#and it's like they're enemies AND they're lovers

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem #7002:

There is next-to nothing more awkward than learning most of the shippers you interact with, only care for certain ship cliches if they're with characters of the same gender. While you rarely see the genders of the characters as a factor for how much you like it or not.

I'm (not) sorry, but stuff like "Enemies-To-Lovers" or "Main Hero X Main Villain" works regardless of the genders of the characters themselves in my eyes. It feels so excluding watching fans praise certain tropes when applied to same-sex pairings, only to turn around and call things that don't apply ("this romanticizes abuse!") just because an author dared to write it with oh-so-evil, straight characters.

Also, if you hate a pairing, just say it. Don't make up stuff.

Not even just full-on dynamics. Even the little things earn ire from a fanbase, only for all that hate to subside when it's written with a same-sex ship.

For example, no, the author doesn't hate the main "strong" female character just because they dared to give her a male love interest. And no, it's not infantilizing just because said love interest is equally as compentent. Mutual competence doesn't just work with mlm or wlw ships, and it's insulting to know you only care for "straight" pairings if the man is dumb and the woman is smart.

[arcaneconfessions]

For a show that has received such praise for its reputation, Arcane's "rep" in romantic relationships often just serves to re-inforce the status quo.

CaitVi becomes the trope where there's an "enemies to lovers" WLW couple that's actually just one partner being an extreme dick to the other but it's underplayed since they're innocent sapphics and everyone knows women are too sweet and pure to seriously harm each other, making this all just "relationship drama" instead of "Caitlyn's extreme bigotry and toxicity."

What little development that we got for TimeBomb involved making a Black man throw away all his goals in order to do emotional labor for a white woman after "neglecting" her (read: not liking her after she shot a bunch of his friends and poisoned the city with Shimmer). Like, I get that Jinx needed help, but it felt like the writers tried to shift the responsibility from Jinx to seek out help after having successfully pushing everyone who tried to help her away to Ekko somehow seeking help for her, even though she'd seriously hurt him too. I'm not saying that TimeBomb can't work; it just requires that Jinx actually try to make amends with Ekko because she was the one who hurt him, not the other way around.

And MelJayVik? Mel gets pushed to the side for no real reason other than JayVik fanservice, yet Jayce and Viktor literally get called brothers. Viktor goes from "disabled guy who's sometimes frustrated with his disabilities" to "literal fucking eugenicist" because... reasons??? And even though it felt like Mel should've taken the spotlight with the parallels between Mel and her mother with the different ways they've each participated in colonial forces, this conflict is just reduced down to a plot device to blame Ambessa for all of the other characters' bad actions.

.

[aristarr]

"Another loss, ugh what a shame. Maybe next time, Dunbar." It's hard to see through the helmet but Liam knows that Raeken smiles, that mocking smile of his following Liam even in his dreams. He's ready to wipe it from this Devenford brat's face, when he feels Scott's hand on his shoulder and just throws a threatening look at Theo as the man leaves the field. He should calm down. He knows he should. Would be really bad to cause a fight now.

But easy to say than do and he's walking fast to the lockers, seething, with a strong desire to punch a certain Devenford player. Or...

"So early today, Dunbar" Theo points out, taking his helmet off, "can't control yourself I see?"

"You're alone?" Liam almost growls, his fangs already out.

"Woah, slow down little wolf. I am alone but I could be not. And you're here being half-shifted. Aren't afraid to reveal the secret anymore?"

Liam says nothing, staring at Theo, breathing hard. He is afraid but he can't help it. There's too much to handle right now. So he takes a few steps towards Theo, pinning him to the nearest locker.

"Woah, so needy today" Theo chuckles, keeping away Liam's hand, that already sneaked under his jersey. Liam growls again, leaving a few quick kisses on Theo's neck.

"So that's why you lost. It was me, right? The distraction?" Theo asks, making Liam even angrier. If the looks could kill, Theo would now lie dead on the floor. Like hundred percent so.

"You're silent, I'll take it as a yes. Couldn't focus on a game because of me - how sweet Dunbar. I appreciate that"

"Can you just shut up and do your job already" Liam barks out, kissing Theo's lips and Theo says nothing more, obeying to his favourite rival.

My piece for @officialthiamlibrary Thiam Secret Santa 2024 for @bererjs!!!! I really hope you like it!

When I saw "enemies to lovers" and "sports" I immediately thought about Heated Rivalry so here we are with some sort of a Thiam Heated Rivalry AU!! They're both playing lacrosse, Liam for Beacon Hills and Theo for Devenford AND!! they're both werewolves! And they both share a little secret🤭

Happy Holidays and I hope you enjoy your gift🙌🏻

[amomorii]

ERISED FIC CLAIM

A Soft Place to Fall

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter | Healer x Teacher | E | ~143k

Gift for @epitomereally

All love and earnest thanks to @mossybunnytail and @dodgerkedavra for the plot wrangling, and to @tieguan for beta-ing this monstrosity and for keeping me sane and motivated!! This fic would not be the same without you <3

Tags are under the cut!

Summary:

When Harry arrives for his first year teaching at Hogwarts and is struck with a bizarre malignance, how on earth is he supposed to react when Draco Malfoy suddenly cares?

Or;

A darkness crawls out of Harry, and there's only so long he can keep it to himself.

Malfoy took Harry’s jaw in one hand and shoved him against the wall and Harry just— went. Malfoy was livid, his hand squeezing Harry’s face to the point of pain, his gunmetal eyes scouring every inch of it. “Your pupils are dilated, you’re sensitive to light and sound, probably touch.” He tightened his torturous grip and Harry hissed. “You’re speaking far too quickly, you’re agitated and you… you smell like fucking vomit. Potter, I will only ask this one more time: are you high?” Harry squirmed in Malfoy's hold, but he had gotten strong and Harry hadn’t noticed. Harry had been an Auror, he should be incapacitating Malfoy and taking off back to the safety of his rooms, victorious. His voice was a hoarse whisper through squashed lips. “I said… get the fuck… off of me, Malfoy.” Gradually, Malfoy relaxed his hand though he stayed close enough that Harry couldn’t make a break for it, wielding his wand and breathing all over Harry's skin and smelling like lemon and black pepper and wild mint.

Read A Soft Place to Fall on AO3

🎵Listen to the playlist on Spotify🎵

Tags:

EWE, Professors AU, but neither of them are technically professors and they're pretty adamant about it, Ex-Auror Harry Potter, PE Teacher Harry Potter, Healer Draco Malfoy, Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, abstract expressions of childhood trauma, Magical flora, Magical Theory, Magical Creatures, loads of Shakespeare, Angst with a Happy Ending, POV Alternating, Sectumsempra Scars, Magical Illness/Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Canonical Child Abuse, Harry Potter Needs a Hug, Flashbacks, Dissociative Amnesia, Panic Attacks, Drowning, Insomnia, Hallucinations, reluctant magical co-parenting, Eventual Smut, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Frotting, Mild D/S elements, Praise Kink, Anal Fingering, Rimming, Anal Sex, Intercural Sex

[mythalism]

i think, anecdotally, canadians love to use land acknowledgments and Diversity(tm) a bit more than americans do, and have a degree of always pointing at the us and being like "well at least WE didn't do anything that fucked up! we're so much more enlightened and respectful 😌". and so any acknowledgment that racism exists, or that necessary societal change is often only brought by unpleasant disruption, or specifically that indigenous people live in terrible conditions because of colonization, is bracketed with this type of "but it's very complicated, and who's to say if there's a solution? we're thinking about it really hard, and holding space, and listening and learning, and maybe we will get to fixing it in like 50 years if people ask nicely" rhetoric. and there's a degree of apprehension that "land back" is a call for ethnic cleansing of settlers (somehow, despite this being both physically not possible and not actually anyone's demand) and that any movement towards that will be bad and overly radical.

which maps directly onto how bioware writes elves specifically haha. they'll sympathetically show how they're oppressed and living under the boot of a catholic church-esque entity, but then... ahhh noo, actually they had a very problematic pre-colonization culture, and they're too impractically fixated on the past and that prevents them from moving forward, and the church employees are sometimes trying their best and making amends, and the demands of the elven leadership are just too out there and violent... so really, it's very complicated. maybe it could be better to keep the status quo and only have Incremental Change, forever.

(they sort of didn't do this in the masked empire, but as always they had to throw in a bit about how Rude And Mean the dalish are. plus the ridiculously evil chevalier lore of each one randomly executing a few elves as a rite of passage, and then never mentioning that aspect again bc i guess it wasn't relevant to michel's story. as well as the insanely underwritten premise of what briala and celene's relationship actually was. there's ~toxic lesbians~, and then there's "extremely rich and powerful white noblewoman calls her younger servant class gf ugly for being dark skinned, lies to her for years, has her family and then entire community killed, then tries to seduce her back when she gets angry and leaves" lmao. i think weekes was going for a tragic morally grey starcrossed lovers to enemies vibe, but to me it was more of a horrific one-sided exploitation that the author did not seem to realize they were writing.)

and in veilguard i suppose they tried to avoid the entire issue by mostly removing those aspects of the setting, so you no longer even have the somewhat well-observed depictions of oppression combined with Justin Trudeau Moments, it's just kind of empty.

anyway thank you for appreciating my very long ted talk! i left tumblr after the whole "popular bloggers mass reporting pro-palestine people for terrorism" thing (i can get that treatment for free irl, don't need that extra stress from the Fandom Webbed Site haha). i've just been drifting back to look at dragon age posts bc i was curious about veilguard. i didn't expect much from bioware but it was surprising that they just went even further into tone-deaf bizarre race allegories rather than reading 1 (one) nonfiction book in the years since dai, or hiring anybody from a different background who could weigh in. :')

wow this is seriously so fascinating and insightful and truly does give me a better understanding of both canada and bioware LMFAO so thank you so much for sharing seriously. you are welcome in my inbox for more ted talks anytime and now im just gonna leave this here to marinate on it further and hope other people read it because its fantastic. xoxo

[cryptids]

Feeling unwell about megop........... how they're almost like soulmates who find each other in every universe, but are inevitably destined to end up as enemies in conflict with each other every time? The way the thing that separates them is also what defines them both as characters and is an inextricable part of their narrative...... like they're really star crossed lovers, so many different versions of them crossing paths in so many universes always falling in love but never able to be together bc its their fate to be apart.......

[lazzarella]

@secriden #ohhhh ohHHHH NOOOOOOO#this is awful because Style said this most crucially when HE DID NOT LOVE Fadel#episode 3 is very much their “this is the enemies part of enemies to lovers” era#and Style says this flippantly with no understanding of Fadel as a person or even any real desire for a relationship with him#which makes the callback in ep 6 a lot worse because now it looks like its the only thing fadel says in that scene that is truly CALCULATED#everything else - how he's learned to miss style; how he wants to do what lovers do; even the confession of love - that is rooted#in the genuine feelings fadel has for style now#but this: not only is this the opposite of what he says to style in ep 6#(“I want to see the real you” / “I want him to accept me for who I am")#but its the opposite of what STYLE asks fadel for (“I don't want you to do what you don't want to do”)#the more meta i read from other people the more i think i maybe actually got it right#about fadel choosing to weaponise his own feelings in the war he is preparing to wage (once again) against style (and his own heart)#the heart killers#fadelstyle#thk meta#fadelstyle meta#am i excited or am i heartbroken i can't tell anymore x-x;;

Thank you once again for your wonderful tags on my post 🙏🏻 and yeah, I can see that! That’s how I read it too. I wish I'd added the other scenes/moments now, but I made this post off the cuff XD I'm glad you brought those moments up, though, because yeah—they're another nice bit of mirroring between them that adds a lot of interesting layers

The Heart Killers Ep 3 // The Heart Killers Ep 6

Style (ep 3): "What's your type, then? Tell me! I can be that for you."

Stype (ep 6): "I don't want you to do what you don't want to do."

Fadel (ep 6): "But I can be exactly what you want."

Missed this one from Ep 3 when I made this post (though that post was just for the parlallels within ep 6). I'm sure someone else has pointed it out, but I haven't had the time to go through the tag lately. But I thought it was another nice bit of mirroring in the show, and especially with their relationship!

[kaahmbem]

legend has it that the young witch circe and the once beautiful nymph scylla shared a complicated past...

[luminiera-merge]

KILLOVE FIREPROOF has sold me on a type of relationship that i'm scared isn't really much of a thing in media

[ihavesomejays]

on first loves yunqing lol they are silly that's it that's the prompt anyways i think this is like the first thing i've posted here that has an actual background which is kind of insane. i think you can tell i don't draw backgrounds very often. anyways yunqing is so ponytail puller annoying each other even though they've realized they like each other core and it's satisfying my peepaw heart

bg only/closeups under keep reading

[nadiajustbe]

I think the most beautiful thing about writing of Howl and Sophie's pair is that they are written as people before being written as a pair. Let me explain this very quick.

The thing about book Sophie and Howl is that they are not really fully fitting into any "classic" romantic trope. They are not exactly enemies to lovers, as their angry chats are definitely cannot be considered a life or death battle, they are not rivals to lovers because the only aspect of rivalry between them is the cleaningness of Howl's room. They are not friends to lovers, as their relationship just doesn't fit into "friendship" structure at the very start, nor they are roomates (yes, they live in the same house but that's not the core aspect of their relationships). Of course, you can go on and fit the name of the trope you found specifically for them, but that's the thing.

They simply cannot be processed through a pairings lenses only, in order to understand how they act in relationship you need to analyse them separately, as a characters first of all. Cause that's what the book itself does!

Sure, it doesn't have a whole lot of romance instead, but it gives us time to learn and observe the life of incredibly written, alive characters, understand them as personalities first of all, while slowly immersing the dynamic between two characters (in this case, Howl and Sophie) into work. They are written as personalities, both being fully separated and interviewing, changing eachother's point of view.

It's difficult to find a trope for them. They're are not a trope. They are Howl and Sophie, and that's probably the only way their dynamic can be properly described. Just as real people, they are not really fitting into the boxes of linial character progression, but go way deeper into being complex, filled with little differences and moments only people with their personality can have in romantic (or any different) kind of interaction. They're imperfect, and silly, and multidimensional and the reader knows them well enough to imagine them interacting way beyond of what the book says to them.

They are being people before being a ship, a pair of a trope — and that's why they work so perfectly charming in the end.

Howl and Sophie are unique in being themselves.

[hozaloza]

pigeon Alex

[abnormallyo-a-k]

I'm back pushing my terricky agenda onto you all- what do you know about them? what do you knOW about thEM?? anyway i love them with all my heart and here's my design notes on this -

so this is pre-betrayal. don't ask me the timeline, I may have the timeline but I'm not placing this anywhere First and foremost, on the left- it's not coloured and wont be because I'm lazy but Nicky is wearing Terry's purple sweater, and Terry is wearing a Glenn Close Trio shirt that Nicky has had for years at this point On one of Nicky's many necklaces is a guitar pick, one of the first ones Glenn gave him after he remembered both timelines. He turned it into a necklace to always keep on him, even when they fight and argue. Terry is wearing one of those tight-knit fishnet undershirts with an open chest (saw an image on Pinterest of it and went with it) with one of those sheer mesh cropped shirts over top. His big ass goth ass coat is lacking details again bc lazy but it definitely has a lot more pockets and buckles on it. And yes, Goth Terry is Canon to Me and he absolutely would do some really cool ass punk inspired makeup on Nicky or try out different trad goth makeup ideas on him for fun. Nicky, in turn, paints his nails. Typically they were always black, but occasionally they'd be red or purple or what have you if they felt a lil spicy. Terry also only wears upside down cross jewelry so that normal cross necklaces don't bother Nicky, because you know,,, demon

Also Nicky's tail is wrapped around Terry's leg because he's fruity I stand on the fact that Nicky crushed and fell first and Terry did not realize for a Very Long time because he's a fucking Dumbass and I love him for it

thank you for coming to my Ted (Terricky) Talk, I'll see you again another time when I crawl from the void

[ghostly-kal]

OKAY EVERYONE HEAR ME OUT, MINTHARA X KAGHA

(also my friend suggested the The Spider and the Snake as a ship name and im obsessed, he also wrote a very short fic about them in like 30 mins lmao)

[aimbutmiss]

I've said this a lot (a lot of people have actually) but I will say it again because we got two seconds of cross guild in the new opening and I can't stop thinking about them:

Cross guild is the funniest and most random dynamic to exist ever. How did Oda even come up with the idea like what was the thought process

"I bet you can't come up with the most ridiculous trio and make it work so hard that they become the most iconic trio to ever exist"

"alright bet"

[whenuwishuponastar]

Now that Billford is having a rise I need ficwriters to do the big three tags:

Jealousy

Protectiveness

Kid Fic/Accidental Baby Acquisition

(And maybe omegaverse too but you didn't hear this from me)