#how do people even ship them?

[alwaysspeakshermind]

When I say 'I ship it'

this is what I mean:

Because I believe just about anything and everything can (and should!) be analyzed, I have decided to post a trio of unnecessary charts I made once upon a time in college, while I was supposed to be studying. 

Are they exciting? No!

But they do help illustrate the method to my personal madness, and I've got a 'favorite ships' list I've been needing to finish for like a year now that I feel like this will help explain, so there’s that. 

How I ship: lazy little flowchart edition

For me, it’s not about tropes, aesthetics, or the following of/rebelling against canon. It’s essentially chemistry, story, and overall execution that sell me on a pairing, and all three need to be present in order to reel me in. 

Ex. 1: If the chemistry is dynamite but the setup is meh or the storyline takes a dive/drags too long/rushes too much etc., I’m out. Maybe I'll read a fanfic or two for a taste of What Could Have Been If..., but effectively, I'm out.

Ex. 2: If the setup/potential is the most brilliant, epic piece of art in the history of the written/spoken word but the chemistry is blah or the actual execution of the relationship doesn’t live up to the preamble, I’m not just kind of out...I’m Viola-Davis-grabbing-her-purse gif out, and I’m locking the door behind me, and I might even be considering writing a strongly-worded rant on how annoyed I am over my time being wasted.

Ex. 3: If the relationship, whenever it finally happens, is the cutest/hottest/most magnetic and beautiful example of a well-written and loving relationship ever but the chemistry is so-so and the setup is barely there, I may not be out, but I’m definitely not in, because who in the world is excited to drink lukewarm coffee? Not me, so thank you, but no thank you.

That’s just how it is.

And even if I love a ship, certain writing choices can still turn me off of them/lessen my liking for them; while I do sometimes joke about cherry-picking from canon, I don’t as a rule just ignore things I hate and hype what I like because I can’t. It’s like lying to myself, and I don’t roll like that. When I ship, I’m ultimately shipping a dynamic (And yes, the dynamic is usually take-charge, kind-of-b!tchy girl and a feels all the feels/flies-by-the-seat-of-the-pants guy, but what of it?), but I need the dynamic to be built on something that feels organic to both story and characters so that the exasperatingly practical part of my brain isn’t interrupting with things like “But why would they get together?”/ “Why would they get together now?” 

Like...I don’t care if we’re discussing animated mice (Disney's The Rescuers) or elderly assassins (RED). I need to see that they like each other, I need to see why they’re great together, and I need to see why it makes sense for them to get together when they do, as opposed to earlier or later.

So, in summary...I do not convince myself to ship. The ship convinces me, and there is a definable process.

Levels of shipping: cute (love-themed?) colors edition

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll be quick. 

Lowest level = “I don’t NOT ship it” = the default level = the ingredients are all there, the finished product is just not tasty enough to tempt me. (Maybe they were mixed improperly, maybe the cookies were pulled from the oven too soon, maybe they had all the ingredients for a delectable layer cake and chose instead to make cornbread and call it dessert, maybe they just served me vanilla when I wanted chocolate, etc.) Highest level = “I hardcore ship it” = the rarest level of shipping I attain = however calm I claim to be about loving this pairing, I am downplaying it because I am actually unhinged. I adore them. You will never make me stop shipping them. The bridge is crossed so stand and watch it burn because babes, we have PASSED the point of no return and I have ZERO regrets.

Rough Shipping #s: extremely unscientific version that I would never let my old stat prof see b/c it would make her sad and possibly think about revoking that good grade she gave me

Whatever the fictional medium, my default shipping mode is neutral...most of the time, when I read a book or watch a show/movie, I don’t care one way or another about the relationships presented. My primary concerns are “do they work?” and if the answer is “yes, they have a not unpleasant dynamic, and the proper amount of work has been put into developing that dynamic,” then I sort of go “okay, good for them” and I move on.

If the answer is “no, they’re kind of boring/basic/bland etc. and they just sort of happen for no discernible reason and/or leave a bad taste in my mouth” then I roll my eyes, get through it as soon as possible, and move on. It’s out of the ordinary for me to love a ship, but it is even more out of the ordinary for me to actively dislike a ship, and it is rarest of all for me to hate a ship. So when I say I adore a ship, it’s kind of a big deal. And when I say I loathe a ship...yeah, well. You get the picture.

In summary:

When I say "I ship it," I mean all the above elements have clicked for me. I have gone through a process to reach this point. I'm not just going "ooh, pretty people, I want them together!" or "ooh, character I relate to most! I want them with character I'd want to be with most!"

Nope.

It's about the journey AND the destination AND the pre-journey prepwork, but it's also about an X-factor, something special I respond to with each ship...and at the end of the day, if that little unexplainable spark is there I'll ship it. If it's not, I won't.

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[bowenoke]

in scott's pov (ep7) he refers to scar as grian's husband. no one tells him this is not the case. this is because traffic!scott decides who is and is not married like some sort of contractually binding arbiter of love. to me anyways

[hauntingofhouses]

Very interesting to me that a certain subset of the BES fandom's favourite iterations of Mizu and Akemi are seemingly rooted in the facades they have projected towards the world, and are not accurate representations of their true selves.

And I see this is especially the case with Mizu, where fanon likes to paint her as this dominant, hyper-masculine, smirking Cool GuyTM who's going to give you her strap. And this idea of Mizu is often based on the image of her wearing her glasses, and optionally, with her cloak and big, wide-brimmed kasa.

And what's interesting about this, to me, is that fanon is seemingly falling for her deliberate disguise. Because the glasses (with the optional combination of cloak and hat) represent Mizu's suppression of her true self. She is playing a role.

Take this scene of Mizu in the brothel in Episode 4 for example. Here, not only is Mizu wearing her glasses to symbolise the mask she is wearing, but she is purposely acting like some suave and cocky gentleman, intimidating, calm, in control. Her voice is even deeper than usual, like what we hear in her first scene while facing off with Hachiman the Flesh-Trader in Episode 1.

This act that Mizu puts on is an embodiment of masculine showboating, which is highly effective against weak and insecure men like Hachi, but also against women like those who tried to seduce her at the Shindo House.

And that brings me to how Mizu's mask is actually a direct parallel to Akemi's mask in this very same scene.

Here, Akemi is also putting up an act, playing up her naivety and demure girlishness, using her high-pitched lilted voice, complimenting Mizu and trying to make small talk, all so she can seduce and lure Mizu in to drink the drugged cup of sake.

So what I find so interesting and funny about this scene, characters within it, and the subsequent fandom interpretations of both, is that everyone seems to literally be falling for the mask that Mizu and Akemi are putting up to conceal their identities, guard themselves from the world, and get what they want.

It's also a little frustrating because the fanon seems to twist what actually makes Mizu and Akemi's dynamic so interesting by flattening it completely. Because both here and throughout the story, Mizu and Akemi's entire relationship and treatment of each other is solely built off of masks, assumptions, and misconceptions.

Akemi believes Mizu is a selfish, cocky male samurai who destroyed her ex-fiance's career and life, and who abandoned her to let her get dragged away by her father's guards and forcibly married off to a man she didn't know. on the other hand, Mizu believes Akemi is bratty, naive princess who constantly needs saving and who can't make her own decisions.

These misconceptions are even evident in the framing of their first impressions of each other, both of which unfold in these slow-motion POV shots.

Mizu's first impression of Akemi is that of a beautiful, untouchable princess in a cage. Swirling string music in the background.

Akemi's first impression of Mizu is of a mysterious, stoic "demon" samurai who stole her fiance's scarf. Tense music and the sound of ocean waves in the background.

And then, going back to that scene of them together in Episode 4, both Mizu and Akemi continue to fool each other and hold these assumptions of each other, and they both feed into it, as both are purposely acting within the suppressive roles society binds them to in order to achieve their goals within the means they are allowed (Akemi playing the part of a subservient woman; Mizu playing the part of a dominant man).

But then, for once in both their lives, neither of their usual tactics work.

Akemi is trying to use flattery and seduction on Mizu, but Mizu sees right through it, knowing that Akemi is just trying to manipulate and harm her. Rather than give in to Akemi's tactics, Mizu plays with Akemi's emotions by alluding to Taigen's death, before pinning her down, and then when she starts crying, Mizu just rolls her eyes and tells her to shut up.

On the opposite end, when Mizu tries to use brute force and intimidation, Akemi also sees right through it, not falling for it, and instead says this:

"Under your mask, you're not the killer you pretend to be."

Nonetheless, despite the fact that they see a little bit through each other's masks, they both still hold their presumptions of each other until the very end of the season, with Akemi seeing Mizu as an obnoxious samurai swooping in to save the day, and Mizu seeing Akemi as a damsel in distress.

And what I find a bit irksome is that the fandom also resorts to flattening them to these tropes as well.

Because Mizu is not some cool, smooth-talking samurai with a big dick sword as Akemi (and the fandom) might believe. All of that is the facade she puts up and nothing more. In reality, Mizu is an angry, confused and lonely child, and a masterful artist, who is struggling against her own self-hatred. Master Eiji, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

And Akemi, on the other hand, is not some girly, sweet, vain and spoiled princess as Mizu might believe. Instead she has never cared for frivolous things like fashion, love or looks, instead favouring poetry and strategy games instead, and has always only cared about her own independence. Seki, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

But neither is she some authoritative dominatrix, though this is part of her new persona that she is trying to project to get what she wants. Because while Akemi is willful, outspoken, intelligent and authoritative, she can still be naive! She is still often unsure and needs to have her hand held through things, as she is still learning and growing into her full potential. Her new parental/guardian figure, Madame Kaji, knows this as well.

So with all that being said, now that we know that Mizu and Akemi are essentially wearing masks and putting up fronts throughout the show, what would a representation of Mizu's and Akemi's true selves actually look like? Easy. It's in their hair.

This shot on the left is the only time we see Mizu with her hair completely down. In this scene, she's being berated by Mama, and her guard is completely down, she has no weapon, and is no longer wearing any mask, as this is after she showed Mikio "all of herself" and tried to take off the mask of a subservient housewife. Thus, here, she is sad, vulnerable, and feeling small (emphasised further by the framing of the scene). This is a perfect encapsulation of what Mizu is on the inside, underneath all the layers of revenge-obsession and the walls she's put around herself.

In contrast, the only time we Akemi with her hair fully down, she is completely alone in the bath, and this scene takes place after being scorned by her father and left weeping at his feet. But despite all that, Akemi is headstrong, determined, taking the reigns of her life as she makes the choice to run away, but even that choice is reflective of her youthful naivety. She even gets scolded by Seki shortly after this in the next scene, because though she wants to be independent, she still hasn't completely learned to be. Not yet. Regardless, her decisiveness and moment of self-empowerment is emphasised by the framing of the scene, where her face takes up the majority of the shot, and she stares seriously into the middle distance.

To conclude, I wish popular fanon would stop mischaracterising these two, and flattening them into tropes and stereotypes (ie. masculine badass swordsman Mizu and feminine alluring queen but also girly swooning damsel Akemi), all of which just seems... reductive. It also irks me when Akemi is merely upheld as a love interest and romantic device for Mizu and nothing more, when she is literally Mizu's narrative foil (takes far more narrative precedence over romantic interest) and the deuteragonist of this show. She is her own person. That is literally the theme of her entire character and arc.

[alexandraisyes]

The cutest reminder ever that the way family works in TSAMS canon is that two parties have to be in mutual agreement that they are family. If one party doesn't agree then they aren't family. Parties can revoke familial ties whenever they want and that means they are no longer family.

"Code Relation" theory is stupid because you're then implying that Eclipse is Sun and Moon's child. Which he isn't. Or that Killcode is somehow Moon's child and his brother at the same time that he's Eclipse, Lunar and Bloodmoon's "father" at the same time that they're Sun and Moon's grand children. Like, we're seeing the issue here, right?

Don't make things more complicated than it has to be. Just accept the fact that family is literally determined by a verbal agreement between two animatronics and nothing else because none of them were born from wombs. That means respecting canon when characters in canon decide that they aren't comfortable being family (like Eclipse) or just straight-up disown everyone (like Bloodmoon). It's okay to have headcanons, but don't try to push them onto canon.

[voidlessmaze]

ochako, screaming crying throwing up over the loss of toga:

izuku: uraraka!!!!

izuochas:

(…yall call bkdks toxic but i have never experienced them treating izuochas like this over deku screaming katsuki’s name (which happened like 500 times already but wtv)? and this isn’t you being happy over your ship maybe having a cute scene or becoming canon. i doubt any of them even care about izuku or ochako (cuz ochako is literally??? having the wORST time rn why would izuku confess to her?? why would ochako confess to him??) like atp i have seen several izuocha shippers butt in and go “what are you saying?? nothing happened and it would be inappropriate to confess” (and this is not me just being a bkdk shipper and not wanting izuocha to be canon. if this was katsuki and deku instead i wouldn’t want a confession either.) and it isn’t even about that. this is just gross and homophobic honestly…(yes homophobic cuz the amount of comments that are about them being boys is telling and the lack of comments of lgbtq people saying the same thing is also telling (actually i have seen several people say “i also hate bkdk with a passion but this ain’t it guys”))

[dustykneed]

In your fem!trek, do Jim's boobs still get cameos every other episode? If not, is there an alternative?

hmmmmm.

honestly i have no qualms against going yeah, totally (because, well. 23rd century, after all.) but then again variety is the spice of life and there is just something about underboob and a glimpse of that abdomen that hits SO hard. so i guess f!kirk utilizes this particular... diplomatic strategy constantly loll

also i saw the note you left about f!scotty (saaaame lmao <3333) and let's just say most of the enterprise crew shares the sentiment xDD:

[epiphainie]

i can't with all these "the show is highlighting tommy's jealousy, they're planting seeds that it will cause problems" takes like bffr. he mentioned being envious over the 118's dynamic twice, sure, but in what world (literally how?) would that cause a relationship problem? do yall expect him to be in cahoots with gerrard behind their back and murder buck to take over his life or something?? like even with the hyperbole aside, i genuinely cannot see how they can turn this into relationship drama without going against everything they showed us with tommy so far

[98chao]

truly i love all of you and i'm so grateful for all the support i get on my vanilla milkshake posts here because i've just seen the way people talk about vanilla milkshake and mysticao on twitter and its genuinely taken 50 years off my life. now i've been reminded as to why i should never join the crk fandom on twitter

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

[butterflysonnets]

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

[littencloud9]

bsd fandom has always mischaracterised kunikida to hell and back but the fact that i am seeing SO MUCH hate for his character right after his 'death' is insane

[mainalias]

thinking about compiling screenshots of golden/silver age batman exclusively calling dick his ward to combat the allegations that it was “initially a father-child relationship”

[owlsie-hoot]

So many ways of saying "I LOVE YOU"

[ventiventigrande]

yeah that's pretty high up there

[originalcontent]

I can't find art of my ship anywhere so I GUESS that means I have to make it myself, here are some doodles.