#but omg ok there is one part of this headcanon that is stolen from real events

[victimhood]

As predicted, dear old predictable me is procrastinating again, but I’m fixated on the fact that @itsrottenvibes proposed that within my football!AU Yooker shippers call Yusuf/Nicky “Yucky” WHICH IS THE MOST AMAZING THING AND 100% ACCURATE

This is three Inception levels deep nonsense (The Old Guard > football alternate universe > “RPF” within this football universe) but I’m OBSESSED with thinking what the in-universe fandom is like. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out The Beautiful Game before you @ me.

Yusuf/Booker: MAJOR FANDOM SHIP. This ship attracts fans from rival clubs. Even AC Milan fans hate-follow Yooker on IG just to view their stories. There are wonderful, moderate Yooker fans, and then there are some SERIOUS DELULUS who comment on every IG post that Yusuf and Booker make with 4th wall breaking bad shit like “THIS REMINDS ME OF CHAPTER 14 OF [YOOKER FIC WITH 1000 KUDOS ON AO3]

Booker’s fanon characterization: major yt boi woobie, he is somehow the main character in 75% of Yooker fics, reflecting the unconscious racial biases of the fandom. He is granted all sorts of magical powers and leading roles in the most egregious AUs. Top or Bottom Booker discourse is something you never want to touch with a 10 foot pole. Top!Booker fans basically never interact with Bottom!Booker fans since the Great Fanwars of bad discourse.

Yusuf’s fanon characterization: depends on which part of fandom you look at, Yusuf is either the Gary Stu of Gary Stus, or some sort of Manic Pixie Dream Boy who fixes Broken White Boy Booker and helps him achieve his dreams. The most popular Yusuf POV fic is one in which he is a quasi-James Bond type character, and Booker is some sexy villain that seduces him on a mission. Fans with a Yusuf bias tend to be...the coolest part of fandom, and they have an incredible skillset in producing gifs/edits/media from clips of Yusuf floating on the internet (that Armani ad has been milked to death 28937428934 ways)

Yusuf/Nichi, aka “Yucky”: only Fandom Olds ship this, and even so it’s kinda a rarepair since so many left the fandom. It was a bit of a thing back in 2021, but like, there was this post about how problematic the Yucky BNFs were and everyone did a hate-pile on and since then Yucky’s kinda...an icky ship no one wants to touch.

The Yucky fans are disturbingly literate, and write incredibly prescient fics, but also kinda weirdly elitist about it. A group of Yucky fans, who apparently attend Ivy League-level colleges, made an exclusive community of fanfic writers where they write fics for each other. It’s this elitist group that attracted the hate. A lot of the good Yucky fics have either been deleted or orphaned on AO3, because their authors work in governmental-level positions now. The best Yucky fanfic is a space academia AU written by an actual PhD candidate and the quality of that fic is like...Margaret Atwood style prose.

Nicky’s fanon characterization: The Yucky writers write Nicky as a thoughtful, intelligent human being (despite...the misspelled tattoo and Eurotrash haircuts), which the Yooker shippers think is extremely OOC. These days (in the year of our lord 2027), Nicky is often the stock villain in Yooker fics. In Yooker fics, he is always some sort of weird possessive ex-boyfriend (of Booker, surprise twist), bc Booker is the woobie that needs to be saved from the evil captain by Yusuf.

Booker/Lykon: the cute happy corner of the most sensible fans. They know they’re not a big ship, but they love each other, and they write the cutest fics and they’ve offended no one.

Rachida/Booker: this pairing surged in popularity during the Women’s World Cup, for that enemies to lovers dynamic. However, as a het ship, just doesn’t reach the heights of Yooker, and is kinda seen as a crack thing.

Nile/Booker: someone wrote this fic after Nile 1 Booker 0 (it’s super porny and basically consists of Nile domming the heck out of Booker), and everyone went crazy over it like OMG THIS IS THE BEST CRACK...two months later WAT THE HECK THIS SHIP IS REAL??? 

Yooker fans pretty much have a total meltdown at the reveal that Nile/Booker is canon. Most go into delulu mode, and write compensatory fanfics in which Booker is somehow so deeply closeted he marries Nile to prove he is very het, but then he goes back to training at Inter and he can’t resist Yusuf anymore. The worst Yooker fans make Nile a total bitch, but they are just a vocal minority (like 10% of the fandom). Most Yooker fans continue because they are still being fed new content on an extremely regular basis, like when Booker posts photos of shakshuka captioned “brunch with the bestie”. Another 10-15% of the Yooker fandom start writing Nile/Booker/Yusuf threesome fics.

Andy/Booker: ...why. But they exist. They often get hate for the age gap in their ship.

Unfortunately, no one really knows that Quynh/Booker are a thing, although it is known Andy and Quynh are married (I think the...Olympic ski fandom is like...minuscule). But Andy + Quynh/doing kinky things to Booker fics exist on the internet.

[TOG FC SPOILERS BELOW]

On the eve of Yusuf’s wedding to Nichi, Booker gets invited to spa day with Yusuf. Of course he posts about this on his IG “spa day with the bestie”, which sparks 283291321932 Yooker angst fics. The predominant plotstrains are: (1a) Booker has been secretly in love with his best friend the whole time, and finally confessions to his friend at the spa. Yusuf calls off the wedding, and Yooker ride into the sunset. (1b) Yusuf and Booker have been on and off the whole time, and Yusuf confesses to Booker that he has doubts on his compatibility with Nichi. Booker makes a grand romantic gesture, and Yusuf calls off the wedding, and Yooker ride into the sunset. (3) Nichi is forcing Yusuf to marry him for [flimsy reason]. Booker, the hero of the day, swings in to saves Yusuf from abusive big bad Nichi. (4) Blatant pwp hammam porn fic

[tardisbadwolfrose]

For the character thing, please do Rose Tyler

Ooo thats fun. I was not expecting a doctor who character. Ok. Lets go.

Why I like them: part of it is just because she was my first companion. I fell in love with Doctor Who through her. But also, theres something to be said for a perfectly normal, ordinary person with flaws and who probably doesnt think much of themselves, who is young and naive and loving, who ends up doing extraordinary things without some preternatural destiny guiding them. The only other companion who really hit on that was Bill. Donna had a bit, but there were elements of s4 that implied that it was all some sort of prophecy coming together. The DoctorDonna and all that. Rose really was so ordinary. Even Bad Wolf was born of something so ordinary, so human, this intense love and desire to protect. Rose was, in so many ways, such a perfect first companion, because from the beginning shes such an every girl. And she has so much compassion for so many. Everytime she interacts with people, especially people who work for other people, she treats them like people and like equals. Theres the mechanic in "the end of the world," gwenyth, etc. I just... Ugh. I love her. Bills still my fave, but rose is a VERY close second.

Why I don't like them: her selfishness. I dont know if its really that I dont like her because of it, because I like that she has a real, human flaw, and its a real reason that people might dislike them. It means shes well written, and feels real and human. But it still bugs me. Especially in s1, but even in parts of s2. She treats Mickey and her mother with this dissmissiveness, which is very immature. Like she thinks they only exist when shes around. She gets called on it though, and pretty early on. She never fixes it fully, especially where Jackie is concerned, but she makes an effort. But you can especially see it in school reunion, with her jealousy of sarah jane. She has a problem with the people she loves fully having lives outside of her, especially when those lives seem like a threat to the one shes creating.

Favorite Episode: the Parting of ways, fear her, turn left, or stolen earth/journeys end. Aka, im a simple girl with simple pleasures, and those pleasures are rose being a badass/saving the day. Special mention for the idiot lantern bc i must have watched it 20 times and they give me LIFE the doctor and rose in that episode.

Favorite season: 2. Shes starting to get more confident and sure of herself, but shes still human and flawed.

Favorite Line: whatever the hell she says during the christmas invasion, when shes trying to get the sycorax to leave. Its utter bull, makes zero sense, and its beautiful.

OTP: Doctor/Rose. Any doctor. Im a little desperate to see rose/thirteen. Also Rose/doctor/river. If ianto didnt exist, id say rose/jack/doctor, but alas, he does.

Favorite outfit: oh god. Either the one in the unquiet dead, the idiot lantern, the long game, or the doctor dances. There are so many more though. Her costuming was brilliant.

BroTP: rose and jack.

Headcanon: you mean besides time lord/immortal Rose? Ok here it goes.

So when Rose dropped out of high school for Jimmy Stone, she ran away. Went off on tour with Stone and his band. While on tour, she got.very close to the other band members, including the lead singer/lyricist, a very cute 20 yr old Welshman going through his rebellious phase named Ianto Jones, who helped her figure out she needed to go home and, in the process realized he needed to stop rebelling and start acting like a mature adult, leading to him eventually signing on with Torchwood. Meanwhile, Rose is stranded all the way in Paris because she won't stay on that tour bus with Jimmy, and she's terrified to call her mum, who had told her she'd never forgive her if she ran off and wasted her life on Jimmy. Penniless and desperate, walking alone in the rain, Rose thinks she's never going to make it back to London when she almost gets run over by a car after forgetting to watch where she's going and wandering into the street. The driver swerves and just barely miss her, and after pulling over, a man hops out of the car and starts admonishing her, when Rose bursts into tears. Feeling badly, the man insists on taking her home. She tells him home is in London, too far away for her to accept, but the man refuses to listen, telling her he was heading to London anyway, and here, why don't you borrow my cell phone and call your mum, I'm sure she wants you home. He's right of course, and Jackie cries from relief at hearing from her and is thrilled she's coming home. The man's name was Rory, she learned on the drive, and he was married to a wonderful woman who he loved named Amy, and they lived in Leeds but he was travelling around from work and he was heading from Paris to London because of it. It took six hours to gt back to London, and once they got there, her mum treated Rory to breakfast and he went on his way and rose never saw him again.

Yes, it was that Rory. He was with Amy and the Doctor and he got stranded in Paris in the early 2000's and he wasn't heading into London at all but he felt very bad about almost hitting the poor girl with his car and he recognized her from an old picture he found while he was wandering the Tardis and he brought it to the doctor to ask him about it and the Doctor got very sad and very quiet and walked very quickly away from the conversation and Rory figured that meant that he used to travel with her and there was a sad story in there somewhere and he was curious about the girl and how she'd inspire that kind of emotion from a man he'd rarely seen care about anything real.

Should I make this a fanfiction? I kind of want to make this an actual fic... Anyway.

Unpopular opinion: ...She is a very much not straight woman. I don't know if that's unpopular, but it isn't popular. Or at least, it isn't talked about.

A wish: That she comes back in S13 and we see a reunion. I am but a simple girl with simple pleasures and I have been WAITING WITH BATED BREATH FOR A ROSE COMEBACK FOR YEARS AND I AM O V E R D U E.

An OMG-Please-Don't-Ever-Happen: For a character that is no longer in the show there isn't much I can say. I'd be very disappointed if they brought Rose back and ruined it but that requires them to bring her back first.

5 words that best describe them: Kind, good, jealous, badass, loving

My nickname for them: I don't really have one

Give me more characters! I love this!