthy family and the reason why he’s always seen ready and flexible to go off on his own without his parents wondering about his whereabouts is probably because Okarun’s parents/caretakers are probably living a life where they’re never home with him.

Perhaps Okarun’s parents work overseas and the reason for Okarun’s deep fascination with the occult is cause its related to his parents’ occupation.

Maybe his parents are archaeologists or astrologists or a pair of people who study these kind of things and often have to travel abroad for long periods of time while Okarun is left alone; unable to accompany them due to him attending school in Japan.

I mean, it would make sense why we haven’t seen them as yet in the story. To me, Okarun living alone because his parents work overseas sounds more plausible than them secretly being alien.

Perhaps the little girl who suspects Chiquitta of being an alien doesn’t necessarily have to be someone related to Okarun. Perhaps she’s his neighbour or something. Or maybe she doesn’t even know Okarun and is just someone related to Chiquitta’s side of the story.

On the subject of aliens, it would actually be pretty funny if Okarun’s parents were another pair of refugee aliens who have been living on Earth for years and thus Okarun is secretly an alien who was born and raised on Earth.

Like his parents brought him up on the occult to desensitize him to the existence of the alien race. Their race; although they never revealed the truth of their alien lineage to Okarun, wanting him to grow up believing himself to be just a “normal human boy on Earth” when he actually isn't.

I mean that’s another theory for the pool of possibilities.

If Okarun parents are indeed secretly aliens then imagine them being Ken Takakura fans as much as Momo is because his movies were the first thing they were exposed to once they came to Earth and thus they decided to take the surname of Takakura and named their Earth-born “alien” son, Okarun after him.

It would honestly be insane if there comes a time when Momo gets to meet Okarun’s parents and the first thing they bond over is their shared love for Ken Takakura.

That would actually be insanely cute.

Overall, these are just little headcanons. For all I know, there’s probably no twist to Okarun at all.

He could really just be a regular guy who, despite everything that life had thrown at him, lucked out and found the love of his life and the literal girl of his dreams when she just happened to be passing by on a bad day and noticed him for the first time.

That really could be just it.

Then again; who really knows.

We really have to see what Tat-Tat has cooking up in that noggin of his for this ongoing love story he's made.

The most I will say is that the longer the story drags on with us readers never seeing or knowing anything about Okarun’s homelife, the more this squiggle meister will start to believe that he’s secretly an alien until it’s debunked by the actual story.

~LMS (2025)

[gracieeegleegal]

Shinning Beauty - Charlie Bushnell

Pt. 2 for my ballerina

Pov - your a profesional ballet dancer and Charlie is your boyfriend

Pairing - Charlie Bushnell x fem!Oc ballet dancer

@yn.ln

Liked by dior.n.goodjohn, iamcharliebushnell, walker.scobell and 27,629 others

yn.ln - last of rehearsals before the show tmw night 🩰 Also HELLOOO? Episode 5 made me cry like a baby @percyjacksonseries

📸: @iamcharliebushnell

Comments

leahsavajeffries - so excited to see youuuu

↪️ yn.ln - even more excited to see you xxx

iamcharliebushnell - genuine question why do you always look so gorgeous 😍

↪️ yn.ln - stoooppp I love you so much 😭

dior.n.goodjohn - YOU BEAUTIFUL ANGELLLLL 😍

↪️ yn.ln - I LOVE YOU DIOR😘

walker.scobell - 🫅

↪️ yn.ln - don’t even I’m still sensitive

leenascobell - so excited to see my baby again it’s been too long

↪️ yn.ln - LEEEEENA MY LOVE

aryan.simhadri - how can you not cry while watching episode 5 is my question

↪️ yn.ln - RIGHTTTTTT my percabeth heart was SCREAMINGGG

↪️ iamcharliebushnell - I can confirm

@iamcharliebushnell

Liked by yn.ln, aryansimhadri, momonatamada and 876,193 others

Iamcharliebushnell - can confirm she actually did cry watching episode 5 and later had to go outside to reflect on it

Tagged yn.ln

Comments

walker.scobell - she’s so real for that

↪️ yn.ln - walker your acting killed me in this episode

dior.n.goodjohn - bet she looks pretty even when she’s crying

↪️ iamcharliebushnell- she looks pretty all the time

↪️yn.ln - mr bushnell u sure do know how to make a lady blush 🤭

↪️iamcharliebushnell - what can I say I try my best for my girl

↪️ walker.scobell - get a room

yn.ln - DONT MAKE FUN OF ME OKAY IM A SENTIMENTAL PERSON

↪️ yn.ln - AND A VERY BIG PERCABETH SHIPPER

↪️ iamcharliebushnell - I know sweetheart I know

aryansimhadri- those cookies look so good 👀

↪️ yn.ln - THANK YOUUU I tried my best

↪️ walker.scobell - omggg I want to try them

↪️ yn.ln - I’ll bring you some

↪️ iamcharliebushnell - walker stop trying to steal my girlfriend

↪️ walker.scobell - WHAT DID I DO? I only asked her for some cookies man :(

i.am.andrew.alvarez - she’s like me Fr

↪️ yn.ln - you get me drew

@yn.ln

Liked by iamcharliebushnell, walker.scobell, leahsavajeffries and 46,788 others

yn.ln - so incredibly thankful of everyone that came to see me tonight. Couldn’t have done it without the support of everyone. Special thanks to my man that no matter what is always there watching me across the room applauding me and supporting me as always. I love you Char 💕

Tagged iamcharliebushnell

Comments

dior.n.goodjohn - AHHHHH YOU WERE AMAZING 😍😍😍😍😍

↪️ yn.ln - stoppppp I love youuuuu

leahsavajeffries - you were for sure the best out there on stage

↪️ yn.ln - I love you leahhh 🫶🏻

iamcharliebushnell - I’ll always be there looking at you from the front row

↪️ yn.ln - and ill always be grateful of your presence 💕 I love you baby

leena.scobell - YOU WERE UNBELIEVABLE BEST BALLET SHOW IVE EBER SEEN

↪️ yn.ln - I love you leena 🫶🏻

user - I love the fact that Charlie always gives you flowers after a show

↪️ yn.ln - IKR! He’s all I’ve ever wanted best bf ever frr

walker.scobell - for someone who doesn’t watch this often I loved every second of it

↪️ yn.ln - awwwww I’m so happy you loved it 🫶🏻 thank you for coming tn

iamcharliebushnell - you were shining beauty tonight, how did I get so lucky?

↪️ yn.ln - ughhhh everyday you say something that makes me fall more in love with you 😍😭

yn.ln - BTW EVRYONE GO WATCH PERCY JACKSON SERIES SERIOUSLY ITS AMAZING 🤩

percyseries - looking like a real Aphrodite’s daughter

↪️ user - ?!?!???

↪️ user67 - WHAT DOES THSI MEAN

↪️ pjofan268 - HELLOOOO

↪️ yn.ln - 👀

@iamcharliebushnell

Liked by walker.scobell, leahsavajeffries, yn.ln and 1,663,394 others

iamcharliebushnell - celebrating this beauties amazing work

Tagged yn.ln

Comments

dior.n.goodjohn - she was Beyond amazing tn

↪️ momonatamada - 100% agree

leena.scobell - she’s so talented omg

↪️yn.ln - 🫶🏻🫶🏻

leahsavajeffries - she’s so ethereal my god

↪️ iamcharliebushnell- why’d you think I feel in love with her?

yn.ln - I love you 💕

↪️ iamcharliebushnell- I love you more 💕

walker.scobell - thank for the dinner man 🙏

↪️iamcharliebushnell- bet ur loving not having to pay for once

↪️ walker.scobell - I really am 😗

@yn.ln

Liked by dior.n.goodjohn, walker.scobell, iamcharliebushnell and 123,567 others

yn.ln - and that’s an end for the night 💋

Comments

walker.scobell - that scream you gave scared me the same if not more that diors did

↪️ yn.ln - LMAOOOOO 😭

dior.n.goodjohn - baeee ur acting skills are on point

↪️ yn.ln - 👀

↪️ percyseries - 👀

aryansimadri - slayed the house boots down Houston Im deceased 💅

↪️ yn.ln - 💀Aryan bby that’s enough tik tok for today

Iamcharliebushnell - 😍

↪️ walker.scobell- we get it now shut up

↪️ leahsavajeffries- walker let them be it’s not their fault ur single

↪️ walker.scobell - yk sometimes I hate u

↪️ leahsavajeffries- no u don’t

[bucksboobs]

i was told to come ask you, and i will repeat this part, please treat this ask with kindness because i feel so dumb, i don't really understand why people are saying not liking tommy is homophobic. i'm only on tumblr, and i follow a very select few ppl, but every criticism i've seen of tommy has been bc of his past actions (which does feel like a major overreaction bc clearly the characters moved past it) the writing and acting choices, or a combo based fully on the fact that he's not who they wanted to be with buck. i just haven't seen anything that says they are hating him specifically for being a gay man, and i was wondering if i was missing something. sorry if this wasn't a good place to ask this!

So it’s never as blatant as “we hate him for being a gay man” it’s the language used. Calling him creepy, or gross, or a predator, or a groomer, or poisonous, or insisting that he’s sexually harassing Buck when he’s literally just flirting. The way they misinterpret every scene to say that Tommy doesn’t ACTUALLY have feelings for Buck and that he’s just a pervert in it for the sex. The way they gleefully imagine killing him in the most violent ways possible for the sole reason that he is dating Buck. Saying any gay man that is like Tommy sucks. It all adds up to this overwhelming feeling for myself and other gay men that we are not welcome in this space.

And the idea that we as mlm aren’t welcome is bad, but what hurts the most? The fact that we are so quickly swept aside by the people doing it as irrelevant to the conversation. “It’s just a joke, lighten up!” “It’s no different than what Taylor Kelly went through but suddenly you care because he’s a man?” There was a person in my notes just the other day telling me fandom “isn’t primarily about men” so my experiences don’t matter.

What hurts even more is the passivity that many people in the fandom seem to have towards the rising tide of ridiculous nonsense leveled at Tommy as just “fandom shipping tradition” people I used to follow and admire as Buddie shippers turned out to not fucking care about how they and their friends were harming the gay men in their fandom, when it’s based on a m/m ship. I’ve said this many different ways but the fact that gay men are only relevant when we’re fictional (and only if the fictional ones behave correctly and do nothing remotely problematic) feels a lot like fetishization… but you can’t say that because these people take that as an attack on fandom as a whole and they close ranks and accuse you of being a spoilsport.

So the homophobia is in the reckless use of language that evokes homophobic tropes, yes, but it’s also in the way its allow to fester and it’s more unacceptable to many people to call it out than it is to do it in the first place. And THAT creates a hostile environment for gay men, which is homophobia.

[blossominghunnie]

𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞

Pairing: Matthew x 10th!fem!member

Summary: Fanservice can be helpful sometimes, especially when you’re trying to hide a secret relationship from your fans and the world.

Genre: Fluff, established relationship

Warning: None

Notes: I just love writing for this man. 🙂‍↔️

Fans have always liked you and Matthew together, they live for every interaction you have with him. This started since pre-debut, right after contents of zb1 started being uploaded. Back in your boys planet days you didn’t really interact a lot with the boy, but some star creators had the hope that you would end up working together in at least one presentation, it didn’t happen unfortunately but they were over the moon when you debuted together.

Since you were the only girl in the group, you were shipped with basically every one of the group, minus Yujin, since you were an 03 liner. But their favorite pair was with Matthew, which was actually ideal because you two had been dating for about 4 months now. It was the perfect way to hide it.

You were always next to each other, leaning your head on his shoulder or viceversa, him being your helper while you cook (he doesn’t do much, he just likes being near you), him always touching you in any way (hand on your thigh, hands clasped together, arm around your shoulders or waist, etc).

At first you were pretty careful when the cameras were on, until a live where Matthew leaned his head onto yours (he was sitting behind you) and placed his arms around your shoulders. You moved your head upwards to look at him, a loving look on both your eyes and a small blush could be seen on your cheeks if you looked closely (which was what happened.) It was a quick exchange that fans weren’t supposed to catch since you were on one of the ends of the phone’s screen but surprise, surprise, they did.

That small clip of the live went viral, it was EVERYWHERE. After this, you were much much more shipped with him, everyone thought you looked so cute together.

You didn’t think much about it, until your timelines were filled with edits of the two of you and even on fan signs zeroses wanted tons of more new interactions.

“Matt? Have you been seeing more posts of us?” You asked him a few days after the bomb exploded; you were lying together on his bed, just scrolling through your phones while playing with his hair, his head resting on your chest.

“Mhm, it’s entertaining to watch them. We look cute.”

You nodded, you did like them. There were a lot of talented editors.

“I think it’s the first time I’ve seen that many. And people ships us a lot.”

“As they should, we’re the cutest together.” Matthew turned around and looked at you with a smile while you giggled. He leaned and gave you a quick peck on the lips.

“Can’t deny it.” You agreed, a lovesick smile on your face.

Oh if your shippers could see you now.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Zb1 masterlist || Main masterlist

[cassylost-inspace]

The object show community has honestly become so unsafe and toxic. I’ve only been in the community for a year and a half ,but the difference between now and then is honestly drastic. People don’t even enjoy the media anymore, all everyone does is criticise. While criticizing is fine, I don't think a community should be based on that. I have barely seen ANY positive posts about the ii movie, everyone treats it like it's meant to be God tier and I get that everyone thinks they should get what they deserve, but holy shit you guys have nothing good to say. Shipping has also become such a difficult point of discussion in the community, considering that everyone believes that their ship and their ship ONLY is good. Most of the shipping stuff wasn't relevant to me, because I'm a multi-shipper but the fandom takes ship wars to an extreme,honesty speaking. Another point is the fact that people are mad at ii for making canon ships,, again this doesn't bother me,because I have always liked all of the popular ships but it's honestly not that deep. I think I've seen like a million posts about the payjay scene from ii 18,, and people got SO mad over fan service despite the fact that it was like 3 minutes long 😭 Another thing is, I haven't talked about c2bc on here b4, but Cole getting cancelled proved how fast the fandom is willing to act immediately on a show's downfall. "I never really liked the show" that's really not the point here. I feel like people should take the situation of cole being racist more seriously instead of just taking this as a chance to bash the show. Moving on,, I remember seeing a post of someone saying "how could you even cry to object shows,, they're so unserious" why do you care? Genuinely WHO is it hurting.Moreover people saying stuff like only "12 year olds watch object shows" is dumb; because have you ever been in a fandom before??Teenagers literally keep fandoms alive, also who DO you want to be in this community. My last point is how almost everyone acts like object shows are meant to be "amazing works of art",, like they literally started off as terrible. These shows are indie and run by an even amount of people, stop treating the shows like Hollywood. Reminder that these people can do WHATEVER they want with their characters. Animationepic is one of the most listening teams out there, they sacrifice a lot for their fans and I personally think that they're allowed to do anything they want with their characters especially since they put so much effort into what the fans want. As someone who uses object shows and animation in general as a way to escape reality,, it is evident that most of you do the same. So I don't understand why there is just SO MUCH negativity coming from the community,, when os fans are so clearly talented and instead of putting effort into being hateful they can use this energy to make art, amvs, maps and animation memes and help uplift the community and it's overall impact on others.

Ik I normally don't post stuff like this, but the osc is REALLY important to me and I feel like this should be brought to more people's attention.

-Cassy

[ennn]

Initial Agatha All Along Ep 5 Meta Thoughts

Holy FUCK. This episode did not go where I expected it to. Spoiler-y thoughts and theories below:

The Lies We Tell Ourselves

Now I know so many folks are gonna be arguing how awful or evil or deplorable Agatha is for killing Alice. Did she do it on purpose? Or was she not aware or have control as she claims?

On a rewatch (ow my heart) and I guess in Billy’s defense it does seem textually ambiguous. Enough time passes and Agatha seems aware enough of what was happening that you see her lean into the power siphoning — euphoria evident on her face.

And on rewatch, it’s also ambiguous if she had the ability to snap out of it when her son was mentioned or whether it stopped because Alice was fully drained in that moment.

Agatha being possessed means she didn’t initiate this exchange — but something happened in the moment. Was Agatha operating on pure instinct? Like an addict trying to come clean but just had their drug shot into their system? Did she even see Alice or just the power going into her? Did the hunger and euphoria just override her thoughts?

We simply don’t know enough about how Agatha’s ability works. What we do see is Agatha looking distraught after she snaps out of it. She looks taken aback by what she’s done.

Now we know Agatha lies. She lies even to herself sometimes. Agatha lies to survive, for power and to protect herself. She puts on a show when she’s afraid, as Rio points out (more on that in a bit).

Why I think Agatha did not want to kill Alice comes from the scene after, where you see Agatha alone. She’s shaken. She’s not happy about what she’s done and here there’s no audience to put on a mask for.

She definitely reads as sincere trying to defend herself to Billy, although there is the possibility that she is genuinely lying to herself as well, in that she could have chosen on some level to give in to that incredible rush of power, everything else — including herself — be damned. Definitely not the first time we’ve seen the “magic as a drug” analogy.

My Shipper Heart

Okay so we got some delicious food this ep. Agatha and Rio giving each other their brooms all too easily, despite the awkward looks. Agatha flying free and looking at Rio like she’s her North Star, like she’s the one she wants to share this with.

And yes while Rio may seem eager to slit Agatha’s throat (who knows how their no-killing rule works!), she’s also the one who truly understands Agatha at this point.

I’ve mentioned this before but Rio’s arguably the most truthful one of this group. She’s mercurial but she’s honest about who she is and what she wants. And she’s been with Agatha enough to shed light on her truth.

Rio’s the one pointing out whose trial this is, who sees Agatha doing dumb shit as her hiding her very real fear.

And notably we see Rio toss aside her casual detachment and raise her voice for the first time on the show. No. No way!

Power, Grief and Darkness

Look, Billy is going to be a Young Avenger or something so we know he’s gonna go on an arc for the remaining eps but what a juicy one it’ll be, because at least Agatha will be there with him. I’ve suspected he placed the sigil on himself for a while now but I have no idea how aware he is of everything that’s happening.

What’s interesting is how Agatha puts the villainous mask on right after Billy claims to be morally superior. Agatha’s bullshit detector pinged and she digs into that indignation, that anger for strength. Agatha doesn’t like being on the backfoot, certainly not when it comes to feelings like regret.

I see Billy as needing to confront and understand his own darkness, and in doing so understand Agatha’s darkness. Things aren’t so black and white when you’re in pain, and angry at the world, and have the power to lash out.

Agatha is set up to be a mentor to Billy here in a way she couldn’t for Wanda, although the potential was clearly there.

It’s definitely going to be an interesting Road with them going forward, given how dark this ep got.

[haptronym]

Hap's Adventures in Dadmight

aka “this experience was really strange so I’m going to write 6,000 words about it”.

Fandoms are bizarre. I know this, but I still keep doing the shocked Pikachu face whenever I join a new one. 

This time around, I really thought there would be no surprises. And yet, the fandom ended up having a really weird, really uncomfortable dynamic that confused the hell out of me for a long time. I met several others who said “Yeah, it freaks me out too,” but they couldn’t explain exactly why, and nobody really wanted to talk about it. So now that I’m mostly done with the My Hero Academia fandom, I’ll just go ahead and vaporize my bridges with a whole-ass case study about what on earth seemed to be going on here.

Warning: very long, very self-absorbed, as usual. Contains discussions of relationships, underage shippers, and how to influence whether something “feels” platonic vs. not.

Disclaimer 1: This doesn't apply to everything tagged "Dadmight." Just a select subset. But this subset appeared pretty consistently.

Disclaimer 2: I'm posting brief, fair-use-commentary examples of the content that made me question my sanity because it has to be seen to be believed, but I'm not including names or links because I don’t want to easily funnel negativity to them. If an author really wants me to, I’m happy to link directly to their story.

Disclaimer 3: I’m not trying to “spread awareness” or do a callout. I just like to write for fun and this time the fun was puzzling out why I, personally, had the experience I did. Many people feel differently and that's great. If all fluff has always felt 100% wonderful and charming to you, then this post isn't relevant to you. But if a supposedly "cute" story has ever made you squirm with discomfort, this might help explain why.

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A few years ago, I took a terribly wrong turn in life and ended up in the My Hero Academia fandom. My kidnappers were these two:

In short: the little kid on the left, Izuku Midoriya, is exactly as dorky as he looks. He was born powerless in a world of comic-book superheroes and has a tendency to burst into tears under any possible circumstance. The series kicks off when the guy on the right, #1 hero and national celebrity All Might, sees potential in him despite all this. In a fit of inspiration, All Might decides to give Izuku the same chance he was given as a young boy. Despite being a notorious lone wolf, he (secretly) names Izuku as his successor and takes it upon himself to covertly train this weepy, noodle-limbed wimp into a hero, the hero, the next Symbol of Peace who will wield the world’s strongest superpower and safeguard the future of society. Surely they’ll pull it off just fine, right?

(Don’t ask how All Might switches from a bodybuilder to the skeleton pictured  above. The show doesn’t know either.)

I loved these two. I wanted eight seasons of beach training montage. The mentor/student shenanigans were hilarious and the found family potential was off the charts. They’re two awkward bumbling fools with several truckfuls of emotional baggage, brought together by purehearted heroic zeal. Wonderful.

However, I quickly discovered that the show shoveled approximately ten thousand new characters into every new episode and definitely wasn't going to slow down long enough to give me the All Might & Izuku content I craved. So I wandered off to see what kind of fanfiction was on tap.

...I wandered off, while bracing myself. I’ve been a weeb long enough to know that any characters who pass on power through “DNA” are never going to escape a fandom unscathed, regardless of pesky things like “Age Of Consent” and “Have You Watched A Single Minute Of This Show, He Would Never Fucking Do That”.

Their canon relationship is impressively alarming all on its own:

Izuku is 14-15. Underage character? Check. 

All Might is 55+. Enormous age gap? Check.

All Might is both Izuku’s secret mentor and his high school teacher. Teacher-student dynamics? Check.

Izuku is a nobody. All Might is a global celebrity. Staggering power imbalance? Check. 

Izuku’s superpower, which lets him go to the school of his dreams, accomplish his lifelong goals, and be the protagonist of this show, was given to him by All Might at great personal cost. Enormous sense of debt and obligation because of a huge sacrifice? Check.

Izuku is an outright fanboy. His room is full of posters and figurines of All Might in spandex. Other characters frequently comment on how obsessed he is. There is a whole plotline about him being so starstruck by All Might that he can’t think for himself. Literal hero worship? Check.

As the cherry on top, they spend most of the story pretending they don’t know each other and sneak around under the noses of every other character, including Izuku's mother. Secret hidden relationship with a minor that no other adult can learn the true extent of? Check. 

What a pair. Japanese fandom constantly cracks jokes about how Izuku is probably that kind of fanboy. Even official media is well aware of how sketchy it all looks:

With all this in play, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the stuff in their platonic-relationship fanfiction tag vastly outnumbered the stuff in their shipping one. Phew. Finally, a pair of characters who got something besides endless gross hornyposting. 

As I browsed, I kept seeing a certain tag: "Dadmight." This, unsurprisingly, was used by stories that decided to make All Might into Izuku’s biological father. But it was also used by... pretty much all non-shipping media that focused on their relationship. How interesting! I was used to ship pairings having nicknames, but not platonic ones. 

I could imagine why the name caught on. All Might was practically the definition of "goofy wholesome dad energy,” and his mentor/student relationship with Izuku was easy to see in a parental light. Plus, Izuku’s actual dad is never to be seen during the story. Clearly he deserves a replacement.

So I delved in. Man, this was going to be great! A huge amount of good clean platonic content, with an easy-to-find tag too. Reading about cute dadly shenanigans was going to be such a fun-

How he would love to fall asleep to the sound of his soft voice and the touch of his rough hands, telling him he was proud of him, caressing his hair. He was so mortified over having this need, for all kinds of reasons, but it became clear a long time ago that fighting it wouldn’t work, so he let himself dream.

Uh... well... Izuku didn’t grow up with a dad, so... maybe he needed a father figure... to... caress his hair with his rough hands...

More hums of contentment make their way from him, his body swaying with every push and pull from Toshinori’s long fingers. He uses them to massage Midoriya’s head, taking every moment to not just clean his hair, but to make him feel good; Toshinori can’t bear for this to be purely utilitarian.

Uhhh... okay... All Might was a rather isolated guy. I bet he appreciated being able to share time with his student... bathing time...

What if the boy would rather this stay simply as it has been, professional as mentor and mentee? What if Toshinori has read all of this wrong and the boy has no feelings above Toshinori being his teacher, and all Toshinori has done is fall harder and harder for him every day?

What was this? What exactly did people think kids got up to with their dads!?

Well, maybe I just found a few of the strange ones, I told myself. Fanfiction always has its odd outliers. But after more searching, I realized: no. There was wildly uncomfortable stuff all over. It wasn’t all Dadmight stories. But it was a lot. The most popular authors of the “Dadmight” tag wrote it and the rest of the Dadmight authors gave them big thumbs-ups. It was at least as popular as the “All Might is Izuku’s real dad” stuff and sat at the top of the kudos and comments sorting.

Were people just being polite? Or was I overreacting? I know how annoying it is when people deliberately take things in bad faith and demonize perfectly innocent human affectio—

He kept the contact to a minimum, not wanting to take advantage, not wanting to cross a single, unspoken boundary… but how could he possibly completely refrain, with both how proud and how worried Izuku made him?

There was a voice, in the back of his head, that didn’t agree. That voice – either logic or wishful thinking – told him that while Izuku didn’t initiate physical affection, he surely did lean into it, and seemed to crave receiving it as much as Toshinori craved giving it.

Oh god oh god oh god what is happening STOP—

This was horrible. I just wanted to enjoy cute fluff. I’d never had this reaction to platonic fanfic before. I’m a big found family fan and my worst issue with fluff is usually just that it tends to be kind of samey. I normally love reading about chaste affection and closeness between characters who care about each other. So why did these stories read like Lolita AUs to me? Did shippers in this fandom like to hide their softcore stuff in the platonic tags?

I was soon able to find out. I had been writing my own All Might & Izuku story, and got invited to a “Dadmight-centric” Discord server. Almost all the popular Dadmight authors were there, including the ones who wrote the particular stories that made my skin crawl. There were several channels where people brainstormed, critiqued, and discussed the motivations behind their writing. 

Cool! I’d be able to meet new people, make some friends, and get a better understanding of what the Dadmight dynamic really was. So I introduced myself, I chatted, I lurked. Everyone was really nice.

I found zero cheeky shippers. The writers claimed to be horrified by the idea of shipping the two of them. They would never disrespect the purity and innocence of this beautiful platonic relationship, they said, as they churned out stories about Izuku “coming undone” under the caress of All Might’s rough hands. Right...

I could’ve understood if this was coming from naive 14-year-olds. But some of these people were in their 30’s, with kids of their own. If anyone understood family dynamics, it should’ve been them.

But after I spent more time around the server, I began to notice something else... something which explained a ton of the strangeness. 

Baby Fever

To understand what was happening, you first have to understand that Izuku’s baby face inflicts instant brain damage on sight. I mean, look at him:

aaa his cute widdle cheeks oh my god—

This kid sets off maternal instincts like landmines, and in the Dadmight server, I found that the Izuku infantilization train had gone completely off the rails. Writers constantly cooed over the adorable antics of 2, 3, 5-year olds and constantly talked about how much they wanted to make Izuku act them out. And surely, if All Might could indulge in the parental joy of caring for an innocent young babe, then his emotional scars would be healed and he could find fulfillment outside of that pesky “saving the world” business.

Now, the bio-dadmight folks had it easy: they just wrote about Izuku in his toddler years playing with daddy All Might. The cuddling and tickles made sense and were very cute. But other writers faced a challenge: they wanted to keep him 14-15 so that canon events could occur... but they didn’t want to be left out of the fun. 

So... they decided to rationalize and egg each other on. I mean, how much does age really matter? Being a child at heart is always cute and wholesome, right?

Suddenly, a whole lot of very uncomfortable things began to make sense:

So Much Physical Contact

He loved the physical touch. It was embarrassing and he would never admit it out loud, but there wasn’t much in this world he loved more than receiving physical affection from his idol. Every single time it happened he would save the memory to replay it over and over again whenever he felt sad, or almost every night before he went to bed. He was glad no one in the dorms had a mind-reading quirk. And All Might always gave it more freely when he visited his apartment, so of course he went there.

Izuku is often written to have a near-pathological craving for hair stroking and cuddles. Which is cute when directed at, say, classmates or mom, but gets real weird real fast when directed at the adult man he canonically idolizes to a freakish degree. Ever work with teenage boys? Most of them would rather die than be physically affectionate with adults, even parents... unless, you know, they’re that kind of fanboy.

Even freakier is that the grown adult would then reply, “Hell yeah! I see nothing wrong with getting physical with this kid who worships me! I crave it so much! I can't resist!” Ever work at a school? They have rulebooks and seminars specifically about how teachers should never touch or be alone with kids.

Then again, Midnight exists at this school. Maybe U.A.’s infamous lack of safety standards extends to this too.

Either way, though: cute and wholesome for a parent to do with their three-year-old. Very creepy when a high-school teacher makes excuses about why he really needs to cuddle and stroke his fifteen-year-old student in secret.

Narcolepsy Xtreme Edition

His student was never this affectionate or vulnerable when he was conscious, so he enjoyed the moment, even if it was a short one, as he moved to his room upstairs.

If you’ve read fanfiction for more than seven seconds, you’ve probably seen the “cram the character with booze/painkillers until they blurt out Vulnerable Things” plot device. It’s a beloved classic. But Izuku writers are robbed of the alcohol angle since he’s underage, and morphine is pretty niche. So authors who want to use this trick often just make Izuku tired after a long day, conclude that being sleepy is close enough to being five drinks in, and have him murmur “thanks, DAD... OOPS DID I SAY THAT OUT LOUD???” to awkwardly segue into Familial Confessions.

But quite a few stories took the “sleepy” angle to a new, very odd place. Instead of groggily dispensing convenient confessions, Izuku would just... keel over while doing homework and be utterly dead to the world. And instead of having All Might briefly rouse him to shoo him to bed, or worry about his student suddenly becoming catatonic, the writers would make him eerily fixated on the opportunity to physically carry Izuku to his bedroom (which would somehow not wake him up!!!) and tuck him in while waxing poetic about how vulnerable and helpless he looked. 

Before joining the Dadmight server, I was mildly alarmed whenever I saw this, wondering why so many authors were obsessed with roofying the teenager and making the adult fondle him. But after joining, I realized: they were just trying to act out the cutesy aww-the-two-year-old-fell-sound-asleep-while-playing, it’s-so-cute scenes that all those darned lucky bio-dadmight people got to indulge in so easily.

Bed Sharing

It wasn’t long before Izuku’s breathing slowed, and soon he was asleep, snoring peacefully. Toshinori, after a few minutes of debating with himself, said screw it and got into the bed with the boy.

Cue me SCREAMING internally in confusion and fear. But no, it was just that the cutesy-kid-trope obsession stretched all the way to “Well, I used to snuggle with my parents at night after I had a nightmare! It was super wholesome!” Which led to scores of stories featuring a celebrity crawling into bed with his student.

All in all, joining this server was a huge relief. I was so glad to see that these hair-raising scenarios were just the result of the authors forgetting to mention “Oh, by the way, the characters are acting weird because we made them all agree to participate in preschooler roleplay.”

Just picture this while reading and it all makes sense.

Fanfic is uniquely susceptible to this sort of “forgot to mention this strange dynamic that I take for granted” issue. After all, 99% of fanfic doesn’t bother to waste time asking “would this make any sense to someone who had never watched the show?” It’s not worth it to focus on such a broad audience. As a result, fanfic normalizes skipping huge swaths of context that would normally be mandatory in a story. Fanfic authors don’t have to practice asking themselves “did I explain this properly?” anywhere near as often as original fiction ones.

This would be bad enough on its own, but then, we go cloister ourselves away into little sub-fandom echo chambers, and spend months crafting obscure in-joke fractals, and get so absorbed in our tiny myopic corners of the community that we also fail to ask, “would this make any sense to someone who hasn’t spent the last 5 months marinating in this specific Discord channel?” 

Sometimes we know exactly how niche our stuff is and just don’t care. But too often, we just legitimately suck at guessing how our work might come off to other groups. We don’t have to practice theory of mind as much as original fiction authors do. Our fandom buddies see nothing amiss with our writing (since they know all the server insider lore!) and everyone outside our tiny clique politely ignores our word salad... so we never get proper feedback on how incomprehensible our work can be even to other members of the same fandom.

In this case, this resulted in a whole pack of writers seemingly getting lost in the fluff sauce and completely forgetting to address the fact that the stuff men do with their own five-year-olds generally becomes really weird and creepy when done with someone else’s 15-year-old, whether or not the 15-year-old seems to want it. Izuku was a cute widdle innocent baby in their heads, so they assumed he was a cute widdle innocent baby in everyone else's.

Once I realized where they were coming from, it wasn't so hard to adjust my mental framework and enjoy these stories on their own terms. That said... infantilization still couldn't explain stuff like “What if Toshinori has read all of this wrong and the boy has no feelings above Toshinori being his teacher, and all Toshinori has done is fall harder and harder for him every day?”

To explain why that paragraph makes me want to crawl out of my skin, we first need to answer: what makes a piece of writing feel “questionable?”

“Vibes,” A Primer

Love comes in many forms. The big four are platonic, familial, romantic, and sexual. Sexual is easy: you’re horny for the person. Platonic love is specifically non-sexual, and familial love is a subset of platonic love. Romance usually implies horny, though there’s definitely a difference between outright sexual behavior and the behavior we file under the “romance” label.

There’s also a difference between romantic and platonic behavior. And this is where a lot of “questionable” vibes appear: when you’d expect an interaction between two people to be platonic, but for some reason, it has uncomfortable romantic/sexual overtones instead.

But what causes those overtones? A dad can give his kid a kiss on the head, and it comes off platonic. A suitor can give their crush a kiss on the head, and it comes off romantic. In fact, most romantic gestures have nearly identical platonic counterparts. Kissing, hugging, hand-holding, cuddling, vulnerable confessions. So what gives? What makes something “come off” one way or the other?

The actual answer is: a ton of stuff, most of it subjective. Everyone draws their lines in different places, based on culture and personal experience and how gutterbrained you’re feeling on any given day. A lot of it has to do with context (that thing that us fanfic authors are notoriously bad at judging).

Online wars are fought every day about whether some glance or gesture or phrase means they're "totally into each other fr"

But if you want to draw broad strokes, one way to roughly separate platonic vs romantic love is by gauging the level of passion involved. “Passion” is “a strong and barely controllable emotion that compels action.” That last part is key. 

Stereotypical romantic love is incredibly passionate. It’s all about desire to act, desire to change, desire to progress the relationship to something more. It features overwhelming anxious preoccupation about the other person’s thoughts and opinions, feeling irresistibly drawn to them, feeling intense longing. It’s about confessing and hoping the other person also feels the same. It often involves attempting to label the relationship, make it “official”, and show it off. It’s about trying desperately to secure assurance that this love will last forever and ever. You have to do something, and every moment spent not doing something is torture.

Contrast this to typical depictions of platonic and familial love. Familial love is calm, encompassing, soothing. It’s secure. You don’t have to worry, because no matter what rough patches you go through, they’ll always be your family and will always have unconditional love for you. Yes, you’ll fly into action if your loved one is threatened, but at rest, platonic love is generally not “exciting” and there’s generally little sense of urgency.

Romance is usually an insecure, anxious thing that’s trying to get to that secure, grounded familial stage. That’s why people say they progress from being “in love” to just “loving” one another. Romance draws people together and kickstarts the bonding process. And as the steady, mature bond of a long-term relationship forms, the obsessive mania of romantic infatuation fades away. 

So the difference between platonic and romantic behavior is not so much about the actual actions. It’s more about the mentality. Is the person anxiously trying to secure their partner’s affection while treating the relationship as a really big deal that will make or break their lives? Then their affectionate actions may come off more romantic. Are they seemingly at home in their partner’s presence and not trying to deepen or change the relationship? Then their affection will probably come off more familial or platonic.

There are, of course, a ton of things that go into it besides this, and caveats out the ass. For example, people trying to establish a new friendship are often anxious too. But when it comes to determining the “vibes” of a kiss or a cuddle, this can be a useful litmus test. Failing this test is often what makes something feel Questionable. The characters seem too invested... maybe because it's not truly innocent.

Now, let’s take a look at our Dadmight characters.

The biggest challenge of writing familial closeness between Izuku and All Might is simple: they are not family. They have no long shared history to justify any sort of intimacy. Instead they have a teacher/student relationship that places them both into rigid, frigid roles. 

Usually, familial-style bonding just takes time. You wait a few seasons, the characters slowly get closer and learn to trust one another, and eventually they’re hugging. But these two clowns spent the whole show being the ultimate found-family blue-balls experience. They were just never very emotionally open or touchy-feely. Every time they had the chance for Vulnerable Conversation And Cuddles, they passed it up in favor of a pep talk and a fist bump. It took a near-death experience to extract one (1) brief hug and some tears. But in normal everyday life? Arm’s length.

Literally. For example: after five seasons of bonding and character development, they are separated and Izuku is embroiled in a deadly conflict that almost destroys the world. When they finally reunite after the harrowing ordeal, alone under the starlight, they greet each other with a loving, heartfelt… handshake. This, predictably, spawned furious fix-it fic.

Overall, there is a huge gulf that authors need to cross in order to get these two from “polite handshake” to “tender cuddling and kisses.” They could write 50,000 words of setup to slowly accomplish this, but most authors did not want to wear their fingertips to the bone just to inch these two into an embrace. They wanted to jump the gap within a oneshot, leaping from canon frigidity into an unbreakable lifelong familial love that was also super touchy-feely and extremely vocal.

Now, remember what I was just saying? How romance is generally about trying to establish new family bonds? How it’s all about trying to change the relationship into something more?

Knowing all this, what do you think might happen if an author tried to speedrun two characters to the Family Finish Line as fast as they could? What do you think their shortcuts might end up looking like, completely by accident? Especially if their “sane and appropriate human interactions” gauge was warped by an echo chamber of fluff tropes and baby fever?

You might get:

Was it even possible that his feelings could be reciprocated? Toshinori didn’t want to think about it. It would just pain him more. Young Midoriya only saw him as an idol, a mentor who would help him train his body for One for All. Midoriya did not see him in the way he wanted him to.

Or:

He wanted desperately, desperately to have the courage to cross that threshold, to ask him what he longed for, to ask him for that relationship that he dared not voice.

Or even:

Toshinori feels his heart rate pick up and his gnarled stomach twist with nerves. Is he really going to do this? Is he going to tell this boy what he truly thinks and risk everything they’ve built up together over the past year-plus? His palms are sweating and he wipes them on his suit pants, rubbing the pads of his fingers together.

I'll stop now. The point is that these quotes could all have been word-for-word ripped from a romance novel. These are some industrial-grade Questionable Vibes. And reading them in context really doesn't help that much, for me at least. It's almost comical when they throw in "...I crave the touch of your rough hands as a son! A SON!"

If you know the building blocks of romance, it makes perfect sense why stories like this could come off this way. Platonic love is great, but it’s also stable, calm, and slow. It simply doesn’t have the sheer explosive force needed to catapult two stilted dorks into a brand-new dynamic within 2,000 words. Most stories can only achieve that kind of mileage via near-death experiences... or by inflicting the characters with neurotic infatuation.

Not only that, but their canon relationship is uniquely poised to set off romance-adjacent warning bells. Because they are not actually family, it makes sense for them to yearn for a deeper relationship in a way that a normal family wouldn’t. It makes sense for them to be anxious and insecure about their relationship, because it’s a very strange, hard-to-define thing that has to be kept secret from those around them. And it makes sense for them to consider their relationship a huge deal, because in canon, it’s fundamental to the most important aspects of both their lives.

I actually think it’s kind of inevitable that their character dynamic will sometimes stray into places that feel romantic. But that doesn’t mean the writer is a secret shipper... because I don’t think that passion always has to imply sexual desire, especially in fiction.

I’ve spent some time around the asexuality community, and my biggest takeaway was that sexual desire is very different from the desire to make deep, lifelong connections. Most asexual people still yearned to find that special someone, their anchor, a partner who unconditionally loved them and would stay by their side forever. Family. They would fall for people... they just didn’t want to fall into their pants. But it was almost impossible to keep these partners unless they were asexual too. Every one eventually pushed to “take things further,” or they left to find another person who would. 

So I can understand the yearning for a world where sex is kicked to the curb, where two strangers can find each other and share intense, whirlwind, “you’re my #1” love... without any lewd overtones. This little pocket of stories seemed like a manifestation of that yearning. 

Nowadays, more and more stories are taking previously romance-exclusive intimacy and yanking off the sexual baggage. For example, looking on the Dadmight tag will reveal “platonic soulmates” and “platonic hanahaki” stories. Yes, platonic hanahaki. No, not parody. There’s a clear unironic market for this content. People really want to be able to indulge in passionate, “till death do us part” emotional bonding in a safe, nonsexual way.

All Might and Izuku sit in a unique place. Not related, but powerfully linked by something thicker than blood. And their relationship is easy to paint as “safe”. It makes perfect sense that these two would attract creators who want to explore this hard-to-define chaste side of passionate love.

In real life, passionate obsessive-style attraction between adults and kids is a huge red flag. We can never really know whether those feelings are innocent or healthy. 99% of the time, they’re not. But in fiction, the author gets to choose what people really feel and whether things turn out well. They can explore the most unbelievable scenario of all: not a world where everyone is a mermaid, but a world where it’s actually wholesome and healing for a high school teacher and his student to confess their deep, undying love for one another, where a famous celebrity can secretly invite his obsessed underage fan over, stroke his hair, tell him how special their relationship is, and sleep with him in bed, without it ending up on Law and Order: SVU. 

On Critique

“Hap,” you might be thinking, “surely these stories can’t be as bad as you say. If they were, someone would have pointed it out to these poor souls. You should have pointed it out to these poor souls. You were in their writing server for chrissakes, and now you’re gossiping about them like a heartless goblin.”

First: yes, I'm a goblin. Second: I did bring this topic up to several Dadmight authors one-on-one. After getting a bunch of head-in-sand excuses in response, I decided to just quietly munch popcorn and watch the fandom’s antics unfold like a slow-motion train wreck.

Third: people did try to point this stuff out.

It was fascinating to watch the Dadmight server whenever someone posted a comment expressing concern. Some comments were trolls trying to get a reaction, of course. But others were very gentle: “hey, isn't it kind of weird to have them hop into bed together? It comes off kind of shippy...” I learned that the reason I had never seen comments like these in the past was because they were usually quickly deleted by the fic authors.

After deleting a comment, the author would often flee to the server for reassurance. The other users would agree that the commenter was definitely in the wrong, since they could see absolutely nothing questionable about the writer’s story. Someone would inevitably chime in saying that, oh, one time they got a comment calling things questionable like that, and it turned out to be from a shipper who shipped bad things. So, you know, anyone who sees shipping in things is probably just a bad person.

Phew. Crisis averted. If you can successfully paint the critic as a bad person, then there’s no need to descend into existentialist dread as you’re forced to critically reexamine the foundational concepts of your writing and your grasp on relationship dynamics.

(Credit where credit is due: one of the rules of this particular server was not to bash or insult people who like things you don't like. In most groups this is followed with an unspoken "...unless you can clutch your pearls over it", but to my surprise, when stuff like the above started kicking off, the moderators did step in to remind people to keep it civil. So, good job, mods. More maturity than I usually see in online spaces.)

But still, if anyone actually bothers to read this long screed, I already know what certain responses are going to look like. They’ll smugly assert that people who see questionable things are just sex-obsessed weirdos, projecting their icky lewd thoughts onto every innocent interaction they come across. A morally pure person wouldn’t make such gross assumptions.

I’m familiar with this kind of response because I’ve spent a lot of time around another group that responds the exact same way to these kinds of concerns. That group is known as fundamentalist Christians, and their attitude fosters three things:

People are afraid to speak out when they feel uncomfortable, because they don't want to be accused of being dirty-minded. 

People fail to learn the ground rules of normal romance/sexuality and so fail to recognize red flags.

The community is absolutely infested with creeps who take advantage of points 1 and 2 to run rampant.

Sadly, these three things also seem to be true in the Dadmight community. Being a platonic pairing, it naturally attracts people uninterested in and inexperienced with romantic/sexual relationships. And then the vitriolic, derisive responses to people’s concerns teaches them that it’s wrong to bring up those topics around the community at all.

And so, point 3 blooms. I eventually confirmed that my initial suspicions were correct: shippers did camp in the Dadmight tag, and they got away with posting some impressively brazen softcore underage content in public, presumably because even the people who were suspicious knew that going “hey now” would trigger a circular firing squad. 

The Dadmight community wasn’t clueless about this problem. They were incredibly paranoid as a whole. They knew there were bad actors lurking in their tag, but since they had disabled all their own safety alarms and expanded the definition of “platonic” to a ridiculous extreme, they had no way of being able to determine what was shipping and what was not until characters started actively whipping their dicks out. I saw constant fretting over whether it was okay to click the “like” button on an affectionate-looking piece of fanart without knowing for sure the intentions of the creator. But asking intentions was pointless anyway, since shippers just lied to them and then laughed as the platonic group eagerly ate up their evil, dirty-minded content.

I get why these “wait, that feels shippy...” comments feel like attacks. It’s fucking awful when your intentions are pure but someone interprets them in such a horrifying, disgusting way. It feels disrespectful when you clearly label something “platonic” but people still doubt. 

But remember: Going from “mentor” to “dad” with these two generally means breaking down normal boundaries, to escalate the emotional and physical intimacy between an authority figure and a starstruck, needy, vulnerable kid, because they have such a special and unique bond that no one else understands. So special, in fact, that it needs to be kept secret from the public.

In real life, this scenario is known as Groomer Tactics 101. 

Seriously, stop and read that link. It’s short and non-explicit. This is why I called their canon relationship “impressively alarming”—the bullet points of stages 1-3 describe Izuku and All Might nearly word-for-word. This does not mean I’m claiming All Might is a groomer, or that Izuku and All Might’s relationship is bad. Just that, due to their circumstances, they happen to have all the building blocks of relationships that go horribly wrong. All that separates their scenario from tumbling into Bad is the goals of the adult. So when a fanfic then comes along and makes the adult suddenly really interested in excessive touching? And the only reason he gives is “I’m weirdly drawn to this kid and touching them feels really good”? Of course people will get nervous!

Noticing this does not mean someone is “obsessed with shipping”. It means they’re a normal human being with eyes. Accusing someone of being problematic for making the most obvious possible observations about adult/child interactions is like accusing someone of being an arsonist because they embarrassed you by pointing out that your homemade backyard fireworks setup is halfassed and dangerous.

This does not mean it’s wrong to write wish-fulfillment where escalating to bed cuddles actually turns out great and awesome. But it does mean that, if an author writes it ignorantly or carelessly, they risk coming off like they’re glorifying and normalizing Groomer Tactics 101. It’s the same as when careless Twilight fans glorify and normalize stuff that, in real life, is abusive controlling boyfriend behavior.

Yes, it sucks when people come and yuck the yum. I’m sure the Twilight fans also get sick of people who complain and demonize them instead of letting them write their vampire boyfriend fantasies in peace. But the concern usually comes from a well-meaning place. 

Proudly announcing “I ignore the most basic child/adult red flags because they ruin my fun” is not the flex that some people think it is. I highly recommend people reconsider before they try to paint anti-child-groomers as the bad guys.

The Recipe

So, let’s summarize how to reproduce the Dadmight phenomenon. It starts with a canon relationship that has the most enticing found-family building blocks the world has ever seen: a downtrodden kid who really needs a dad + a lonely heroic mentor. However, their canon relationship also sits on top of a powder keg, coincidentally featuring all the “setup” stages of the sexual grooming model: 

a lonely, low-self-esteem kid

singled out by an esteemed, charismatic adult who is a pillar of the community

sharing a “special” relationship

constantly going off alone and keeping secrets 

A platonic fan community forms that is blissfully unaware of the above dynamics. They head off to fluff echo chambers, as platonic fans do. But due to the crybaby tendencies of the teenage character, they start projecting really aged-down toddler-play scenarios onto him. Eventually, as echo-chambered fans do, they decide that contextualization is for chumps. This results in fics that take the powder keg and add:

The adult craving to touch and hold the teenager

The teenager craving touch from the adult and mewling like a kitten when his hair is stroked (I’m not fucking joking)

Completely age-inappropriate stuff like stroking, kisses, and sharing a bed with a teenage student

Izuku and All Might also happen to suffer from loneliness and isolation, even more so in their fanon incarnations. This really resonates with most fans, who want to soothe and heal them. They also want to get to the healing cuddles within a few chapters instead of wasting time on super-slow buildup. So they make the two of them really strongly fixate on and angst about the agony of their loneliness, and how the other person’s love is the only cure that will fix them. In doing so, they insert:

Anxious passionate obsession

Love confessions

Coming-out scenes

Craving for exclusive relationship labels

Desire for exclusivity

Lastly, because platonic groups are either uninterested in or too young for spicy content, they tend to have very little experience with romantic/sexual literature and the tropes and catchphrases they lay claim to. So fic writers will innocently sprinkle in poignant-sounding things they’ve picked up here and there, such as:

Blushing and heart racing when looking at the person

The phrase “falling for each other”

The man “caressing” his partner with “rough hands”

“He came undone”

And because their communities condemn people who “read into things”, nobody points out any of this shit, and it all slides out into the public Internet unquestioned.

And so, we get the most impressively uncomfortable platonic content I’ve ever seen. It’s no wonder I had never encountered something like this before. It required a lot of unusual circumstances intersecting in just the right (wrong) way.

In the end, I think the biggest aspect was just that I'd never become a fan of characters that had such a potentially-problematic canon relationship. Usually adult and kid characters have very different dynamics, so if fics treat their social interactions with all the tact of a bull in a china shop, it just comes off as lazy instead of creepy. I'd be interested to know if other platonic adult&child fandoms suffer from this issue.

In any case, although it was fascinating to watch, I sure hope I never run into it again.

[feelthesturmanddrangintheair]

On Nosferatu and Dracula, Mina & Ellen

I loved Nosferatu but I hate the online discourse about it. It’s literally making me crazy. This is a pic of all of you bitches right now:

I have a huge problem with literal readings of this movie at all. It’s obviously not the point of the damned thing. But, Ellen/Thomas shippers, I'm coming for you now.

I’ve noticed people online, on tiktok, tumblr etc, shipping Ellen/Thomas the exact same way I’ve seen Mina/Jonathan since Dracula Daily. And the Mina thing already frustrated me, but the Ellen one makes me crazy.

(they’re not the same character)

But I guess I understand the instinct?

Modern vampire media is obsessed with the male vampire as the sexual/romance object. Twilight, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Buffy. (Interview with a vampire doesn’t count (lol count) cause it’s all from Vamp perspective. Also it's profoundly gay). (However Anne Rice does get enormous kudos for basically dragging the vampire from hammer horror into boyfriend material, so it is relevant i guess?).

The modern approach is that the subtext has become text “Yes we do like dracula and we do want to fuck him thank you very much”.

It’s always been the subtext of Victorian vampire stories - which were riffing off the already dark, brooding male figures in literature before that (Rochester, Byronic heroes, also Byron) and combining them with Eastern folk tales. In the original Dracula Mina and her plucky group of fuckbois slay the vampire. He is defeated and good Christian morals are preserved.

However, Dracula is that bitch - he’s an object of fascination for everyone in the book, especially Mina. The title of the book is “Dracula” not “Jonathan Harker is a good husband actually”. 

In the late 19th century gothic literature, the vampire and the monster was The Other. They were feared but also hypnotic - a beguiling, seductive other. Some women gave in to such temptation (Lucy) and some stood stoic in the face of it (Mina). But the temptation was still there. That is why it is powerful to triumph over it.

The Text: Dracula is scary and we shall defeat him The Subtext: But also don’t you think Dracula is kinda sexy?

That is and remains the subtext in all good gothic horror novels of the 19th century: you don’t literally want to fuck death or a monster but also, maybe in your subconscious, you kinda want to fuck death. You might want to fuck the monster. Maybe you want to be bad.

So when movies began making vampire stories - Dracula, Nosferatu - this theme became stronger in the visual medium. The monster was sexual, and the tension of the film was always the push and pull of attraction and horror between it and the fair maiden.

Later in the 20th century, it became more explicit, like everything else. Sexy vampire movies and exploitation movies in the 70s give way to Francis Ford Coppola’s ridiculous, fantastic, opulent “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” in the 1990s. A film that labors with every breath to faithfully adapt the novel, then throws that labour away to turn Mina into Dracula’s reincarnated soul mate. I find this movie perplexing but fabulous. I have watched it probably 6 times in the past 3 years.

And then the 2000s teen vampire obsession. You have Buffy obviously, with her litany of vampire boyfriends (I’m a Spike fan - Angel is BORING). Hilariously for this discussion, Buffy is a slayer who dates vampires, so it’s less Mina/Dracula and more Van Helsing/Dracula. 

(huh there is a market for that)

But where Buffy took what Anne Rice did and turned it into a weekly fun drama for teens (and tweens who probably should not have been watching), Stephanie Meyer evolves the vampire again. Twilight exploded the Vampire Boyfriend into the mainstream. In the early 2010s you couldn’t escape YA vampire and monster boyfriend fiction. You even had the CW jumping on board with The Vampire Diaries ffs

So after Twilight, wanting to fuck a vampire or monster became somewhat mainstream.

In the 2020s, vampires being the main love interest has fully transcended the subtext from the original stories. The monster has become a protective puppy in our beds. Say it with me “We have defanged the vampire”. And like all big, crazy trends, eventually they run out of steam and become unfashionable. There is nothing particularly shocking left to milk from this archetype. Vampires became dull, untrendy, old news. They were supplanted by dystopias and fairy courts.

(I think ACOTAR is more honest about what readers actually want - most people aren’t monster fuckers. Most people’s interest in vampire erotica is rooted in a powerful, sexy, somewhat feminine man magicking you away from your hum-drum life. Twilight is the dishonest version of ACOTAR. ACOTAR says “Yeah we just wanna fuck Howl from Howls Moving Castle leave me alone”)

I digress.

Dracula Daily started in 2021. A simple idea: using substack, send the text of Dracula out, on the timeline that matches the epistolary novel’s dates. Tumblr being tumblr, we latch on and from 2022, the yearly run of Dracula Daily is an integral part of the tumblr experience. 

Like a book club with thousands of members, Tumblr has basically conducted a multi-year close reading and textual analysis of Dracula.

What has been most surprising is the volume of readers who have discovered the incredible character of Mina, and her sweet and strong relationship with Jonathan.

I think, in comparison to the often milquetoast relationship between these two on screen (I'll call it the cuckification of Jonathan) and the reduction often of Mina to a swooning maiden, Stoker’s original text is a revelation. 

In the book, Mina is a headstrong, intelligent and resourceful operator. Without her, the group would have failed and Dracula would have England in his thrall. The men around her respect her. She works tirelessly to save Jonathan in the first place, then England.

Jonathan and Mina make an excellent team - once reunited, her determination to extinguish the thing that killed Lucy, and his first-hand knowledge combines to help defeat him. A now oft-quoted section shows that when Mina has been bitten and is in Dracula’s thrall Jonathan writes:

“To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks.”

Very sweet stuff. Very wife-guy. Isn’t Mina lucky?

So we now have so much fandom for Mina and Jonathan.

And it’s very sweet and interesting - it’s presented often as a radical, subversive take “I think Dracula sucks and is abusive. Mina and Jonathan belong together!”. It’s a classic “only on tumblr would this be considered a radical take”. But also “Only in the 21st century is this a radical take”.

It’s like Christine/Raoul shippers in the POTO fandom (I am one but however it’s because I truly do not think Christine is right for Erik. Read the masterwork “A Stroll on Sunday” that’s what I want for poor Erik). There’s nothing wrong with thinking the canonical breeding pair are well-suited; however the fixation on them and vilification of the interloping monster is perhaps missing the point of the entire text.

I’m so sorry Tumblr, thinking Mina should be with her Good Christian Husband Jonathan is not a life-altering take. Tumblr has subverted too close to the sun and started reinforcing Victorian values. We/Tumblr should be studied in a lab I stg. The brain gymnastics involved in this one is too insane.

And now we’re seeing this bleed into the Nosferatu discussion. I really liked and agreed with a lot of what Princess said in her video about Nosferatu & the Gothic Appetite:

But to bring this shipping focus to Nosferatu, is even more insane. Eggers' Nosferatu is far more focused on Ellen’s connection to Orlok than Dracula/Mina in the original Dracula text. I really liked what Eggers' said in this interview:

“In the novel, Stoker’s Dracula is seemingly moving to London, to England, for world domination. And, but this is all a demon-lover story. Ya know, Orlok is going to Wisborg for Ellen and no other reason. And that, that’s more interesting to me as a storyteller”

Nosferatu is different to Dracula in that it strips the vampire-hunting gang out of the text. It takes a lot of the unnecessary excess of the text and pairs it down to a fairy tale. One town, cut down the plot, remove excess characters, keep it simple. For me, I feel the result is way more focused than the original plot (and the Coppola movie).

Instead of Quincy, Seward and Arthur you just have Friederich. And Friederich is not a valiant hero like our noble trio. Instead of friendship and brother’s in arms saving the day, Friederich abandons Ellen and Thomas and succumbs to the monster. There is so much more darkness and despair in Ellen’s story because of this change. 

Those changes centralize the relationship between Ellen and Orlok in a way Dracula never did. It also does it in a less shit way then the Coppola film with its terrible reincarnation storyline.  

With Ellen and Orlok central, the Ellen/Thomas argument makes even less sense. Ellen cares about Thomas of course, she doesn’t want any harm to come to him.

But she also says to him “You could never please me as he could”. 

Thomas symbolises the status quo - a husband who leaves you to go to work, to ignore your strangeness and potentially also flatten it. Ellen says “It all ended when I first met my Thomas”. She grew up abnormal, supernatural and sexual - she alienated her father and family, and had a connection to a supernatural ancient demon during her teenage years. But the presence of Thomas removed that.

Some may see that as a saving grace - symbolising Thomas’ love as healing and protecting Ellen from the forces of darkness. That is a fairly simple, Christian reading - the healing love of matrimony and gender norms. However, you can also see this as a squashing of her powers and uniqueness. As Von Franz says:

“In heathen times you might have been a Great Priestess of Isis. Yet, in this strange and modern world your purpose is of greater worth.”

He does not view Ellen’s powers as an affliction but as matter-of-fact and part of who she is. He reframes those powers as something different - not a curse or possession. He compares her to the respected priestesses of an old world. 

Ellen chafes against the role of the good, noble wife. She does not want to be an angel in the house, and she does not want to be left at home while Thomas works. She clearly enjoys the honeymoon part of the marriage. The first scene we have between them Thomas gets ready to leave for work, leaving Ellen in bed crying: “The honeymoon was yet too short!”

It’s a Romeo and Juliet style scene - Thomas trying to leave the bedchamber as he must, and Ellen trying to convince him to stay and enjoy their married life. Thomas, like Romeo, does not realise the horrors that await him.

When he returns and tells her he must go away on a business trip, her reaction is less romantic and more frantic: she throws down the lilacs he bought her and eventually shrieks “Can’t you see that it doesn’t matter? If you leave nothing will matter!”

Throughout the movie Ellen fights Thomas leaving with everything she has. She has premonitions, she knows nothing good will come of his trip. She does not want to be a little wife and does not want to be left behind in domesticity. 

(this is in contrast to Anna and Friederich, who are blissfully happy in a traditional marriage. He talks of his sexual appetite, she produces babies for him. He runs a shipping business, she stays at home with their children. He is brash, masculine and doesn’t listen. She is sweetness and light, hosts their guests and never causes trouble. And they both die. Their goodness, their adherence to Christian values does not save them)

Ellen however plays the part of the hysterical woman. She does not remain quiet, she does not remain sweetness and light. She has fits, she is hypersexual, she speaks her mind and speaks about death.

If you watch Nosferatu and think Ellen would be happy as Thomas’ little wife at any point, I think you have missed the point. Thomas’ personality or qualities are besides the point - he is part of patriarchy, part of status-quo living, part of her subjugation and squashing her into a role she could never fit into. She says as much when he returns and they have their infamous fight by the fire:

“Well, where is it? Your money? Your promotion? Your house? Where is that which is so precious to you? Have you paid back kind Harding your debt? Have you repaid him with this plague that infects his wife?”

She is furious that she warned him not to leave her, that he did and the bad thing happened. That he seemingly sacrificed their love for a sack of gold. Women, in parts of culture and history, blocked from seeking work and income of their own, were therefore subjected to their spouses ambition and therefore neglect. If she was happy with having less materially, and more in her marriage, that was not a decision for her to make. Her husband made it, and the consequence was being left to her loneliness with an increasing brood of children to take care of.

Ellen does not want this. She spends the entire movie telling Thomas this. And at no point does he get it.

I think this is why it's so important that Orlok says:

“It is not me. It is your own nature… Love is inferior to you. I told you, you are not of Human kind… I am an appetite, nothing more”

Orlok is a symbol of all of Ellen that is not able to be seen, heard or appreciated in her world. She has an appetite of her own, love is inferior to power and control. In her marriage, unlike Anna’s, she is the one with the sexual appetite. She wants, she asks and calls. 

There is no future of Ellen and Thomas happily together. There is only death - either the way that played out in the film, or Orlok killing Thomas. But if Ellen and Thomas somehow defeated Orlok with both surviving, like Mina and Jonathan, I doubt they’d happily go on to have a child and name him Friederich. Ellen would leave, one way or another.

Ellen is a woman trapped in a society that does not want her, or at least wants to cut her down, contort her to the right size and shape. Reduce her expression, shut her up and leave her at home while the real men do the real work, including hunting vampires.

And this is why I find Stoker’s ending to Dracula so fucking frustrating. Mina is kept outside of the plans (for good reason - she has a channel to Dracula’s thoughts and worries he can see what she sees, but this is created by the author and so I get to critique it) and bears witness to the destruction of Dracula. While I don’t need a girlboss in every story, Mina is somewhat side-lined in this process and I don’t love it. She follows this by becoming the normal and good house wife to Jonathan and producing some progeny to name after their slain heroes.

(sidebar I think it would be more meaningful if Mina had a daughter and named her Lucy, the name of her dearest friend who was horrifically killed but don’t mind me)

Ellen is very different from Mina here. Her connection to Orlok is not the reason to keep her distance - it’s the reason she must get closer than anyone else. She takes control, speaking to Von Franz and getting what information she must to help her plan Orlok’s destruction.

Like many people, I see the final scene as both a sacred bond (a matrimony) and a heroic sacrifice. It can be both. Ellen can both know what she needs to do to save her love and the innocents around her (kill Orlok), she also knows she is the reason for their suffering (girl clean up your mess!) and knows that luckily, this is also what her dark heart has longed for.

It’s not often the thing you must do is also the thing you desperately, secretly want.

Ellen knows there’s no life after this. There’s no world where she becomes the happy mother and wife Mina Harker. There is only darkness and despair.

Eggers Nosferatu is a fairy tale that warns about the prospect for unusual, modern, sexual women. I read the ending of Dracula, of Jonathan saying “My wife is so happy now” and I think of Betty Draper shooting pigeons in the backyard. You’re telling me that educated, brilliant Mina Harker is happy being relegated to the home? There will always be something that rubs me the wrong way about Mina’s ending in Dracula, and the way the fandom has decided to blindly celebrate it. Ellen is an amazing antidote to that feeling.

Nosferatu is brilliant because it is honest about women and their status in this world. It allows room for Ellen and her own foibles. And it allows the darkness and the monstrous to coexist with the feminine. The ending is not a girlboss ending, it does not leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. It makes me uncomfortable - it is a gothic horror. The status quo is not maintained at the end of the movie - Orlok has disrupted their world, and it cannot be undone.

Ellen and Thomas are not a love story, and to pretend they are is to take the piss out of the entire thing.

[takendruid]

Okok so, requesting some help from StephCass shippers, and maybe also TimSteph shippers/people who know decent amount of information about TimSteph’s relationship

Can you guys, StephCass shippers, explain to me the reasons why you ship them?

I don’t know nearly enough about Steph or Cass, or their relationship to each other, to make a proper judgement of the ship.

It always kind of felt weird to me, because it just felt like Batcest even though Steph isn’t actually Bruce’s kid. And then I actually started to think about why the ship makes me uncomfortable in a batcest way, before having the realisation that I simply don’t know enough about either girl or the relationship they have with each other (nor Steph’s relationship with Tim) to justify feeling that way.

I’m relatively new to the Batman fandom, so I’m still learning a lot. And this is something I feel like I need to be educated on before I can actually make a judgement of the ship.

Because I only found out today that the reason Tim and Steph broke up was apparently because Tim is bisexual?? I already knew he’s bi, I didn’t)t know that apparently that was the reason they broke up (but don’t quote me on that, and feel free to correct me).

I have started to read the comics, but there are so many comics that I just… need that shit explained to me. Tim and Steph’s relationship kind of also made me uncomfortable because Batcest, but to a bit of a lesser degree, before I had the same realisation about TimSteph that I did with StephCass; that I know basically fuck all about their relationship to each other because I’m a newbie, and very uneducated.

The way I have always perceived Steph and Cass has just been as sisters, and Steph and Tim as exes who are still close and have a very sibling-like relationship. Before realising, obviously, that I just know fuck all.

This post, and request for an explanation comes from a place of genuine confusion and curiosity, not any hate. I do just need the StephCass ship explaining to me because I genuinely don’t know very much about either girl, or their relationship to each other.

Sorry I keep repeating myself ✌️ (under the cut isn’t anything really relevant to what I’ve talked about here, it’s just an explanation of what I have seen comics-wise)

Idk if anyone is going to ask, but when it comes to the comics, I have started actively reading some currently releasing ones like Batman & Robin: Year One, and Absolute Batman. I have also bought Absolute Superman and Absolute Wonder Woman, but haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. I’m perfectly aware that the Absolute comics are basically AUs/is an AU (idk if they carry into one another), and that B&R:Y1 is of a retelling of Dick’s origins as Robin???

I have actively read the two issues of Red Hood Gotham War, and the surrounding issues in Batman and Catwoman that take place at the same time (Bruce… what the fuck… writers, what kind of mischaract-). I wouldn’t say I have “read” either RHATO, but I have skimmed through the one with Artemis and Bizarro; from when Jason is kind of… disowned-ish by Batman as a Bat, up to about when the group of kids were introduced (because I wasn’t reading it properly, I got super confused and just stopped looking). But I have read more closely the Prince of Gotham issues when looking at it a second time for a quick moment. I have also skimmed through the early issues of both RHATO comics. Jason is my favourite character, so I have kind of tended to look at official stuff more aimed around him. That is why I know pretty much fuck all about Steph and Cass.

I briefly know their backstories, I know that Steph became Robin for like 2 weeks after Tim was fired, I know that Tim and Steph were dating. But I haven’t actually read anything official with them in besides RHGW, which includes like a panel or so of Steph as Spoiler.

And yes, I have read most of WFA (I need to catch up) but I’m perfectly aware of the context it existsin; it’s not official, it’s slice of life, it’s a webtoon, and it does not properly represent the characters… even though (some of the) said characters have been so disgracefully mischaracterised by the official comics that WFA doesn’t deserve the amount of shit it gets for doing the same thing, or so I have heard.

I’m not claiming to know my shit, I think that’s pretty obvious. I trust the people on Tumblr to not treat me like shit because the community here is lovely. But I know there are going to be the odd people that might pull me up if I don’t clarify what comics I have actually read and seen. Or maybe not pull me up? More just be curious to actually know my level of knowledge from the official sources, instead of people on the internet talking about it.