#and obviously because 90% of the fandom ships them and I think this will get some notes

[skankcunt42]

for @evansbutnessance

oh no their lesbams!!!! 😨😨😨😨

just kidding I know you want to see them k i s s i n g

this looks so cringe I'm gonna kms

but I hope you like it and thank you for the request :)

[artyphex]

Mate the issue isn't that Stolitz got together the issue is that Stolitz is now 90% of the show

And why is that an issue?

I'm not trying to be dense, I'm not trying to gotcha. I'm asking: why is that an issue?

Because the relationship between Stolas and Blitz has been there since the show started, literally the first episode it's established as a thing, the second episode has Stolas flirting with Blitz the entire time, episode 5 has Blitz save Stolas from an assassin.

Their relationship was literally always a center of the show. It is not NEW. This is why I'm so baffled that people are acting like it is. As the show continued, and both Stolas and Blitz got more development... of course their relationship was gonna play a big part? As the show leaned more into themes of classism and unjust systems... naturally the already sexual relationship between the dude from the lower class and the dude from the higher class was gonna be fleshed out? One way or another?

And sure, if you wanted an episode show about demons killing, it certainly stopped being that and I get being disappointed about that. But saying "It's all about STOLITZ" is just so weird to me. It's always been about Stolas and Blitz, they're just more focused this arc

And that's another thing. This arc. This is season 2 of (I think) 4. The midpoint. Time for big change. If they want Blitz and Stolas to get together before the end of the show, now's the time to do it. It will involve heavy character development on both sides, the only way to do that is to center them and their relationship. But it doesn't mean they'll be the center of every single arc going forward.

They've established they want to be together, but they've still got things to sort out separately. I'm fully expecting Blitz and Stolas' relationship to take a back seat to their individual growth. It'll still be there, and some episodes will be about it, but the next season won't be so much about their romance as it about them and their relationships in general.

And before people say "Well, I don't trust Helluva Boss to do that" I do! Genuinely! Why do I? Because every single thing I've said I think will happen that will make for a competently told story in season 2 has happened

I've literally been saying since Full Moon that I expect season 2 to end with Blitz and Stolas together, but Stolas estranged from Octavia and Blitz still estranged from his sister, so season 3 can have mending those relationships as its emotional core. And... that's what happened. That's exactly what happened. I have no reason to believe they won't follow through with what they've set up because they already DID

I don't know man, the longer I'm in this fandom, the more forced a lot of the "criticisms" seem. Sure, there's critique to be had, I still think I could file a whiplash claim from the tone of this show, but "The writing is bad!" "The storytelling is bad!" Just... isn't that true. Not when I sit down and look at it from an objective standpoint. It's not perfect, obviously, but it's competent. This is a show that knows what it's doing.

You can not like what it's doing, that's fine, but it doesn't make what it's doing BAD. "Bad writing" has been so skewed lately to mean "any writing choice I don't like." They don't equate. They never have

Anyway. Stolitz makes perfect sense to me, yes my main engagement through fandom has always been shipping, but if you know me you know you can't force me to care about a main ship without reason. I have reason. Stolitz is a well-done relationship in my book, and I was very satisfied with the end of season 2 for it

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

What do you think about the claim that Zuko respects Katara more than Aang does?

"The guy that thought she should die because of her race respected her more than the best friend that had been supporting her in every way from day one" I dunno, sounds like bullshit to me.

Again, I have a lot of Hero X Villains ships, and that's a CLASSIC argument that is rarely ever true. It's just fans being defensive of their ship because OBVIOUSLY the villain will, at some point, do something genuinely horrible to the main character, while the "good" love interest usually won't go that far, and just has bad moments like a normal human being.

They know it looks bad, but instead of embracing it as just part of the trope and the contrast that is supposed to happen as the characters grow closer and thus the villain becomes less evil, they try to act like the villain never did anything bad to the main character in the first place, while the "good" love interest was the devil.

You rarely find a case of a love triangle (be it a real one or fanon one) with a character picking between the good guy and bad guy in which the dynamics are genuinely like the fandom describes them. 90% of it is just fanfic being treated as fact - hence zutarians acting like Zuko is the first male to ever do a feminism because he "doesn't refuse to fight Katara despite her being a girl", even though he's fighting her for the explicit purpose of letting his nation continue to oppress/kill her people, while Aang is TOTALLY a sexist pig that made Katara his maid, even though he was the one literally cheering for Katara when she threw hands with a misogynist that tried to tell her what she could or could not do based on her gender.

Another classic cope from fans of that kind of ship: acting like "support and respect" means "encourage them to do ANYTHING they want, even things that will hurt themselves and others", hence zutarians acting like Zuko "gets the real Katara" for encouraging her to kill Yon Rha (because he wants a cheat-code to make her forgive him) and Aang is the bad guy that "can't handle her thinking for herself" when in reality Aang was objecting to it because he's the one that actually knows Katara and understood that she'd regret killing someone, even a horrible person, while Zuko didn't realize it both because Katara is still mostly a stranger to him at that point, and because he grew up in a place that normalized, glorified and rewarded violence.

[chemyaart]

Rant about the cookie run kingdom fandom

Okay, so I know I'm gonna get hated for this, but I don't care. Ignore if you're sensitive.

First, I just want to clarify that it's for every fandom, of course, bad apples exist everywhere. But at this point, I can't believe what I'm seeing. The more a media is cute, kid-friendly, the more the fandom is crazy (and not in a good way)

So, I want to adress the things that bother me a lot.

Firstly, I think the Beast Yeast update was both a good thing and a bad thing to happen. Let me explain. Of course, the enemies into lovers trope has always existed and it's the most popular trope, but I think that update actually flipped upside down the fandom. Toxic ships has always existed (like affocara, redpastry, etc..) but they weren't that common I think?

But after that update, it never became the same thing again. It honestly makes me uncomfortable how shippers say "hAhA ToXiC yAoI" for everything, especially Shadowvanilla. It makes me cringe (I like sometimes when it's funny cringy, but not uncomfortable cringe you know?)

I hate how CRK content mainly ships (like 90% of the time) it's sexual.

Of course, I guess sex jokes/suggestive jokes can exist, but it comes to a point where it's like everywhere. These shippers only think about these 24/7.

One thing that adds with the fandom, is how people love to woobify the characters. The misrepresent/misinterpret the character for something they're not. Headcanons are fine, but when I see Shadowvanilla, and purecacao fans... I'm really concerned. They woobify the characters into "b-b-b-but he's g-g-g-ood!" or "I'm j-just a-a innocent uwu gay boi" I understand if you're a kid/teen, but when I see adults doing that, I'm like actually scared.

Every character is complex, and it doesn't have to be romantic. I actually like the Shadowvanilla ship, but not to this extent. And I don't like them romantically. But I would love to see them grow.

Plus, not just woobifying the characters, but also just changing them entirely. Like their personalities, and just only keep one trait. For example, Pure Vanilla Cookie. He's the most popular cookie with Shadow Milk, and all I see is just him being all innocent and nice. Of course he is friendly and generous, but (especially purecacao shippers) think he's weak or something. But when you see him defeating Dark Enchantress ALONE in the video, he isn't WEAK at all.

Or Dark Cacao, all they make him is "manly man who is strong and protects his boi" or "neglectful dad bad dad". When it's much more complex than that. I'm shocked when their account is JUST about this ship. Like I like Purelily and Cacaolily, but I don't post to this extent about them. And even if I wish for Cacaolily to be real, I'm not delusional enough to repeat that they're canon like some shadowvanilla and purecacao fans do. Of course, you can say that they're joking, but there are actually people that seriously do this ☠️ (do what you want, but I just can't belive it myself)

Plus, the amount of times where these shippers also looked at the tiniest details of an interaction, and thought, "it's canon" it's actually crazy. Like I've seen a post about how Dark Cacao's face in the fight between the ancients and Dark Enchantress Cookie, meant that he loved Pure vanilla cookie in a romantic way ☠️

Obviously characters can care about eachother without liking them romantically. Plus, not only Dark cacao was saddened, but also Hollyberry and Golden Cheese. But you don't include that for your ship.

You guys can understand that I really hate Purecacao, right? Well, unlike Shadowvanilla fans, they don't attack me personally, and they're actually cool. The experiences I had with Purecacao shippers made me hate this ship.

Also, stop hating characters for no reason, because of misunderstanding or something. Whether it's Golden Cheese Cookie, where there are people who think she's selfish and as bad as the beasts, Lord Oyster, or anyone tbh. A lot of characters are hated for no reason, either from their design, or what they did. What I mean is, okay, hate a character, but PLEASE have a at least a reason why you hate the character, and not just because it blocks your ship 😭

It's actually crazy Kingdom fans hated Revel Cookie and Okchun Cookie just for their "simple" design? A lot of CRK fans are so narrow minded it's sad. I really hope your minds opens up more, especially to other ships. For example, rare pairs are cool, and I don't see the problem with it except if they're problematic like age gap, pdf things yk?

I hate Purecacao, Affocacao, but I just block their tag. They just love drawing them kissing and making out. As much as I hate them, I won't threaten them or sending death threats over it, you know? I'm really sorry if I was too rude, my emotions get over me, I really hope it didn't hurt you.

At the end of the day, do what you want. Just don't interact with me. And please improve yourself, a lot of you guys need therapy, myself included. I needed to rant.

[starryjkoo]

will always find it so interesting how army made the "jk is a minimoni anti" joke about him being jealous over namjoon....

https://x.com/jklovesjoon/status/1870891537451950488

Oh my god, that video 😬 just… so corny and unfunny. My thing is, why wouldn’t they just make it a namjikook throuple thing - aren’t ARMYs all about poly-BTS? That’s why the ARMYs who make it about only n*mkook are so transparent to me… 👀

Anyways, imo one of the reasons for this is because there’s actually a lot of HL x JM/JK shippers in this fandom who feel a similar way about Jikook as tkkrs do (just not as extreme lol). Maybe 90% of the fandom are shippers & that also includes a lot of HL x ML shippers who operate like, well, shippers. It doesn’t really matter if they think their ship is real or not, it’s still pretty common to feel jealous/resentful when another “rival” ship is getting all the moments they want for their own ship - especially when a lot of BTS shippers are basically Y/N’s who heavily project onto one member of their ship while being infatuated with the other.

This is pretty common in shipping in general, tons of fictional ships have absolutely batshit insane fanwars so it wouldn’t surprise me if there were lots of non-serious BTS shippers who also got weird and dismissive about Jikook out of the same kind of petty jealousy that tkkrs feel. They don’t even have to be a shipper to feel that way tbh, some people are just really attached to the idea of their faves being the closest (and I’m not saying everyone who ships other pairings that involve JM/JK feel this way, plenty are normal and even like jkk, but there’s definitely a large enough group who are super weird about it…)

I think this is one of the reasons why so many Jikook moments get so heavily OT7-ified compared to other duos. The way that the fandom still refers to JK’s JM live as JK’s "BTS content" live is the biggest example of this to me, it’s actually insane. I remember the way the quotes were just full of people talking about how much JK “missed his hyungs” and how he’s “watching BTS content just like me!”. It felt like none of them even acknowledged that it was a Jimin teasing video either, the whole thing was pretty wild. It's sort of the same situation with AYS and the kinds of clips that would circulate ARMY spaces vs the ones that were noticeably absent.

Like, can you imagine how many ARMYs were probably a little bothered by JK saying that the AYS trips were the best of his life? - literally every brand of JK shipper + the really intense OT7 ARMYs who want to think that they’re only happy as seven and have no individuality outside of being a group, hopefully you know the sort of ARMYs I mean, obviously I know JK loves the group and I’m sure the next BV will be very meaningful.

Anyways, sorry for giving you such a long and serious answer to this lmao 😭 it’s a petty rant and not that big of a deal or anything, but it’s just kind of tiring the way this fandom is constantly downplaying jkks bond, picking it apart and making it about other members. It would be nice if they could just give jkk their flowers and celebrate their moments w/out so much obvious jealousy or whatever. And ofc I don’t care what other people ship or if someone wants to make that whole mini/moni thing about nmkook because they ship it, it’s just annoying that those people will pose as non-biased ARMYs and how all of that has really impacted the whole fandom climate & how jikook are treated/talked about. It’s definitely not the end of the world or anything, but it annoys me enough to rant about every now and then lol.

Also, ofc I know there’s plenty of cool non-jkkr ARMYs who do totally appreciate and hype Jikook!! Maybe even the majority of them are totally normal about it, it’s just that there's enough people who are like this that it’s noticeable and annoying.

I was talking about this with someone the other day but - I’m not sure if you know what a “NOTP” is - I’m pretty sure Jikook make up the majority of NOTPs in the fandom lol.

[theshadowsingersraven]

this nyxlin drama lowkey reminds me of the time a zutara artist was run off tumblr because they drew aged up katara/zuko romantically, but I think it was actually angry kataang’s or e/riel’s -because they also drew gwynriel and e/riel’s were jealous- who were stirring up shit 😭

That would honestly make a lot of sense for how/why I didn't see many posts from them or overall in the Nyxlin tag when I was catching up on what happened. Pretty much every person (notably largely Elriels) who supported Elain Week's censorship got an insta-block from me if they weren't already. And I'm sure a decent amount of people blocked me from my stance on Elaingate, Rhys Week, and Nyxlin Week.

And good! You should block me. Seriously. Art has the right to be celebrated and appreciated, especially in the circumstances designed to do that for a specific character and dynamic! Character appreciation and celebration will never look the same to everyone, and just because it's not what you enjoy doesn't mean it stops being appreciative or celebratory. If you can't grasp that, you don't deserve access to my art anyway. You certainly don't deserve to be in my space, that's for damn sure. Kindly, get out.

Honestly, it kind of makes sense considering the overlap of canon rigidity, purity culture, and morality policing of fiction coming from sides of the fandom that generally can't accept criticism about their faves, or even things that go against what they want for their faves. They are terrified of creativity that doesn't give them what they want and it shows. It's the most Evangelical-ass shit ever, and it's fucking weird.

Like...for all intents and purposes, Nyx is an OC in any works that feature him. And I'd know, because I wrote an adult Nyx for my ongoing ACOTAR D&D campaign set 20 years after ACOSF. So yes, Nyx is twenty in my timeline, because it's writing and I can do what I want lol. I have no basis to write Nyx off of other than Rhys and Feyre. Which means...I'm still doing my own character-building to only less than I would for a completely new OC.

Let's compare, shall we?

Writing my OC Solara's backstory: Writing her parents from scratch ✔️ Writing her early childhood ✔️ Writing her trauma ✔️ Writing her adolescence and relationships ✔️ Writing her interests and adventures as she became an adult✔️ Writing her dynamic with her love interest and how she interacts with Prythian as a whole ✔️

Now obviously these are all at minimum influenced by/will be derivative of aspects of ACOTAR because, y'know, transformative works. But still, I made her.

Writing Nyx's backstory and how he is as a twenty-year-old adult: Writing his parents from scratch ❌ Writing his early childhood ✔️ Writing any trauma he might have ✔️ Writing his adolescence and relationships ✔️ Writing his interests and adventures as he became an adult ✔️ Writing his dynamic (collaboratively) with his love interest and how he interacts with Prythian as a whole ✔️

And this is a version of Nyx that I made. Yes, it's still influenced by canon, but if I put in 90% of the same effort to write him as an adult as I did a complete OC, we can acknowledge they're functionally the same.

It's not that people look at Baby!Nyx and instantly think he's perfect to be shipped with someone and there's something to be gleaned from canon about him in particular. We know nothing about Nyx as an individual. That applies to any Nyx ship.

The appeal, at least in my experience, to Nyx ships, including Nyxlin, is the dynamics at play around Nyx, i.e., his role as an eventual leader and powerful figure in the Night Court, the dynamics that affect Rhys and Feyre also extending to him, how the rest of Prythian/Illyria might view the first offspring of High Fae, Illyrian, and Made parents. It's about his circumstances, not him as a character because he is not a "character yet", he just exists!

People are just creative enough to consider those long-term effects on who he could become and how that interplays with other characters. I don't mean to be cruel, but genuinely, have these people never created an OC before? Have they never shipped anything outside of canon? Have they never read any fics featuring time travel, for example, as a plot point to get characters in the same era at the same time when otherwise the ship would not be able to happen? Are they that unfamiliar with making circumstances outside of SJM's canon to allow things to happen for fun?

Genuinely, the lack of creativity for all of us being in this for reading and writing is concerning.

Even just saying this and advocating for Nyxlin's right to be celebrated as well as Tamlin as a whole pretty much puts me in the position of having to tag this as pro-Tamlin. And I wouldn't even describe myself as anything other than Pro-Azriel and probably Pro-Nesta and Pro-Elain because I don't really dislike any characters. I'm equally as critical to all of them and if their good parts just sort of cancel out the bad or are only a bit outweighing one or the other...I don't actively dislike them, I'm just neutral about them.

But this fandom is so fucking polarized because of the toxicity and the Us v.s. Them, Morality Policing culture that's been festering, people can't even neutrally address something. People are harassed so quickly just for not understanding or being familiar with something, and then in the other court people do the harassing because they don't understand or aren't familiar with something the other party likes/dislikes. If don't utterly despise Tamlin, it's somehow considered supportive enough to qualify as "pro" to antis.

Too many people in this fanbase create this parasocial-adjacent attachment to these characters like they're real and have real feelings/boundaries that need to be protected. They are not! Characters can't be hurt by anything happening outside the narrative. Just because you personally do not like something/don't find it appealing or even find it discomforting does not mean it's morally objectionable. It's just not for you, and understanding that experiencing content not made for you is not an attack on you is kind of a necessary life skill.

This rant ended up way longer than I expected it to be, but anyway...y'all stay safe out there.

[abigailnussbaum]

Lower Decks, "Fissure Quest": Scattered Thoughts

As someone who has had a complicated relationship with Lower Decks precisely because of how rooted it is in references, fanservice, and callbacks, you'd think this episode would be my Kryptonite. But you know what, I'm going to let them have it. One episode from the (thoroughly unjustified; this show could have run another five years, easy) end, I don't think it's fair to complain about Lower Decks being Lower Decks. And while I didn't unreservedly love this story (more on that below) I actually found the complete immersion in references (while leaving "our" main characters offscreen) more tolerable than a lot of episodes that center around how these new Star Trek characters just happen to be Star Trek fans.

(Also, I'm holding out hope that, having gotten the fanservice component of the show out of their system in the first half of the two-parter, the Lower Decks writers will end their show by telling a Lower Decks story, about the Lower Decks characters being heroes in their own right. We shall see.)

Obviously the fandom focus is going to be on canon(-ish) Garak/Bashir (and it is rather clever how the episode manages to have its cake and eat it on this front, distancing these versions of the characters enough from the originals that if this ship isn't your cup of tea it doesn't have to color the baseline story). But to me the most important choice in the episode is T'Pol. I was talking just recently about how screwed-over this character was - not just by the Enterprise writers' sexism, but by a backlash against Vulcans that spread through DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise in the late 90s/early 00s, and which Lower Decks has been at the forefront of addressing (Discovery and SNW have, in comparison, been rather wobbly on this front). T'Pol, and Jolene Blalock, have for a long time deserved the kind of redemption Seven of Nine has gotten, and hopefully "Fissure Quest" isn't the full extent of it.

(One complicating factor is that Blalock has left acting - she apparently goes by her married name these days, and is credited only as "Jolene" in the episode credits. This might complicate a potential guest appearance on SNW, for example.)

Another thing I liked is that this episode functions as a redemption for William Boimler without going too hard on this point. He's still fundamentally different from our Boimler in not-terribly-likable ways, but he gets to save the day and to behave like a real officer and captain, without becoming just another copy of OG Boimler. I also appreciated that all this is achieved while keeping the Section 31 of it all to a minimum. Boimler is still working for them, as evidenced by his badge (can we pause for a moment to contemplate how nonsensical the idea that Section 31 have their own uniforms and badge design is?), but their name isn't even mentioned, which I am taking as an indication that the Lower Decks writers agree with me about the misguidedness of this whole concept.

(Also good: a sciency, risk-averse Mariner who nevertheless rises to the occasion and saves the day.)

And having said all that, here comes the complaint: I am largely on W. Boimler's side on the whole matter of the multiverse, and when he went into his rant about how it's all just eye-catching variations on familiar things without any substance to back them up, I wanted to stand up and cheer. Until, that is, I remembered that this opinion was being voiced by a character who is a) a villain, and b) in the grips of depression. The fact that the opposing view is expressed by Lily motherfucking Sloane is, I think, a pretty solid indication of what side the episode wants us to come down on, but I remain unconvinced. It would be nice if multiverse stories were about exploring endless possibility and, through that exploration, learning more about where you started from. But most of them are just about putting a new hat on a familiar character and getting excited over the hat.

Which I think the episode itself mostly bears out. Boimler's crew are all fun and cute, but none of them go very deep into the characters or stories they're riffing off. Garak and Bashir are together simply so fans can have the visual or them as a cute married couple, not as a result of any attempt to grapple with how these two complicated, flawed characters might actually end up in a romantic relationship (or, for that matter, with the fact that Garak ends DS9 in a quasi-suicidal state). T'Pol deserves her more generous, more serious story, but it's telling that this story (she's best friends with Curzon Dax!) feels almost random, a reminder that what Enterprise did with her - stripping her naked, insulting her Vulcanness, and killing her loved ones - doesn't lend itself to a continuation that is worth following. And the Harry Kim gag does nothing to address, and in fact tries to make a virtue out of, the stasis that character was held in for seven seasons of Voyager. I don't want to ding the episode too hard, because I did end up enjoying it. But the conclusion I take away from it is that if you want to really explore a character, especially one who has been overlooked, you're much better off doing what Picard did with Seven of Nine, moving forward from where they left off while giving them more serious consideration, rather than just cycling through a bunch of different variations on them.

Finally, does anyone else think that Curzon Dax was originally meant to be Jadzia Dax, and things just didn't work out with Terry Farrell? Given how every other crewmember is someone who was screwed over by the narrative or the writers, or just something the fans have long wanted to see, the choice of Curzon seems to stick out. A Jadzia Dax who wasn't killed by Dukat (and an opportunity for Farrell to come back to Star Trek after the bad blood of her departure from DS9) feels much closer to the "fan wish fulfillment" ethos that seems to have been this episode's brief.

[thebreakfastgenie]

this is one (1) redeemable voucher to complain about AO3's tagging system (if you like)

Thanks for the voucher!

I probably should have phrased that post differently because upon reflection what I hate is more downstream of AO3's tagging system. The system itself does what it's supposed to do: it organizes the archive. Of course, users get cutesy with it (and I'm guilty of this myself) and other users will use inaccurate tags on purpose to get more attention (this is not acceptable behavior), but neither of those things are the system's fault.

But because the tagging system is so robust and fics are tagged based on tropes, this culture has developed of hyper-curated, trope-based reading habits. This didn't exist before AO3 because it just wasn't possible to filter fics to that extent. Some of my favorite fic reading experiences have been fics that I stumbled across by mistake because I didn't know what they were or because I had to comb through broader categories.

And this is where I start sounding like Ted Gup. Ted Gup wrote this essay in the late 90s called The End of Serendipity about how computers being so efficient at retrieving information was going to bring about the end of people stumbling upon topics they wouldn't have otherwise explored. I had to read and respond to this essay in English class in middle school and I raked Ted Gup over the coals, because I was writing on my laptop with dozens of open tabs. I still think I was right to point out Ted Gup's failure to foresee the wiki walk, but now that I'm older and technology has developed more over the last fifteen years, I'm starting to think he had something of a point.

I was thinking about this in a fanfiction and fandom context because I recalled a post I reblogged recently saying (paraphrased) "I have nothing against shipping but some of you are too focused on shipping to the exclusion of everything else." I agree with that post, but for me part of the problem isn't even the focus on shipping, it's that the shipping content is often so formulaic. Fandom talks a big game about diversity and creativity in fanworks, but a lot of the actual output I see is incredibly formulaic. In my opinion that's related to the extreme focus on tropes. Tropes are great, but if you're only looking at fic as a list of tropes you're taking a very narrow view. I don't know what the direction of causality is here, if there even is one, but I think the tagging system and the way the tagging system is used facilitate this reductive trope-based outlook.

I'm from the fanfiction.net era and I find the character and relationship tagging on AO3 useful, but I don't really care for the additional tags. I had to train myself to even read them. I prefer to select fics based on titles and summaries, because those are created by the author. Obviously writing a summary is very different than writing a story (and in fact it's a different skill and it's hard!) but a summary is still written by the author, so it gives me some sense of their writing style. When authors actually include an excerpt in the summary it does that even more. Tags can be useful in conjunction with a summary, because well-selected tags make me curious how all the elements listed in the tags fit together. But I don't want to sort by Enemies to Lovers or whatever.

I don't expect everyone to read like I do, this is nothing more than one crank's ramblings about my personal dissatisfaction with the current state of fandom. Maybe it resonates with someone, and if it does they're welcome to reblog it, but I'm not trying to do social commentary here. Maybe it doesn't, and that's okay too.

I also don't know if the trope focus on booktok and in the traditional publishing world comes out of fanfiction or not but it's even more distressing to me there and I think it bothers me in the fanfiction sphere because of the possibility that fanfiction is contributing to that trend.

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The rampant infantilization of tails in fandom probably started with Satam where he was treated as a literal fucking baby that wasn't allowed to go on missions unlike the other freedom fighters but instead stayed at home having stories read to him and getting breastfed by auntie Sally and auntie bunnie. Almost all his tech skills were given to rotor too.

See, I completely get where you're coming from

But I don't actually figure the early spin offs like SATAM or AOSTH are the cause so much as the excuse

Now, let me preface this by saying I'm not a verteran Sonic fan who's been entrenched in the fandom for decades. I've been adjacent to it and seen memes from time to time, but I've only been an honest to god fan for a couple years. Because of this, I can only really theorize about how fandom's acceptable fanon and common practices have changed over time.

Now, with that being said, I assumed the same at one point. I assumed when I first became a fan that it must have been Aosth, Satam, and the Archie comics that caused western Sonic fandom to solidify their idea of who Tails is, and that they've been holding onto this interpretation from when they were kids since the 90s and 2000s (passing it down then to the new fans who would accept the opinions of older fans before seeing it for themselves).

However, bit by bit of interacting with Sonic fans who played the games with their friends in the 90s or were actively into SATAM and Archie Sonic, and were big fans in the 2000s, I have seen a different phenomenon. While there are people there who were fans in the 2000s and insist people have always thought of Tails this way (I don't doubt there always have been some for the record), I keep meeting people who tell me that they weren't aware of any ages back in the 90s and assumed Tails was the same age as Sonic based on game appearances. By someone who read Archie Sonic and watched SATAM back then, I've been told that when the ages became a thing fans knew about, people largely ignored them. For characters like Tails in particular, according to this person, a lot of people did away with the official ages at that time because they found them stupid (not unlike when anime fans complain about supposed teenagers acting and looking like 40 yr old adult men), or they just decided to read the ages like in dog years.

That knowledge instead paints a picture of the loud fandom opinions/practices changing over time, which I feel like is actually more realistic than the idea that people solidified their characterization of Tails in '92 and managed to keep this consistent till now. After all, even just going at looking for things like Archie comic ship art has caused me to find that some ships which are fandom pariahs now had a fair amount of fanart that were retroactively deleted at some point after 2016/2017.

Now, with that being said, this is what I think. Personally, I figure it's the current young, loud fans who want everyone to think Tails' fandom characterization has always been this way, as they want to act it's always been basically canon. They want him to be helpless baby boy, raised by Sonic, who is team little bro, who should stay home and go to school and be just like a young kid. And I think they use the old spin off material as an excuse to say it's been Sega's vision from the beginning (funnily enough, while ignoring how he's largely treated in game canon, not to mention other spin offs like Sonic X). And when they know a certain Sonic media doesn't actually support their claims, they either ignore it or just claim that he's obviously being treated as a very young child there.

It should also be mentioned that, overall, we're kind of in a very special fandom age where new loud fans attempt to retroactively define the fandom's past. And they do this either by claiming things were always as they are now, or they do it by recognizing certain viewpoints, ships, fanon, etc were accepted and popular then but claiming it's actually terrible and they've grown from it now. The intent of doing this is to either erase the fandom's "problematic" past (where "problematic" can even just mean that people used to read characters differently then than people choose to now), or to claim that said "problematic" past was actually an absolute stain of terrible sin that we new fans must make up for by deleting all the "problematic fans" who should have never had their voices on display in the first place. It's always framed as a righteous goal. That the fandom has always been this way and we need to oust and get rid of the detractors before they ruin our pure fandom, or that we finally all grew up and learned better morals and these icky icky detractors who like different fanon or think different things are/should be canon need to be bullied out so they don't ruin the fandom again.

It's framed as a righteous goal, but it's about the same things petty fandom drama is always about. It's by making sure everyone adores the same ships, agrees on the same familial headcanons, reads all the characters the same way and gives them the same fanon dynamic. It's just that we've moved on from "actually my interpretation is better and more canon" and moved to "actually my interpretation is canon because everyone says so and because this is the most morally pure and correct option".

Or in Tails' case: "No, Tails has always been seen this way! He's just a young child and he's always been characterized as a very young child. Just look at Aosth! Sega wants use to see him as a young baby boy you're just confused, but I can help you see the– Oh, wait, unless... You must be one of those freaks who wants to age up a literal child for your devious acts! You can't accept his actual age because you're weirdos, but I'm better than that. I can write him better than sega can and show everyone the baby child he's always been"

I think there's a lot of this attitude as an overall fandom where louder people seek to define how people (especially new fans) view Sonic media as a whole, sonic canon, and the fandom's past. And they do it with shame, bullying, by lying to new fans who they know won't consume the media themselves. Even if it's about something as stupid as wanting everyone to see their preferred fanon as something deeply canon and supported by the text

[eviltothecore13]

I wonder if the writers ever regret putting the rebecca easter egg in

I am not sure the writers have much interaction with the Western side of the fandom, and I don't know what the Japanese-language fandom reaction has been to it. So I don't know for sure that they're even aware there has been a fandom reaction to the easter egg that wasn't viewing it as funny or just going "hey a hot girl" as the average cishet male gamer in the late 90s unfortunately would have.

Honestly people seem to have talked more about the easter egg in the past year than in my entire time in the fandom before that? Like, yes there were always a few people who headcanoned something creepy going on with Wesker and Rebecca because of the easter egg, and there were always a few people who shipped them, too, and also that one old fic that explained it with "she's his secret daughter and he just wanted to keep a picture of his daughter where she was happy and playing basketball like she loved doing, rather than only having an official ID photo of her", but it used to be much easier to talk about Wesker without people mentioning it? Most people in the fandom never really seemed to give it that much thought beyond "yeah, yeah, 90s videogame sexism, trying to 'reward' you with a picture of a girl, kinda cringe", and most discussions of Wesker's characterisation never really seemed to involve it.

For that matter, before RE6, the primary assumption among the fanfic/fanart side of the fandom was that Wesker was 100% gay (generally using his distaste for Excella's attentions as proof). The "gamer guy on Reddit and/or videogame forums" side of the fandom, meanwhile, didn't so much see him as straight, as take a position somewhere along the lines of "Wesker is such a badass killing machine that having any kind of relationship or even being attracted to anyone is beneath him, all he thinks about is mad science and world domination". (Large numbers of people on both sides of the fandom--not just the gay headcanoners and Chrisker shippers as you might think--derided RE6 as OOC because they simply could not picture Wesker ever having had sex with a woman! It's just that one half thought he had sex with men, while the other half thought shipping was lame and for girls and can we get back to the zombies and explosions now.)

"Wesker is a sexual predator who preys on women" wasn't a nonexistent position back then, but it really wasn't the majority, and most people depicting him as such were...well, straight women writing 50-Shades-esque fantasies, rather than people who seriously thought he was a creep and hated him for it. And those would often involve Claire or an OC rather than Rebecca.

It's only the past couple of years that some people have been loud about using the easter egg as 'proof' that Wesker was preying on Rebecca and as a reason to hate Wesker, and only the past few months that I've started getting LOADS AND LOADS OF ASKS about it.

I'm rather surprised by this turn of events and wonder what caused it, to be honest, it seems like a very sudden switch. Is it just the RE2 remake reminding people of it? Wesker seems a more controversial character in general these days though than he used to be. He used to be unquestionably one of the most popular characters with a very high demand for more content of him, the decision to put him in MVC3 being very popular, him regularly placing highly in "best character" polls, lots of people wanting his return from the dead, etc... sure he was evil and there were people who "disliked" him in the sense of "he's an awful person who I'd hate in real life" or maybe "he hurt my favourite characters", "killing him in-game is satisfying because I'm beating the bad guy" kinds of dislike, but not "I wish he wasn't in the series" "I want to see less of him" "I hate anyone who likes him" kinds of dislike, you know? Mostly he was viewed as a badass scheming ruthless supervillain with cool powers, and frequently also as hot. Obviously enthusiasm for "MORE WESKER!!!" will die down after it's been so long since his death (though DBD revived it a bit) but I don't know where the increased amount of outright hate for the character and his fans has come from over the past few years.

Is liking villains just less popular? It used to be a fairly common belief that, no matter how evil they might be (in fact, the more evil the better sometimes), the villains were always the coolest characters in anything. Especially in horror, considering the number of horror franchises that are ultimately villain-based (the Cthulhu Mythos, most slasher things, a lot of kaiju things though how much those count as horror varies, basically all of Universal Horror though Dracula isn't the coolest character in the book). But I know some other villains who used to be seen as a main draw of the series now have a lot of people wanting them killed off for good.

In some of those cases, though, I think decreased quality of the writing is in large part to blame (the Joker used to be seen as an entertaining source of dark comedy and was one of the most popular characters in BTAS and the Arkham games, but now liking him--far from being an uncontroversial opinion--is associated with a Very Specific Unpleasant Type Of Guy...but that's probably because a lot of recent writing of him just hasn't been that interesting or funny). The increase in people who really vocally hated Wesker happened BEFORE RE4make, at a time when he'd basically not been in anything for years, so can't really be blamed on "he recently appeared in something badly written"--so I'm not sure where it's come from.

[mythals-whore]

20 questions for fic writers

Thank you for tagging me @basedonconjecture & @biowaredisasterbisexual one thing about me, if I’ve been tagged i will participate.

I am tagging @sugar-peanut-cat @flowersforthemachines & @thedissonantverses

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

I have three (:

2. What is your ao3 wordcount?

139,763 which um, feels like a lot maybe?

3. What are your top five fics by kudos?

For those who tagged me in this i will actually look at my Kudos count: Hunting Days 120 Check Mate 50 Fuzzy Pink Handcuffs 44

4. What fandoms do you write for?

Dragon Age(: but i do actually have a partially finished bg3 fic in my folder

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

At least 90% of the time yes. Sometimes i feel especially shy OR don’t know how to respond to a specific comment so i sit on it until i come up with something clever OR forget about it/: but most of the time i do. Every comment is special to me and I appreciate everyone who takes the time out to leave one(:

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

As none of my fics have endings yet this is difficult to answer AND in general I’m a happy ending gal. In my imaginary fic world where i get to make all the decisions, the endings are happy and everyone lives idk what to tell you.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Again, no endings BUT! I think happiest ending I’ve imagined is my probably for my Cullavellan fic because they're very domestic and have a child. But no one worry Davrook will be equally happy i’ve already written part of an epilogue for them already

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I have only had positive experiences so far!

9. Do you write smut?

I certainly do (:

10. Do you write crossovers?

I think this means crossover between fandoms but I’m not sure. I mean the answer is no? but technically? Maybe? I am going to have Cullavellan appear in my current work but that probably does not count.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

If i have then i don’t know it and honestly i don’t want to.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No but if anyone wanted to you may?

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

I have not and am honestly curious how this works because i hear people talk about it. Do you trade off chapters? do you just plan together and pick which parts you're going to write? I’m co-writer curious.

14. What is your all-time favorite ship?

Ummmm that’s difficult but I’ll out myself as a supporter of Merthur. They’ve been with me the longest.

15. What is the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I’d love to finish all of them but honestly the above mentioned bg3 fic will probably never get finished. I may break it up and post the best parts as one shots because i do like a lot of it. There’s just too much and i stopped because it was overwhelming.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Ummm I’ll say characterization? On my current fic I got that compliment a lot in the beginning that i wrote Davrin really true to character and I’ve also been told that my Rook’s backstory is cool which is a very sweet compliment(:

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing rule you hear a lot is “show don’t tell” and i have a tendency to do both. I do the long paragraph of the illustrating and then i go “this is what that means” so I’m working on that

18. Your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

Have never really tried? I've translated some elvhen using Project Elvhen (which I have since heard it not the best resource?) but that's the closest I've come. Actually! and this barely counts but I did write something for Antoine in French but I basically just stole some quotes from French poetry. So um I don't know? If it's necessary I'll do my best?

19. First fandom you ever wrote for?

Shadowhunters when i was like 13 but i wrote like maybe two chapters and never ever finished it. But the first fic I posted is Hunting Days and that's obviously Dragon Age (:

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Probably Hunting Days. Davrin and Cyri have just really grown on me i love them so dearly and writing their banter is really fun. Also am so close (still very far) to finishing and I’m just really proud of it!

[lxikobsd]

absolutely loving your kunidazai analysis chart and also your kunikida analyses in general!!! hoping to read more

it still saddens me that skk fans will stop at no one, not even the author who gave them everything, to get what they want..

AAAAAAAAA THANK YOU!!!!

I'm glad you like it, when I start getting into analyses I feel like I become less coherent and just feel like this 90% of the time

I do not plan on stopping being unhinged about Kunikida or Kunidazai any time soon. Analyzing BSD is fun between analyzing the series as it is, and also fun looking at the IRL author's life and work and trying to find potential information that could be relevant to the characters.

Also yea about SKK fans they are ummm... I feel like this might come across as being over dramatic but I genuinely haven't been in a fandom this bad at shipping and mischaracterizations since I was into Hetalia. Not all SKK shippers obviously, but there is an extremely loud portion of SKK shippers who are some of the most immature and toxic shippers I've seen in a long time.

I do not believe SKK shippers who are like this are actually fans of BSD, I think they're just fans of the ship. They don't care about BSD outside of SKK shipping and maybe other popular ships like SSKK or RanPoe.

People intentionally misinterpreting Asagiri-sensei's words to boost their flavorless ship kinda irks me. No he isn't being possessed by a SKK shipper every time he tries to write KNDZ, no he isn't prioritizing SKK because its "the better ship", and no its not like he doesn't know what series he writes and all the SKK bait he's put in it. He quite literally said something along the lines of "I want to write the Kunikida-Dazai duo more, I think I could write them endlessly, and I hope to make Kunikida more active in the story again. Kunikida and his duo with Dazai got pushed to the side because my producer wants me to write Chuuya."

IDK if this is gonna get me crucified but I am starting to believe that SKK is kinda ruining BSD. Not because of the duo itself but rather the push to prioritize them bc of money, it takes away from developing other characters. Maybe I'm just an angry biased Kunikida fan, but getting confirmation that SKK and Chuuya are the reason why he's been shafted stings.

And then shippers threatening Asagiri-sensei over him saying the obvious, that SKK isn't gonna be canon? We need to actively put down behavior like this. Its not only gonna ruin the quality of the manga, but it can cause it to be cancelled entirely if he feels like his life is threatened if he continues.

IDK at the end of the day I hope whatever plans Asagiri has for Kunikida end up being really cool and I hope its not ruined because of immature and insatiable SKK fans.

[instantpansies]

Haiii againn :3

Uhmmmm

I was wondering what your general mml hcs are :p

okay i think i'm finally prepared to answer this question!!! i'll preface this by saying i'm much more obsessed w phineas and ferb than milo murphy's law. i love mml very much but i don't have nearly as many Thoughts(tm) about it as i do pnf... even so here's what i've got

i'm not just saying this bc he's the voice actor, i think milo would listen to weird al. that and like '90s-'00s pop hits (basically canon anyway)

melissa has adhd and can't function without variety. she's always multitasking, fiddling, taking hard classes to keep herself occupied

definitely she's the type to really want one of those treadmill desks

that's part of why she gets along so well with milo, it's never the same with him. he's exciting

melissa is the most online of the main kids i think. she probably plays fps games and argues with people who disagree with her on twitter

i think melissa would be a vocaloid fan, lydia got her into it and she passed it on to amanda

btw lydia has been a miku stan since third grade

also melissa likes metal. i have no proof of this but i think she'd like it. good for studying

zack cannot stand metal though, it's grating and he can't hear the lyrics

on the topic of the main kids, i'm not super into shipping or anything but my philosophy is, they all have two hands. so casually speaking i really like the dynamic of simultaneous milo/amanda, amanda/melissa, melissa/zack (i'm not wild about them but if we don't go overboard zalissa is fine), zack/bradley, bradley/milo. they are in a circle holding hands and i like them a lot :3

however like i said that's just for funsies and i dont really really ship anyone there. i do like the dynamics of that particular arrangement though lol!

sara was a tumblr user during the equivalent of superwholock, now that that's not really a thing anymore she's gotten more into analysis and the more geeky side of dr zone fandom. she still watches the old edits though

okayyy i'm kind of obsessed w cavendish and dakota so they r always spinning around in my brain

i think brick and savannah are newer agents than dakavendish, which is why cav is kinda bitter. despite working for the agency for longer, he got stuck with the worst equipment and the most unfulfilling job possible

cav is probably a little frustrated at dakota because of this, but i'd think after so long working w him he's realized that it's not dakota's fault they can't seem to climb the ladder. they're just like that. but obviously he hasn't accepted his fate as we see in the show

dakavendish have been in the same semi-romantic semi-platonic situationship forever. neither of them has said a word. if they knew what a qpr was they'd really like that but they've never heard of it so instead they're just stuck Like That. hopeless idiots my beloved

cavendish watches ancient aliens and all those other sorts of shows about supernatural conspiracies. he half believes them. dakota watches them with him, ironically.

anyways back to the kids. lydia and buford met once at a concert for some famous orchestra, they don't really hang out but they email back and forth sometimes and exchange recipes.

lydia and amanda have been best friends for as long as anyone can remember. it sometimes seems like lydia is just amanda's sidekick, but she just prefers to step out of the way and do her part from behind the scenes. it's less stressful for both of them.

amanda hates candles. just can't stand them. they smell too strong, or never smell right, or they pose a fire hazard, or the shape doesn't fit the vibe she's going for.

related to that i think amanda has some pretty strong sensory aversions, especially to smells and certain textures

milo's backpack is essentially a pocket dimension. it's his hammerspace, so he doesn't need to think too much about what fits or not. he packs it every morning, but the stuff basically comes from already in that hammerspace. there are times when he packs the wrong things (which we see in one episode), but that's because they aren't stored in the backpack and are instead inaccessible to him

basically im saying milo is mary poppins and he can hypothetically access anything he needs at any time. issues only arise when he is caught unaware and unprepared, and that is very rare

milo and sara really like going to creeks. especially when they were little they would go to the nearest creek or pond and wade and look for creatures in the water

baljeet ran a boy bands fan blog back when the lumberzacks were active. he was shouted out once on their old social media and it's still one of his proudest accomplishments.

this isn't really an mml hc but baljeet kind of reminds me of a friend who runs a blog and a youtube channel about some really niche tech and programming stuff, and is also just a normal guy on the internet, so i think baljeet probably does smth similar

amanda and melissa have been academic rivals for a long time, but they have a mutual understanding and it's never gotten nasty. bradley thinks he's melissa's academic rival but honestly she doesn't see him as competition at all

bradley has a pretty big sweet tooth. i'm basing this off the whole carla thing if it wasn't obvious, but he definitely stops by coffee shops after school and gets the sweetest drink he can. ice cream fan as well

tbh i unfortunately do not think much about mort or chad. i dont have any hcs about them

same with the murphy parents :( i like them a lot but i dont have any thoughts abt them rn

elliot is bradley's older cousin who never really got along with him but their parents made them hang out when they were little. i'm going off vibes only here

okay so yeah that's all i can think of for now!!! i'm sure i will think of more later lmao but anyways. mml is such a good show

[mamawasatesttube]

Kon-El questions 3, 7 and 16

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

hmmm. how do i put this. it's like... the way karl kesel treated him as a self-insert for his own teenage fantasy self or whatever sometimes. obviously this comes out in the way he gets preyed on by adult women and this is played off as cool and chill, but it also comes out in the way a) kesel writes his flirting. sometimes it's very endearing and cringefail, and other times he's kissing women without consent, and that's played off as chill and fine because kesel thinks it should be and the women in question almost always are fine with that, but also b) he writes off concerns about indigenous hawaiians in kon's narrative (like silver sword or ...man i'm forgetting that kid who gets jealous of him and has powers about it for a minute, but that narrative). and like. yeah. white man in the 90s wrote this for SURE. i don't think it's like, written in the absolute poorest taste imaginable, because there's a lot of ways where it seems almost like they were trying to be respectful of native hawaiian culture, but then there's shit that's so far off the mark it's like. dude. and it's very evident that it just reflects karl kesel's own views much more than any character in-narrative.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

lmaooo that's a toughie!!!! fanon kon at large is just. straight up not my boy. however there's a subset of fandom who leans into him being genderqueer/gnc/trans a lot more than canon ever has and i looove that. trans kon truthers lets go ♥

16. What's your least favorite ship for this character?

LORD. tim/ber/kon is the one that makes me roll my eyes hardest, alongside the rarer but no less irksome ber/kon. it's like... this is 100% not about kon as a character. this is about tim. ber/kon is almost funny in that it's entirely about tim but with tim himself cut out of the picture. but tim/ber/kon is just "let's take tim's most popular two fanon love interests and just shove all of them together!" and i have yet to see Anything even remotely try to convince me why kon and bernard should give a shit about each other. like, MAYBE you could sell it as a loooong slow burn, but i just. i don't see it man. putting the rest under a cut bc i AM gonna ramble about why i dislike it, so if you like tim/ber/kon or tim/ber and don't wanna see that, keep scrolling here👍!!

this is also partly bc i just... man i really wanted to like bernard and tim/ber but there's nothing there. i knew i didn't like rebirth tim characterization going in when i read tdr but i was hoping i'd at least find some crumbs. it's all just ... like there's no substance to it. there's no conflict, no character flaws, no "why do they even like each other???", no particular way they seem to help each other grow. it's just tropey "told, not shown" fluff where megfitz insists they are SO in love and perfect for each other, over and over, without backing that up really at all, and it just holds absolutely no appeal to me. and when it's just tim/ber i'm like yeah ok sure it's not my thing but whatever. but when people start trying to shove kon into there i'm like NO!!!!!! sdjkfhkd like im just SO unconvinced and it feels like such a great steaming heap of Nothing.

the main reason that is is that to me a relationship needs to have an arc. it can't just be stagnant. if there's no conflict, if there's no room for growth, if there's no development, it falls apart in my eyes. it doesn't feel like a real story about actual people. and as far as the tim/ber dynamic established in tdr, there's just. nothing. even the fact that bernard apparently somehow knows that tim is robin, which should be a HUGE source of conflict, is completely glossed over. it never comes up in any way.

like, we know that tim wants to tell people, but holds back out of a sense of duty. in robin '93, he agonizes about this with steph. but when bruce tells her his identity without his consent - which steph tells him bruce did immediately - he flips the fuck out!!!! he panics and runs away and he's furious with them both!!! so you'd ostensibly think that bernard knowing, and then not telling him he knows, would be sowing the seeds for an explosive conflict later down the line. especially because bernard now knows that tim is just. lying to him. all the time. shamelessly and blatantly lying through his teeth. and sure, it's for a good cause. right? but you'd think that in a relationship that's only just been established, just for a few months, that would also be offputting!! you'd think he'd start getting more and more unhappy that tim is just constantly lying to him and he knows it!! because he knows it about the robin secret, but what else might tim be lying to him about??? he knows now that tim has no qualms just lying to his face all the goddamn time, and he's... FINE with that???? there's this giant secret they're both dancing around and it's set up that there's just. N O T H I N G done with that. it drives me up the wall. i found this absolutely infuriating to read. both of them just being so one-dimensionally "oh we're in looooove so nothing else matters" that it erodes not only tim's specific characterization but bernard's ability to react like . idk. a human being? it just feels like running into dead end after dead end.

so yeah adding kon into that mix makes me want to tear my hair out bc it just feels SO surface-level. it's like... how much of him are you gonna shave off to fit him into this soulless, conflictless mold? it's like how i get annoyed when tim/kon fics ignore kon being genuinely really upset tim didn't share his identity with the team in yj98, but worse. because identity shit REALLY matters to kon. kon has never dated anyone who didn't know he was superboy. all of his civilian friends in sb11 know he's superboy. like, he does Not get close to people if he can't share that. it would be!!! a source!!! of conflict!!! but i've never seen Any ship content for tim/ber/kon that isn't just either completely declawed fluff that's just oh hehe tim has two boyfriends, or "kon angsting over tim dating someone else uwu" bullshit, which occasionally leads into completely declawed "tim has two boyfriends" fluff. it just does such a disservice to every character involved imo.

[mercurygray]

showing up late to the soirée with a no-pressure 🎬 for fred or cord, if you so desire!

Sorry I let this one sit so long, JJ! Just for funsies - I think I'll do both!

[if they were canon askbox meme!}

Fred

who the fandom ships them with: Brady, obviously, since they are too good for each other. Curt, for the pain, and Rosie, for the double drama of a love gained and a love broken and a good friends to lovers arc. Crosby, because...honestly who knows, but it's probably his big brown eyes and the fact that they share a few scenes. Yet unnamed guy at home OCs, yet unnamed Clubmobile girl OCs, and probably Helen, because she's there and they've both lost people.

why the fandom loves them: beautiful cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure. She's a great character for fic because she can and does share scenes with everyone.

why the fandom hates them: trite girl at home trope who needs to get lost. (The fandom can fight me.)

what the cast relationship would be like: I'm going to be very problematic and say that Fred might be one of the people who has died before the series gets made, so the only way the cast finds out about her is through the stories everyone else tells, which are, perhaps, inclined to be a little bit more rosy. Her daughter takes a great deal of pleasure out of finding out more about her mom. what was their audition scene: Fred's audition scene is one I haven't written yet where the girls are on a picnic on their day off and are talking about home.

Cord

who the fandom ships them with: Egan would be an obvious choice but fandom doesn't like being obvious, so also Gale, because of the friendship they develop. Mae, because they share a lot of scenes and the idea of them making out in the tower is hot. Laura, because ditto making out in a plane. Harding or Bowman, for the drama of being in love with an older man. Crosby, because he's...there. Jack Kidd, because they're both in the same situation of being 'left behind' and having Egan come home to find out Kidd got his job and his girl is very chewy. (Come to that, that would work for Harding or Bowman.)

why the fandom loves them: I don't think the fandom likes Cordelia very much, actually. She feels like a character that's trying too hard to be relevant, even though that's exactly who she was.

why the fandom hates them: She's cockblocking the Buck(y)s and we won't stand for that.

what the cast relationship would be like: Bucky is all in about talking to the cast (please picture this energetic old man waving a cane and parachuting out of airplanes at 90) and I think Cord is also a talker, but in a different way. She's spent a lot of time in her adult life speaking in front of congress about veteran's benefits and equal pay, but not her personal stories. That takes a little more doing.

[lai-mar]

You know, I really appreciate that you’re out here defending this widely hated relationship. Maybe it’s because the anime-only fans are a very vocal majority right now, but I’ve seen people who ‘watched the anime then read the manga’ *still* shit on Laios and Marcille’s friendship. Like you don’t have to ship it but if you deny that they care about each other or deny that they have chemistry, did you even read the comic?? ‘Oh they’re just siblings/siblings-in-law!’ have you ever had a sibling. have you ever had a sibling-in-law. they do not act like siblings they act like *intimate* best friends. ‘Ridiculously comfortable around each other’ best friends. They have a relationship outside of Falin, that is what develops over the entire damn story. 90 chapters. What comic were you reading where you think Marcille can barely stand him.

Thanks for the ask! Very cathartic to see this. About to go on another rant again lol (will be repeating some of my old points but yeah I need to get it out of my system)

"Defending widely hated relationship" + "anime-only fans are a very vocal majority"

Okay, let me play devil's advocate for a second here. Let's say I despise L/M as a ship and it squicks me out greatly and I think it's a boring ship of pairing the male lead and the female lead. What should I do? Obviously go into L/M posts and argue about it instead of blocking the tag and stating my stance my calmly when someone asks me like your average fan who knows how to curate their fandom experience.

Okay, more devil's advocating. I despise L/M as a ship but I have read the manga and engaged with it critically and understood its themes. Which means I like L+M as a friendship in the same way I like the themes of eating and life cycle and the friendship between the party and the worldbuilding. Because all of these are core parts of the story told. So what I do is to block all shippers and ship tag and look for platonic fics and fanart like Your Average Fan Who Curates Their Experience.

Like I'm sorry. I genuinely feel some people are so caught up in the intense fanonisation of DM that they start forgetting about canon. And I KNOW I am not the only one feeling this way because I read the notes on my posts and other people's posts and there's a lot of good thoughts on this. Plenty of people appreciate them. But to some people in the wider fandom, are we reading the same manga? Our male lead and female lead are friends who save each other. They are not together canonically. So canonically, they don't even get into the way of shipping?????? People can have important intimate friendships outside of romance??? And it's a canon well established friendship? I would say it's one of the most well developed dynamics in the series that we see? We get shown and not told? We see images and words and interpret them in our brains?

Devil's advocate level 3. Let's say mainstream fanonisation of DM is real. F/M is a canon ship and they get together and they get married in the end and L+M become sibling in laws. Maybe L/K is a thing. This still does not erase the entire journey L+M and co went on to save Falin. This still does not erase their friendship and chemistry.

"‘Oh they’re just siblings/siblings-in-law!’ have you ever had a sibling. have you ever had a sibling-in-law."

Okay. I do have a sibling. At this point I've long accepted this much be some sort of cultural difference and some weird American / Western thing I am not used to. And the hilarious thing about DM is that we do get canon siblings!!! It's the fucking premise! Falin and Laios!! And they're fun!

I'm sorry but this must be some cultural difference. Like no younger sibling is calling their older sibling by their GIVEN NAME. The sheer disrespect. I'll be scandalised. As a person with a sibling I don't understand the fandomisation of making non related people siblings in fanon? I'm calling my friends my friends, not siblings. My sibling is like a sibling to me. My friends are like friends to me. Idk. I've written the word sibling so many times that it doesn't seem like a word anymore.

Obviously these are just my personal thoughts but I feel like objectively, there has been a fandomwide trend of grabbing a canon friendship between a man and a woman and going "THEY ARE SO SIBLINGS CORE XD" (not siblings in canon) (not related) (don't even look similar) (they're friends). A lot of times this is valid and even fun but sometimes I get the feeling people sometimes push the fanon sibling thing to show they're squicky about them romantically. To which I can only say: a man and a woman can genuinely only be friends. If you need to magically make them related so you / other people won't see their friendship romantically... it feels like a step back. Why are we doing heteronormativity.

I think I'm the type of person who enjoys and mains man + woman friendships in fandoms (which are, unsurprisingly, unpopular as ships and even as friendships until I start spreading propaganda and pumping fics on Ao3), and I think one of the things that get me is. A man who could be attracted to women + a woman who could be attracted to men having great chemistry but staying friends. I want to stress this is different from a man who is not interested in women / romance + a woman who is not interested in men / romance because there is almost zero chance of a reciprocal romantic relationship going on. But for the first case, which I feel like many people dumb down to "straight people shipping", it's even more precious for them to stay friends and not give into the heternormative expectations despite one or both of them possibly (but not necessarily) being heterosexual. Like, here are two people who could date each other but they're like "nah we work better as friends, so we stay friends". To me, this is one fantastic argument for friendship. Not everything has to be romantic. Even better if they considered and thought about the logistics, but decide their relationship is more special non romantically. Having a taste of how their relationship could go and going "thanks, but no thanks". Is this not a great display of sincere and stable friendship compared to people going "lol they can't work as a ship because they simply physically cannot tolerate the thought of each other romantically". I'm rambling here but I feel like this is what I feel across various dynamics and fandoms. At this point, I think somehow non romantic relationships genuinely fascinate me more than ships. Save me QPR save me.

"They have a relationship outside of Falin"

I feel like some manga readers have missed the point so badly when it comes to this. It's hilarious. They have a relationship outside of Falin it's the whole fucking point about coming to terms with grief and death! You know, one of the core themes of this story that you finished!

And of course this doesn't erase the love they have for Falin. Falin is clearly beloved and their main motivation, but hilariously enough (for the L+M deniers), the manga shows Laios and Marcille's "true" innermost desires being granted and it's not about reviving Falin even though they both clearly want her back and it's at the forefront of their minds. Laios turns into a monster. His curse isn't about Falin not coming back (even though that was his immediate thought), it's about him not being able to interact with monsters ever again. Marcille was traumatised by what happened to Falin (nightmare chapter) but when she turns into a dungeon lord, she goes about trying to fix the lifespans, showing her fear of loneliness and all her loved ones (NOT just a single person!!!!!!!!) dying before her. You can argue they didn't revive Falin with magic lord powers because they don't trust the lion / trust their own plan of eating her, but I think the manga focuses enough on their desires for the interpretation of "the lion fulfills their innermost desires that define their existence" to work. Marcille is the one who finds Laios first after he turned back and Laios broke Marcille free from the lion's influence etc etc we know they play a part in each other's arcs. Laios says they wouldn't be on this journey if Falin hadn't been digested. Marcille says in the end she was okay with Falin not being brought back this time. Laios invites Marcille to stay with him. It's in the text.

"Boring straight ship" or whatever

This comes from what a friend said about my main duo of another fandom but it's like "why isn't [ship] more popular" "because it's easy to fall into the boring trope of pairing a man and a woman together".

And this is a thing that does happen! But not to pairings with strong canon foundation and chemistry sorry. Don't look at me, look at canon. A male/female ship with good canon support is a good ship. Why are you surprised. People like shipping characters who spend lots of time together saving each other and all that. Dare I say: sometimes (sometimes) shipping "straight people" is more respectful to their canon friendship than shoehorning them as siblings. Which I believe is true in the case of L+M.

Anyways. Well that was a nice angry rant. Sorry I had to get it out of my system. I've spend too much time writing this so I won't be doing much proofreading lol. If you've reached this point, thanks for reading <3