#honestly it was like that meme 'yaoi for women'

[mistninja]

watched the black clover movie. Mereoleona yuri moment >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[case-of-traxits]

How about Vincent (maybe Tseng too if that last one didn't kill you haha) for the new ask meme :D

For the Opinion Meme || Still accepting!

OOH THE PRETTIEST BOYS

Whew. Sorry this one took so long. I uh... I went hard. This got so long. It's behind a cut.

Vincent Valentine, Turk Flavor (And then Vincent, post-Chaos) (And then Tseng)

Sexuality Headcanon: Bisexual, but with a slight preference for women.

Gender Headcanon: Cis male.

A ship I have with said character: Vincent/Veld so much, thanks. I'm a sucker for partnerships in the Turks though, so this cannot possibly surprise anyone.

That said, I also absolutely love Vincent/Lucrecia. I have... so many feels about them.

The ship of my soul would probably be Veld/Vincent/Lucrecia, with Vincent as the hinge there. So good.

A BROTP I have with said character: Vincent/Veld. I mean, you don't really have too many options for back then, but I'm also super fond of several of @ladykf-writes's OCs as broships with him.

Honestly, I just shamelessly steal her OCs constantly. They're all deliciously written and they do so much to flesh out the world in those leaner eras.

A NOTP I have with said character: I have not personally seen anything I would consider a NOTP/squick for me with Turk!Vincent.

A random headcanon: Vincent's mother is a priestess at one of the Temples to Leviathan in Wutai. Grimoire met her while researching planetary flows, and while he drifted to and from Wutai during their relationship, he did eventually marry her. She chose to stay in Wutai though, offering him a home whenever he came back.

Vincent stayed with her for a lot of his childhood, but when he was about 10, Grimoire fetched him to start traveling the world. Vincent's not sure he's ever really forgiven Grimoire for removing him from the place he felt like 'home.'

General Opinion over said character: I love my precious cinnamon roll, okay. He's so wonderful. An absolute idiot sometimes. But wonderful.

BONUS! A song I associate with the character:

The child without a name grew up to be the hand To watch you, to shield you or kill on demand The choice he'd made he could not comprehend His blood a grim secret they had to command He's torn between his honor and the true love of his life He prayed for both but was denied So many dreams were broken and so much was sacrificed Was it worth the ones we loved and had to leave behind? So many years have past, who are the noble and the wise? Will all our sins be justified? The curse of his powers tormented his life Obeying the crown was a sinister price His soul was tortured by love and by pain He surely would flee but the oath made him stay

-- Hand of Sorrow, by Within Temptation. (You can thank @ladykf-writes for that one too.)

Vincent Valentine, post-Chaos

Sexuality Headcanon: I don't know that post-Chaos Vincent really has the emotional energy to actually spend on being attracted to anyone anymore. That said, I think he's probably far more likely to develop a sexual attraction after he's developed a romantic/emotional one, so I'll just stick him in the demisexual box.

Gender Headcanon: Vincent barely sees himself as human anymore, but if pressed, he'd say male still, I think. (Let's be real, he'd say he was a monster first.)

A ship I have with said character: Ohhhh boy. Okay, so...

Vincent/Lucrecia. I do, I still love it. Post-OG, I think Lucrecia is too broken to actually do much, but I still love his pining for her. (And her pining for him too. Mutual pining idiots.)

Vincent/Veld. Some delicious old man yaoi at this point. And Veld has some trauma of his own to contend with, and they've both had horrible things happen to their bodies without their consent and just... It's still so good.

Vincent/Tseng. I can hear the record scratches now, but listen. I always HC Vincent as half-Wutaian, and Tseng as a former Leviathan priest, and I just. I want them to talk post-canon. I want those moments of just exchanging looks and getting it in a way that most people don't.

Vincent/Reeve. I do really like this. It can be a bit squicky, given the age difference (and that my Reeve sees Veld as a father figure), but honestly, they're so good together. Dirge was a delicious snack that I thoroughly enjoyed.

A BROTP I have with said character: Vincent+Tifa and Vincent+Yuffie are absolute favorite broships of mine for Vincent. And Vincent+Reeve.

A NOTP I have with said character: Vincent/Yuffie is really my only hard no.

A random headcanon: Vincent's fixation on Lucrecia isn't just his own love for her, it's how Chaos manifests his interest in someone that he sees as being basically his first follower since the Cetra "died off."

Lucrecia is the first mortal to be as thoroughly fixated on him as she is, and she's spent years now, crystalized in the tainted mako where Chaos is from. She feels like home to him and Vincent both, even if they're not good at quantifying it.

Vincent also really likes Marlene and Denzel both.

General Opinion over said character: I really do like Vincent. I was always a little meh on him in just the OG, but I was sold on him in Dirge. I think I was only meh on him because he was so damn popular originally. I was in my not like other girls phase at the time, after all. XD

BONUS! A song I associate with the character:

And I'd sing a song that'd be just ours But I sang 'em all to another heart And I wanna cry, I wanna learn to love But all my tears have been used up On another love, another love All my tears have been used up On another love, another love All my tears have been used up On another love, another love All my tears have been used up, up

-- Another Love, by Tom Odell

Tseng of the Turks

Sexuality Headcanon: Technically bisexual, but much like Reeve, functionally gay. His is for cultural reasons more than anything though.

(Surprise! Incoming HC)

In Wutai, same sex relations are strongly encouraged up until marriage to prevent out-of-wedlock babies. So for Tseng, as an unmarried man, he would absolutely expect and be expected to sate any urges with another man. Since moving to Midgar, he has managed to wrap his head around the realization that it doesn't necessarily work that way anymore, but he still feels horribly transgressive whenever he sleeps with a woman.

Gender Headcanon: Cis male, but he has absolutely zero give-a-fucks if someone were to misgender him. He's firmly of the opinion that Midgardians wouldn't have any clue what masculinity looks like if it bit them on the ass.

Now, getting misgendered in Wutaian when he isn't actively trying to pass for some reason? That would earn a side-eye, but more because Tseng cannot imagine it happening without it expressly being done as an insult.

A ship I have with said character: I love basically everyone with Tseng, okay. Like. So good.

Tseng/Reeve is so soft and so sweet sometimes, and they're still holding secrets and just... I love it.

Tseng/Rufus is an amazing complicated dynamic, with Tseng being his trainer/teacher and Rufus being the one to actually demand/control the romantic part of their relationship.

Tseng/Sephiroth is full of these meaningful silences (if there was ever a pair who can communicate entirely in unspoken glances, it's these two), and it's so deliciously tragic.

Tseng/Reno is also super complicated (I talk about it in my Reno answers for this meme).

Tseng/Vincent was talked about up there in post-Chaos Vincent section.

Tseng/Tifa is a wonderful favorite of mine too. I just... It's all great.

A BROTP I have with said character: Tseng and Reeve. I cannot not have them be close. If I'm not shipping them, they're absolute best friends.

A NOTP I have with said character: I wouldn't say it's a NOTP exactly, but I am not super fond of Tseng/Elena. It used to be a favorite ship of mine, but the older I get, the less I care for it, so... Yeah.

A random headcanon: Oh man. Okay, so let's just... I'll discount everything I gave you guys in the 50 Random Questions post. Let's see...

Tseng can play the Erhu and the Guzheng well enough to play for the Wutaian Imperial Court. He can also draft letters in Wutaian calligraphy. He loves poetry and likes to pick up Wutaian poetry/short story collections from vendors in Little Wutai.

Speaking of, how about that one? Sector Eight is "The Turk sector" because Tseng moved there as soon as he could get his own housing in Midgar thanks to the high population of Wutaian ex-pats there. He ended up forcibly removing several infantry patrols from Eight pretty early on, all of whom had attempted to menace or attack him without realizing he was a Turk.

After that, he realized that Shinra would still need some kind of influence in the sector, so when Veld put him in charge of assigning schedules, he made sure to add patrols of Sector Eight to the standard Turk duties.

(Hilariously, I've always had Eight as the "Turk Sector," even well before CC established it as canon.)

General Opinion over said character: I love Tseng so much. He's an ass, much like Rufus, but I adore him all the same.

BONUS! A song I associate with the character:

We're going to hell, we're going to hell We're going to hell, we're going to hell my friends So what's that something sinister inside We act so civilized Devils in tuxedos Our sordid hearts are far too hard to hide What's that 'neath the floorboards? Boom boom Boom boom Boom boom We're going to hell, we're going to hell We're going to hell, we're going to hell

-- We're Going to Hell, by Cursive

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

You've started reading Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint! For Han Sooyoung??? Story, you are the most valid ORV reader there is and I'm wishing you thoughts and strength for the coming destruction of sanity.

How are you finding it so far? (This is Note, btw, and feel free not to answer if you still want to withhold judgment)

Note!!! Yes, I did start!

Ahuhdfv yeah I had heard people talk about it before but I wasn't really looking to get into anything new atm so I thought ok, I'll check it out eventually. Like it sounds good but not right now. Then the yaoi polls started and people were telling me to vote joongdok so I did with like, zero understanding of what was happening but you know. Happy for you guys! And then there were a few memes and I was amused and said ok, it seems like I should really put this on my list. And then there was a post talking about how meta the themes are and that it's heavy on platonic love themes and it made people cry and I went oh. And then another said the women were distinct and well written and I went oh.

Yeah and then I saw people tagging these deranged posts with hsy and that decided it for me. Pleased to know she is every bit the chaos woman I thought she'd be, and I still feel like I barely know her at this point. Her and kdj's dynamic is ahafbvdhfvnv. Asshole besties. To me.

I actually binged most of the webcomic in one day (I found it first) before I decided to stop and start from the beginning with the novel because I wanted more of kdj's narration! It's interesting... I know it's going somewhere very different from how it started and while I have some ideas, I'm very uncertain about them. There's so much going on. The entire cast is really fun and I'm intrigued by all of them. But. um. I have a lot of fondness for. Her.

J-Jung Heewon... so cool............. (also she's funny as heck which is just a bonus at this point)

Love that Kim Dokja has surrounded himself with people who care about him deeply and 100% have his back but also would not hesitate to get his ass. Good for him, honestly.

Anyways I'm still catching up in the novel but I left off in the comic with yjh flipping out after kdj took a mortal blow for him and then going ballistic while affirming kdj as his companion only for dead kdj, who is watching all this go down, to immediately rationalize it as "ah he's trying to get coins". ............ How can he be so clever and also so dumb.

Who are your favourites btw? I imagine it may be for spoiler reasons but I'm still curious :D

[friendshapedplant]

would love to hear about your kirby ships that involve 'characters no one cares about' if youd like to share! i love seeing oddball ships that arent well known :) no pressure though!

Oh with pleasure!

Disclaimer these ships are very headcanon heavy, most except the first one involve reformed villains and primarily imagined in gijinkaverse. Bear w me here QwQb

Nightmare x Zero: TOXIC old man yaoi, big bad villains tryna take over the universe. Zero hates Nightmare's stupid lovey dovey antics, but it's either that or they fight one another for eternity and make no progress on their goals. Nightmare is fully aware of how much Zero hates it and finds it funny/adorable. Less romantic and more a shitty business deal they pretend is a marriage.

Galactic Nova x Kracko: Queerplatonic ancient beings that just want to stay out of the public eye, a silly and grumpy duo :3 Nova can fix Krackos cold ways tho

Dark Crafter x Yin-Yarn: More old man yaoi (30s-40s), you see the vision right. Do I gotta explain it. Okay just for clarity: Craft themed spinoff game villains. Flamboyant gay and chill gay. They're the "He ask for no pickles" meme.

Zero Two x Lor Starcutter: Both products of Halcandra and carry the weight as a couple of the last beings to personally bear its memory, and its hardly even good memories honestly. They're both such sweeties <3

Miracle Matter x Flutter: What do you mean you don't know Flutter (/sarcasm)??? I suppose at this rate this is just OC x Canon but do any these mfs really have any character??? I do what I want. They are an adorable t4t sapphic duo that also embody the "(s)he ask for no pickles" meme. I would say more but I'd have to write a whole ass fic to make anyone understand QwQ

Susie x Sectonia: Not sure how rare this really is, rooted in the audio drama. And don't question how Sec is still alive she got better or like necromancied back to life I dunno! Their fields of interest are Very Different but I think they have alot to learn from one another! Also powerful women team up 🤝 Sorry Taranza maybe you can go be this dynamic w Magolor but less cool /lighthearted

[petorahs]

☀️ anon

"I like girls that are mean to me" - not me but dude I get it

And i live persona 3 Portable. i think they really give you a completely new perspective with Minako and the social link with Ryoji is fantastic, best one, they are so cute. I know a lot of people dislike Minako bc they say she completely negates the theme of Memento Mori, but I think she is just the flipside of the coin. Like that meme about "nothing in life matters" where one is a depressed emo (Minato) and thr other is a sunglasses-wearing party man (Minako). She does fit the theme but /differently/ and that's rhe whole point of it. That's why I long for Atlus to do that again, give us femc with a different perspective on the same theme!!!! And yes, I know it was easier in p3p bc the cutscenes were basically a narated slideshow, so it just needed a modelswap and some new social links but honestly it was so damn good QwQ

I guess thats also why I took kind of an issue with Kasumi. When she was shown there was the hope she might be a Femc, but no Atlus proceeds to be a male protag waifu game-

Tangent: the fact you can date Kawakami but not your bros Ryuji-protects-women-daily-Sakamoto or Yusuke who is just a sweet nice guy living his best artist life, is a crime and I am personally pissed about it. I really hope that future games do shake things up and dont go down this path further. You can't just give Ryuji a line that's basically "my place is by your side/right next to you" and NOT expect me to see a budding romance.

i like how that's your takeaway LMAO what can i say...... me when im just a bisexual mess. girls can be mean to me. guys too im never picky but... girls. <3 obv my appreciation for yukari and her character goes deeper than that like i think shes the realest ever but thats another analysis for another day. for now hehe heart choker go brrr

?!!!!!!! PEOPLE SAY THAT ABOUT MY GIRL FEMC?!?! who what when where Why!! let me at em!! throwing hands!! i havent experienced minako/kotone in her entirety because well. p3fes the answer depression slump. but a large part of why i chose to p3 as my backwards dive into persona series and not p4g is because its arguably the only game to have a FeMC (maya p2 counts but also doesnt? cause she has the benefit of speaking in innocent sin that future silent protags don't). the sheer novelty of an unabashedly cute, girly girl in a social sim rife with the theme of death... her presentation alone could've told you how she's on the 'toxic positivity' side of the spectrum when dealing with grief? your description fits so well LMAO p3 MCs are so nihilistic love them both fr....

the glorified slideshow thing, their choice to port p3p instead of giving us a revamped, definitive persona 3 with fes' benefits (The Answer, control over team members, animated cutscenes) is just proof that they need to remake persona 3 with p5-level graphics now. god what are they doing over ther...

oh man now that you've got me started on it. kasumi, kasumi... she had So Much to Her that they just kinda. fumbled. do you want me to get into it? i kinda want to get into it. but it'll turn into a whole rant and these asks get long enough as is (not that I'm complaining! bro i love these back-and-forths theyre a highlight of my day fr) so i'll save it for another time I think LMAO. just know that im sharing grievances right there with you in the "kasumi-should-have-been-a-FeMC-of-sorts" camp.

lastly. OH for sure for real i get you like i feel the guy party members in 5 (aside from akch since. hes a special case) are kinda so agreeable to the point of simpery but like in a good way. in a dateable way. i feel like yusuke is so obvious about it too... shakes him affectionately. for a series not afraid of social commentary they really are afraid of blatant yaoi arent they. it couldve been baby steps like how fire emblem series did it... the time was right anyhow. scratches head... little known fact about me is that pegoryu and shukita kinda have my whole heart, almost as much as shuake does!! something about boys... just let them love, ATLUS!!

[runthepockets]

When Kishimoto said he based Naruto and Sasuke off of himself and his own younger twin brother I was like, ohhhh that makes a lot of sense. Like their whole bit is that they're constantly arguing and calling each other assholes and douchebags and bastards as a term of endearment and Sasuke has the whole "YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND ME SO FUCK OFF I WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU!!!!!" thing in their later teen years, they only know how to communicate by fighting and arguing, which at that age is pretty common both in terms of hormone imbalance during adolecense giving teenagers poor impulse control and the fact that boys are socialized to be more hands on and aggressive, just as a social commonstance. All ~intricate rituals~ memes aside, physical action genuinely helps stimulate us and makes it easier for us to think about stuff, since we're socialized to be a little more aggressive and assertive than women via tv, movies, and gendered toys that facilitate the idea that being a man means physicality, domination, and competition. It's a concept that follows us into adulthood and is most prevelant in those formative years between the ages of 12 and 23. Brotherhood is also a very common theme in the series, from blood relations like Sasuke and Itachi to peer bonds like Hiruzen and Danzo to historical power duos like Hashirama and Tobirama.

Honestly just reminds me of my own brothers when they were going through puberty, I can't count the number of times I was there for my own brothers when they were going through rebellious phases or having falling outs with our parents. I remember once my youngest brother told my younger brother he hated being his brother (as little kids do; he was like 9 at the time, my younger brother 13) after some dumb argument and my younger brother was so upset by it he just started bawling and couldn't be calmed down for like 10 minutes. We also used to wrestle and play army men and jump on each other, it was just how we bonded.

Not saying that shipping too fictional characters with no blood relation is in any way similar to nuclear family abuse, lol, but Naruto and Sasuke just remind me too much of my own brothers and childhood male friends growing up to see them as anything but homies. Tbh most Shonen yaoi ships feel this way to me, just a bunch of hormone addled young guys being hormone addled young guys. Though if you're a girl (especially one with no brothers or significant male friends, and I emphasize girls here because they make up the bulk of fandom and the bulk of shipping content), I can see how a pair like that would read as steamy and enticing to you, it's a little different if you haven't lived it and don't have that masculine upbringing. It would probably just read as something new and cool to look at.

When I look at images of Naruto and Sasuke out of context I get why people think they're gay but when I actually pay attention to the dialogue I'm like mmmm no this is just two teenage boys with lackluster communcation skills due to years of child neglect who can't convey how much they care about one another.

[fallenhero-rebirth]

Important

Okay, let's have a talk about words and their effect on people.

This is mostly tying in to the discord, but since it also has to do with design decisions in general, I am putting it on here.

First of all: I'm old. Well, not really, but compared to most of you. I'm 47, been queer since the eighties, and I've seen some shit. Done some shit too, if I'm being perfectly honest. I'm not perfect. I wouldn't even be bringing this up if it hadn't been brought to my attention from other parties as well (thank you anon from yesterday) and so I thought we might have a talk.

A talk about Chen.

Now, originally, Steel was not intended to be a RO. There was only Ortega and Mortum, but then this fanbase happened, and I started seeing Herald with new eyes, and Argent as well, so I added them. No issues there, the game got longer, but also better for it. People who've been around a while might remember that I was quite hesitant to add Chen, and warned that his romance might be a lot more slow-firing than the others. But, as time passed, and I got around to writing him more, I made the decision to revamp some things, and everything started to slot in place.

Except there was still one big problem.

You see, in my design document I had decided that every RO should be available for romance. This is very close to my heart, I don't want to lock people away from content just because they want to play a particular gender. Hell, this game is all about identity.

But, Chen was also gay.

Now, two things. Yes, this is a fictional character. He is nothing but what I am writing him as. At the time nobody had any idea, I think I had mentioned it in an author AMA, and as everyone knows, everything not in the published game is non-canon. And two, people's sexuality is subject to change. I should know. I've yeeted  myself through most parts of the rainbow spectrum by now it feels like (which is why I use the term Queer for myself). In fact, the way things like that change is very interesting for me, and I've very much liked exploring the various ways Ortega and Herald deals with same sex attraction in what still is a mostly straight world.

So there shouldn't be any issues, should there? I would have no problems writing  Chen discovering his bisexuality, in fact it could be a good way of talking about some things very close to my heart like what happens when your identity changes (went through a similar thing from the other angle, which is why I am no longer a lesbian).

Yeah. No issues. If this was a level playing field and a fair world, which it is not.

Even if I disregard the whole M&M problem with gay representation (if you have a bowl filled with candy and removes one, nobody will notice. If there's only five in the bowl, everyone will) there is still another thing, a bigger thing and this is where words come in.

I was gay online in the late nineties. Anime. Hentai. Yaoi. Fujoshis. I am not going into details here, but there is a VERY real problem with fetishization . I hope everyone is aware of the whole "fucked straight" trope. I am most familiar with it from straight men fetishizing lesbians, the classic "she just need some dick" and way, way worse. This is something I hope everyone agrees on is terrible. But... it's not only men that's guilty of that.

Gay men gets fetishized a lot, and yes, women are guilty of that. Everything from the ' infantilizing uwu cute gays' to the 'men get pegged' to... yeah, the thing we're getting into now.

He just hasn't found the right woman. This is big in real life, and that's a BIG thing in Chen's background. There is a possibility that a F!Sidestep romance route could be read as that, and I am not really okay with it. There is a real and marked difference between two old frenemies realizing they might have feelings for each other and that.

It's like the people modding Dorian's romance route straight in DAI. It's not just about changing a romance trigger to level the playing field (like with Cassandra, or Alistair), it's invalidating his whole background and what his father put him through (trying to use blood magic to make him straight). I am not really comfortable with being seen as catering to those people.

And then there is the last thing. The, for me, even bigger thing.

THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU FUCKING WRITE ONLINE.

Yes, I have written a game that is pretty much angst fodder. You are going to get to kill a lot of people in book three, this is all about bad, dark fantasies but some of them should stay inside your head.

I would very much prefer it if you STOPPED joking about Chen not knowing how to perform oral on women, or just in general treating it as angst fodder. Like oh no, straight panic. Look, I will say it again. It is NOT a level playing field, gay panic Ricardo is not not the same as straight panic Chen. It's just not. All you are doing is making yourself sound like the kind of person I am quite sure you're not.

I don't think this fandom is filled with fujoshi's who gets off at fantasizing about  gay men learning that pussy is not that bad. I really don't. But honestly? Sometimes some of you sound like that. I know you're young. I know you learned most of your language around these things online, but the problem is that sometimes the origin of that language is bad, and the people who have seen that origin cringe every time you use it. I know that the top/bottom thing is used very differently now, but I still have to bite my lip not to rant every single time. I know that 'men gets pegged' is a meme.

I'm old. I've got thick skin by now. Not everyone does.

Just think about what you are saying, and how it might be taken. That's all I ask.  And we’ll see what happens with the Chen romance when I write it.

[kari-izumi]

Continuing from the ask meme for @imhereformysciencefriends , I'm gonna jump to the Renji Abarai request cuz that's gonna be way fast lol

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character:

I just think he's neat 🙃

Plus design is 1000000/10

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: 

Rukia! of course :) how can you not after all their childhood history together?

Ichigo: hand to God, I used to be one of Those People(tm) who thought yaoi was inherent out of character but this was the very first time I was ever disabused of that shitty ideal, because they do fight like an old married couple 🤣

Rukia AND Ichigo at the same time: it's the most versatile of my OT3s where I enjoy any and all combinations of such ❤️👀🔥 but for real, if you've never read The Roots of Heaven, y'all should do that, it's truly a S tier OT3 fic that loves all three in the throuple

Karin: a crack ship that started for lulz but then I shipped unironically and then wrote a fic about it. Besides the initial desire to see Ichigo explode, the personalities could play off of one another pretty well.

Ishida: jock/nerd solidarity babey 👏

Chad: guys, they trained together for weeks and there is so little fic for this. Press F in chat

Orihime: something I never considered were not for @recurring-polynya 's beautiful fic Six Hearts Beat On , a fic that forever makes me see Renji as a Girl Dad btw 🤣

Pretty much the entire Sereitei: a long time ago @effervescible and a a few I think it was had a comm called The Tale of Renji , which was inspired by The Tale of Genji, often credited as the first serialized novel in which the protagonist banged a lot of women. This was basically in the same vein and I respect that because why should he be limited to one person? 🙃

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Him and Byakuya. Actually, Bya is one of the very few people I don't ship him with, but I'm down for the idea that while Byakuya will never outwardly show it, he considers him to be one of his best friends.

My unpopular opinion about this character: you mean besides The Main One?

Actually, I did realize one which I'm gonna put in the next section since they connect.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish Renji had gotten more development for a personal goal independent of Rukia. I love the story and the background but the bulk of his development pretty much ends with the SS story. He has Rukia back, so what's next, yanno? Like maybe after all the shit with RUKIA'S execution he fights to reform Soul Society or something, yanno?

Which ties into my unpopular opinion that I don't think Renji was necessarily shafted by not receiving a captancy. Indeed, I think he's the one character who has a clear image problem with thinking he isn't good enough for Rukia. But with her being a captain with her own Bankai, they're both equals. I'm sure at some point during the 17 month time skip they confessed to one another and Rukia told him that shit never mattered. Plus, I'm sure Byakuya respected the shit outta him for trying to save her, so.

Anyway, Renji would be a great captain, but that wasn't his goal. As long as he had Rukia, he's good...and given how many of the captains turn out on this show, he dodged a bullet IMO.

Favorite friendship for this character: Honestly all the scenes with Ichigo are hilarious, but the very last scene they share in the manga where Renji credits him for bringing Rukia back into his life says so much ❤️

My crossover ship: Renji/Jounouchi from Yu-Gi-Oh. We can call it Knuckleheadshipping 😛

Alright, now off to finish the last one! :)

[elizabeth-midford-who-blog]

salty asks: 1, 9, 10, 20, 26

Long post ahead.

These are all answered by the admin, if you want Elizabeth to answer these too she will. I certainly will be happy to break character, as I love breaking the fourth wall.

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?*

Well, this is going to be obvious as to why with the answer to the next question. However, I absolutely will never understand this fandom’s favourite ship SebaCiel. One, Ciel is a thirteen year old boy and Sebastian looks like a twenty six year old man. It would be pedophilia for one-. (A lot of people like to tell me the age of consent in Japan is 13 so it’s okay, but there are actually laws throughout all of Japan in different parts- the override the first law- saying women must be at least the age of 16 and a male partner must be 18). Not that it matters, because they live in London and the age restriction there is I believe either 16 or 18, and YES even in the 1800’s it was wrong for a grown adult to have a relationship with another under the age of 16.

Besides pedophilia, because that topic is way too fucking touchy. Their relationship would be completely toxic and unhealthy. Sebastian only wants Ciel for his soul, even Yana Toboso has said Sebastian would never love a human. He’d only ever be with Ciel to toy with his emotions, to make him THINK he loves him (if Ciel had feelings for him), sexually USE him and make him trust him, just to get his soul. Sebastian would never love a human or someone weaker than himself, someone like Claude or even the Undertaker would be a much more higher option. I don’t think he cares about gender, he’ll partner with anybody, but I believe they have to be of the Supernatural and just as or even stronger than him.

There’s plenty of more reasons, but I’m going to point out the obvious one. So if there are all these things here that should stop them from being shipped, that should stop anybody from romanticizing them- why is this here? Oh, because it’s fucking yaoi. That’s the only reason the ship exists, is because they both have a dick.

That’s just my opinion, I don’t give a fuck what anybody else likes, but that’s what I think of the ship. The same goes for Alois x Claude, Alois x Sebastian and Ciel x Claude.

I also don’t understand Undertaker x Vincent like- y'all realize if he’s related to Ciel (which is more than likely) he’s Ciel’s uncle or Grandfather? So then- the Undertaker is either Vincent’s brother or father. I can’t tell if people just forget that or if they don’t care. I don’t care what people ship, but nah-. Incest isn’t my deal.

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

So uh-. This is probably gonna be a long one just like the first one. The character I hate the most in the entire series is Sebastian Michaelis. He’s a fucking piece of shit dude. Sure, he’s a wonderful meme, and I actually used to be hopelessly obsessed with him. Until, I met a Ciel role player (that I’ve now been dating for two years in real life), and we began roleplaying and eventually made a ship with their Ciel and my OC. The more I role-played with them and the more of my old feelings for Ciel came back, the more I began to realize that Sebastian is a piece of shit.

I will say, my initial hate for Sebastian has to be the scene with him and Ciel in Book of Circus when they’re killing the Baron Kelvin and The Joker. Ciel, having an actual PTSD attack, happened to catch Sebastian’s attention. He is actually drooling by his mouth, probably ready to vomit everywhere because of the PTSD, and Sebastian-. You know what he does? He grabs his hands, tells him that all he has to do is call his name, to say it, and he can order him whatever he wants. Ciel, thinking he is ACTUALLY in that place he was three years ago, probably warped to believe he was making the decision to form the contract again. That’s what happens in PTSD, for some people, their reality is mixed with the memory of where their ‘trigger’ or PTSD comes from.

So what I’m saying is, Ciel had no clue what he was doing in that moment. Now you can tell me Sebastian snapped him out of it, but no, he didn’t. He encouraged Ciel’s awful PTSD episode, which I’m not sure if Sebastian knew what that was I’ll give him that, and he ordered Sebastian to burn the place down. My theory will always stand that Ciel thought he was burning down the place he had been held in for a month, he was killing those people that hurt him, not the children because like I said-. He forgot where he was. Now, I know Sebastian 'asked him if he was sure’, but no one realizes Sebastian asking him, 'ARE YA SURE?’ Is gonna break his episode.

So why do I think Sebastian did that? Sebastian used Ciel’s vulnerability to his own gain, to make the contract stronger. He used his suffering for his own agenda, just like the demon he is. He is an asshole, he doesn’t care about Ciel’s feelings, he only does it because he has to. Which he can’t be blamed for saying that IS his nature, but I don’t care what’s in his nature, because he’s an evil demon. Isn’t that a good enough reason to hate him?

Ciel deserves better.

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

Honestly, there isn’t a single arc I disliked. I love every single one of them. My favourite probably being the school arc which I am so excited for. However, if I had to choose one I wasn’t interested in as much as the others-. The green witch arc? I don’t know, I loved that arc as well, but I suppose when I think of the manga, that’s arc I think of last. It’s not bad at all, it’s very good, but I guess if I had to choose.

20. What is the purest ship in the fandom?

This is a very hard one for me because surprisingly I don’t have many ships. I think maybe- I don’t know. I wanna say Grell x William or Vincent x Rachel. They’re both so perfect to me, like-? Vincent and Rachel obviously are canon, and Grell and William-. ;; They’re adorable together, especially all the fan art and fan fiction of them, it’s literally the purest ship. I would say Ciel x Elizabeth as well, they’re a very pure ship, but I also have mixed feelings as of late due to the current arc. Anything before that though? Absolutely.

26. Most shippable character?

Honestly-. Either Beast from Book of Circus or Grell. I ship Beast with fucking Dagger, Joker and Sebastian-. Even though I hate Sebastian, I just love the love hate thing. Grell is paired with so many, Undertaker, Ronald, William, Sebastian. Although Grell and William are my favourites, those exist too. Mey-Rin and Elizabeth are very shippable as well. Mey-Rin with Sebastian, either Bard or Finny, DEFINITELY NINA HOPKINS (I ship hard), Ran Mao. Elizabeth with Ciel, Alois (in my opinion, that’s gross), Sullivan ( ;^) that’s some good shit to me).

However, the most out of all of these, probably Grell.

[olderthannetfic]

There’s a meme floating around in fandom that hordes of impressionable “children” in their 20′s read nothing but slash fanfic and are, therefore, developing a warped view of what it means to be a gay man. Thus, goes the meme, it is the duty of those evil, exploitative “straight yaoi fangirls” to write very dull slice-of-life slash full of PSAs about condom use and a realistic treatment of sexual orientation. As a queer woman who did grow up reading fic from the age of 13, I have to ask:

What kind of fuckhead gets their entire queer education from fanfiction?

Queer media has existed forever. As a teen, in the 90′s, I avidly consumed the oeuvre of Pedro Almodóvar, freely available at my local video store. I remember when Velvet Goldmine came out and fandom just about wet itself in joy. It’s a movie largely focused on men, though as an adult, I definitely appreciate Toni Colette’s put-upon character. I have no idea how that character would identify by the later eras in the movie, but she loudly proclaims herself bi in the flashbacks.

Maurice set a precedent in the 80′s for being the first Merchant Ivory gay film. It’s a gorgeous (if kind of slow) costume drama with all the usual repression and longing of one of their films. I’ve been amused to see fandom rediscover it in recent years, probably by googling “Lestrad naked”. [A pause while all of you who haven’t done so run to google...]

Growing up in the Bay Area, I was surrounded by people who were massive fans of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series, including my straight mother. Those books chronicle entire eras of my hometown and all the many varied orientations and types of people found therein. But when I wanted something more exclusively female-centric, my local bookstore carried Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For anthologies. I have to say, I always found Almodóvar’s nutso characters more personally relatable than Bechdel’s banally neurotic lead, but it was nice to have both. Around this same era, riot grrrls were producing all kinds of female-centric media, lots of it about queerness, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time.

Now, in the era I’m talking about, many people didn’t have the privilege of easy internet access or living near bookstores with gay sections or video stores that carry peculiar European art films. I’m talking about 20 years ago.

In the modern era, however, internet piracy is rampant, half the people I know subscribe to Netflix, and even people who can’t afford to leave a trail on the family computer can watch racy gay art films illegally uploaded to youtube--and that goes for people in many countries, not just mine. I have mentioned a tiny sampling of the media I was personally aware of as a teenager and personally a fan of. There is an entire world out there to explore!

There is no excuse for limiting your media consumption to slash fanfiction.

If you prefer slash to other media, great. You do you! But if, as I keep seeing, you are offended that slash fandom is largely women writing things that appeal to themselves and not constantly stopping to Think Of The Men, then you are in luck: the vast majority of queer media caters directly to queer men, especially gay men. The internet abounds with forums and recs lists aimed at gay men. There is no need to feel like an outsider in girl cootieville. Go where the men are if you prefer that!

Tumblr provides a skewed view of what’s out there, and that goes whether it’s mlm whining about “fujoshi” or people who ship het pairings honestly thinking they’re an oppressed minority.

If you want amateur, free m/m erotica that is most likely written by and for men (just as slash is most likely written by and for women), try Nifty.org. No, it won’t be sweet or nice or well-labeled. It’s trashy free erotica. Fandom doesn’t have a monopoly on that. And if you think Hydra Trash Party fans are the most sadistic or tasteless people on the internet, a day on Nifty should disabuse you of that notion. (Or, conversely, if you’re disappointed by HTP, Nifty is your new best friend!)

If you want writing with central queer characters that actually addresses homophobia in a non-fetishistic way and that is not just about romance or sex, look to a queer press. I don’t mean a publisher of ebook m/m romance novels: I mean a real, traditional, oldschool indie publisher of queer books that are not genre romance. Any recs list of mid-20th C. queer lit will net you plenty of books that are by queer people, for a queer audience, about queerness. Most of this stuff will be either gay or lesbian if it’s pre-90′s, but bisexual and trans* literature saw a big upswing then. It’s not exclusively written by people of the identities the books are about, but there’s a very strong correlation--vastly more so than you find in ebook romance novels.

There’s an entire world of queer media out there. So when I see men on the internet whining that slash fandom is not All About Me, I know that they are choosing to shit on a place women have made for ourselves instead of seeking something they would enjoy more. It’s not a legitimate complaint, even if the women they’re directly attacking are straight. It’s a sign of entitlement, male privilege, and an inability to lift a single fucking finger to help themselves.

I ain’t your Mommy, and I don’t owe you the free labor of my fanfic writing.

I don’t owe you a story in your fandom. I don’t owe you a story about your OTP. I don’t owe you a story with your favorite headcanon. I don’t owe you comments on your own fic--and, conversely, you don’t owe me comments on mine.

I used to be an economic moderate, but the last ten years have made me keenly aware of how much free labor women are expected to do. Well, enough! That kind of entitlement is the worst kind of capitalist exploitation coupled with a steaming dose of misogyny. To top it all off, it won’t work. Yelling at women that they don’t belong in their hobbies won’t make more men join those hobbies. Yelling that you feel alone because slash fandom isn’t about queer identity categories won’t make that any less true.

As a queer person, you do yourself a disservice if you only read slash. Slash and queer media that is intended as queer media have different aims. I have found both valuable in different ways at different times in my life.

[not-poignant]

Hi! I think your fandom discourse is usually very well thought out and articulate, so I have a question for you: in your opinion, where should the line between representation and fetishization be drawn in fiction, fannish and otherwise?

I started to answer this, and then deleted it all, lol, which was like 600 words.

So now I’ll start with the basic preface: I can only really talk about areas of representation and fetishisation that I know about, that I write about, that I read about: BDSM, noncon-dubcon, relationships, and so on. I’m not going to touch anything else. I’m not going to talk about straight women fetishising gay dudes in this post, since that’s not what you asked me about, lol, and I’m not a straight woman. And because as far as I’m concerned, this is like...something you could write several books on and still not be done.

Also, I firmly believe I can’t draw a line for anyone except myself. I think it’s folly to do otherwise. Everything everyone does - no matter how sanitised or ‘unproblematic’ they think it is, will cross a line, for someone, somewhere. In a pretty big way. So I do not actually even believe in the premise of the question, that a line can be drawn. I wouldn’t even try to draw it for other people. I know where my line is. I have questioned that line, it has sometimes shifted a bit, I have thought about what it means, I have thought about the subjects I write, I know it’s not unproblematic material, and I’m comfortable with where my line is.

I think anyone who tries to draw a firm line for others - and I mean, like ‘everyone else’ others, is foolish, imho.

Now, onto my thoughts in general about representation vs. fetishisation.

I don’t think authors are obliged to write accurate BDSM if they want to write fantasy eroticised BDSM - I do think they’re obliged to be honest and frank that they’re not writing reality, if asked or challenged (or better yet, tag it so that people know it’s not realistic). But I’ve always been anti-banning-content and pro-tagging/warning systems. I’ve been that way since I did my BA in Media and specialised in censorship and media banning systems. Did you know Australia used to have the most censored media in the ‘western’ world? It still, on a lot of levels, does. Do you know how many movies, video games, and more, are literally banned here, even though you can access them almost all throughout Europe, America and more? Like, it’s bad, folks. Books have been written about how fucked up it is. And how do you get on that road?

I ended up with really strong political thoughts on this subject of what should and should not be allowed in the media on account of growing up studying media in a country that is really ‘nanny state’ over its media.

And seeing the ‘nanny state’ culture developing amongst fandom/s is honestly alarming.

But anyway, I can only really talk about what I do fetishise - which is dubcon/noncon/power play/BDSM (for the most part). Sometimes I care about accurate representation, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I care about accurate consent, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I care about accurate trauma recovery, sometimes I don’t. I will happily, gleefully suspend my disbelief for the worst most inaccurate trauma recovery ever if the whump is good and the hurt/comfort is real.

I will say I really strongly disagree with the increasing censorship/disapproval of people writing fantasy relationships and sex scenes vs. ‘realistic representations of relationships and sex scenes.’ That’s what non-fiction is for. And it’s what certain subsets of fiction is for, and it’s absolutely not what all of fiction is for. And I think we’re in a real sort of...horrific nanny culture if this is what it’s come to. Like, guess how much I care that some yaoi has self-lubricating asses? I don’t care. I don’t sit there thinking ‘oh no, this isn’t an accurate educational treatise into anal sex.’ You know what? Even fics that think they’re realistic aren’t, if they’re not dealing with the regular enemas/douching that a lot of people who have anal go through or alternatively not dealing with the realism of poop/faeces for all the people who can’t be assed with enemas/douching and don’t actually care about that.

I’ve seen authors doxxed and called out on Tumblr for not writing accurate BDSM in fanfiction. Like, inaccurate callouts where people go ‘oh no, but they didn’t use safewords, so this person is awful and don’t read their fanfiction and if I see you reblog anything from this person I’ll block/blacklist you too.’ Did you know contextually, in say, the BDSM San Francisco gay world of male sex - safewords (or SSC) is actually not as popular as RACK? (Risk Aware Consensual Kink). Did you know that RACK pretty often doesn’t have safewords, and sometimes you look pretty naive suggesting that all ‘good’ BDSM needs them? I mean it depends on your bubble, of course. But realism and representation trends like a meme in fandom, it’s not actually about accuracy a lot of the time at all.

The problem with arguments on realistic representation is that most people are like...very much in their bubbles where they think ‘accurate representation of BDSM is always safewords’ which is honestly, a good thing to aspire to if you’re a total newbie (which most writers of fanfiction are lol), but it’s only one way of doing things and some people - people with decades of experience in the scene - think it’s utter bullshit. Trust me, you can fuck people up well and proper even if you’ve got safewords. They aren’t some ‘things won’t go wrong / I won’t damage you psychologically’ magic bullet.

So, like, here’s me as a writer of what I write, and I’ve seen fellow authors doxxed for writing BDSM without safewords. I have a problem with that. That’s not okay. It’s fiction. I’m not writing for a bunch of school kids. I’m not writing a plain language FAQ for a local health centre. I’m writing literally masturbatory material (sometimes anyway) for adults who are getting off to fantasy BDSM. I love titillating non-consent depending on how it’s written. I’ve written it. I’m frank about that. I’m allowed to love it. So are other people. There’s no rule or law I’m breaking by engaging my Id in fantasy. And trust me, if you try and hide from your Id, or censor it, or ban it from certain content that it wants to engage in, that tends not to end very well.

But what I write is so vastly disrespectful and gross to some others that I know I’m hated. I literally once got the message ‘I hate you’ over 200 times from a single person (who later owned up to it) on anon, because they hated the relationship I wrote between Pitch and Jack in SAL. Because it had power exchange and BDSM. It’s like one of the tamest things I’ve written just about.

Like, obviously, I crossed their line. Big time. And they felt entitled enough to me and my writing to tell me they hated me over a period of several months. This is where I think ‘MKINYKATO’ - My Kink is Not Your Kink and That’s Okay is something we really need to keep in mind. Some people’s kinks are realistic representations of things, some people’s kinks aren’t, and some - like mine - are a mix. It’s not always vs. or ‘one vs. the other.’ Just because I will deliberately search for rapefics (all kinds) doesn’t mean I’ll turn my nose up at realistic rape recovery written with gravitas and pathos.

But see, this is where the issue of a ‘line’ is such a huge, huge grey area. Everyone’s line is personal. You can’t homogenise or standardise the line, because it’s different for everyone, and because that damages people. Like, that is a thing that literally damages people.

Meanwhile, my fiction doesn’t have to damage people, because I tag it responsibly and will add tags as people find necessary. I don’t shove it into anyone else’s space. I actively encourage people to not read if they don’t feel safe, and celebrate people who stop reading or engage in self care when they need to.

But strangers coming into my space, into my ask-box and telling me they hate me as a human being for writing the Shadows and Light story simply because there was power exchange in their dynamic? Anyone who knows me or knows what I went through during that time, knows how much that damaged me.

I mean I’ve seen the side of this that came through the Hydra Trash Party and BBC Sherlock and other areas, and so over the years I’ve seen some amazing thinkpieces written on this subject (that particularly focus on morally grey areas of consent in fiction, which is generally where I hang out as an author and as a reader to an extent) that has now been reinvented as ‘representation vs. fetishisation’ which is just a new way of attacking other people’s kinks and trying to sanitise fiction.

So I’m going to link them here, because I don’t think I can really convey just how frustrating I find that this is still such a huge deal on Tumblr, after 20 years of being in fandom and seeing people’s lives destroyed because of it (I can’t be rational about this subject, but other people can be, and sometimes with sources, so you know here you go):

- Yes, you’re allowed. 

“Honestly, I think “yes, you are allowed” is something a lot of fandom needs to hear right now. We had, what, a decade of “what not to do” writing advice, starting with anti-Mary-Sue campaigns and on through sporking and fanficrants and RaceFail, and now everything is this cracked parody of social justice and ~this is problematic~ is the ultimate “what not to do.”“

- Fiction is separate from reality.

“Fiction is separate from reality and that is why we like it. What you write about is not what you condone, Stephen King is not serial killer for writing about murder. People are not being “abuse apologists” for shipping two characters in a less than healthy way.”

- On purity culture toxicity (I strongly believe representation vs. fetishisation is the new label to slap on this latest reiteration of fandom wank). - Scroll down for some incredible sources.

- Anecdote about how purity wank allowed someone to realise how much unrealistic/fetishised fantasy helped them.

“Kinky unrealistic BDSM AUs were a way for me to process actual physical abuse that happened to me. I don’t care if the writer was getting off or processing something of their own: the works were there for me and they helped. For every “THIS IS ABUSIVE!!!” person pointing fingers, I guarantee there are people who were helped by that.“

- How fandom focuses on shaming women over accurate representation, and inherent misogyny within.

“And these people, these moral guardians, they’ve gotten really good at couching their fundamentalist views in progressive language. They don’t say ‘you’re to blame if you provoke men to rape’ - they say ‘your fic normalises sexual violence and contributes to rape culture’. They don’t say ‘women ought to be chaste’ - they say ‘your fantasies are socially harmful and you owe it to the world to be more self-critical’. The messages are the same and the desired outcomes are literally identical.”

- Yes, you’re allowed - the extended version.

“Right now I’m kind of bored because recently a majority of the fics that I read are very prim and proper, with disclaimers that are kilometers-long if the fics ever venture into something even remotely shady morally speaking, and I have a marked preference for fics that explore stuff that’s not Healthy or Sane or even Consensual, because to me fandom and fanfics are this big laboratory that really should allow you to delve into the unconventional and the morally grey”

*

Finally, do I think this means that the subject shouldn’t be talked about? No, I don’t. Do I think this is a huge topic that warrants years of exploration? Which it’s easily had for over two decades in fandom all over the world? Yes, I do. I just think the majority of people wanking over it on Tumblr are generally doing so to condemn other people rather than reach any sort of understanding or greater ethical awareness or whatever. I’ve actually already seen the representation vs. fetishisation discourse around the place and it’s almost always been co-opted by the Antis and similar, and hurriedly taken into purity wank town where the quest to be Ideologically Pure (TM) includes making sure no one has ever fetishised anything ever, and certainly never put it anywhere publicly for anyone else to enjoy it.

So yeah, I guess I have some strong thoughts in my little area of the world. Certainly enough thoughts to know that a line is pointless, beyond my personal line, that I police by reading the tags and browsing carefully with that wonderful thing known as Self-Responsibility.