#i have a lot of opinions on ships-

[bean-spring]

Hot take and not to be a killjoy or the shipping police but people treating Viktor or Jinx's aroace headcanons as if they were canon is not the revolutionary take people think it is.

Headcanons are always all right but we have to acknowledge that they are somehow damaging when they apply to stereotypes. It might not be the case for everyone but most of the time people unconsciously assume that disability/mental illness=asexuality. These headcanons erase the freedom of attraction from people who are already seen as unable to have sexual/romantic experiences/desires, when it's completely untrue and harmful.

You can headcanon Viktor and Jinx as aroace, but I have seen people changing their minds once Viktor is no longer disabled (s2 with all of his other forms) and Jinx is no longer as mentally ill (alternate universe Powder). And it speaks wonders of how people see these characters.

"I never thought about Jinx being able to feel romantic/sexual attraction until s2!" To believe she's actually only capable of that when she's not "damaged" is incredibly disturbing. Especially since Jinx has always had a bit of a flirty personality too.

"I've always seen Viktor as asexual, I don't know why!" That's fine. You can headcanon him as ace. But I believe there is a reason behind it, most of the time, if for some inexplicable reason the "vibes" of the disabled character are making you think he's ace.

I say all of this being aroaspec myself, by the way. Headcanon all you want but going to people's posts commenting how "it's weird for you that they have romantic/sexual plots when they're clearly aroace" is not a win at all. It's a headcanon, after all, and it should be treated as such, and that's fine. But it also is damaging to spread stereotypes like these.

Of course the disabled character is asexual. Of course the mentally ill character is aromantic. It's not as revolutionary as you might think, tbh.

Fandom is not activism and it's all right to have any headcanons you want BUT some of them are filled with damaging stuff and perhaps we should look into ourselves more before treating these assumptions as something canon.

[lucabyte]

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

Bonus:

[owlheartt]

Something I really like about timebomb is that Ekko actually knows what he's getting into.

I'm not really seeing it get talked about but in season 1 they mention that Ekko and the firelights help people addicted to shimmer get off it and lead more fulfilling lives within the community. I should probably rewatch the scene for the exact wording (might be misremembering tbh) but that comment implies A LOT.

First: Ekko's mission is helping people where he can, he would probably try and help Jinx even if he wasn't in love with her

Second: He has experience dealing with severe mental illness as that often goes hand in hand with drug abuse, namely depression/suicidal ideation like what Jinx was exhibiting

Third: He's probably mapped out best course of action FOR dealing with this and has already figured out his own limits/boundaries. Meaning he knew what he was getting into trying to talk Jinx out of suicide, and was thus more equipped to deal with the aftermath

Fourth: He's probably helped ex members of Silco's gang. The firelights seem to have a theme of healing and repairing and recovering, so they've probably also learned to forgive. If they're mission is to rebuild the lanes into a safe space, they can't exclude people they don't like, they have to make room for them. I think they fought Silco out of necessity, and I doubt Jinx would be the first person they help who's killed one of them.

These all might be a bit of a stretch but I think it really fits. Beyond that, it shows that Ekko can ACTUALLY help Jinx. As much as unconditional love can do, Ekko has the tools for Jinx's recovery and a path ready for her. He also probably knows that her "healthy" will look different from AU Powder's "healthy." On top of that, I expect he knows how to respect her even in the middle of psychotic breaks and won't agitate her already frail mental state

[c1trvswurld]

STOP babying and objectifying Daisuke

STOP making anya a perpetual forever doting victim

STOP making swansea this hotheaded gaurd dog

STOP babying and objectifying and being ableist to curly and removing autonomy

STOP ignoring the complex themes of jimmys character just to mischaracterize and to dunk on your idea of him and, therefore, ignoring the themes of the story

Stop ignoring the complexities of their characters please and thank you

[seagreenstardust]

Your guide to living as a bkdk shipper post-431

1. Izuku rejected an offer to work under Katsuki as an intern. This wasn’t a rejection of Katsuki as a human or hero work or even being partners with Katsuki, just Izuku finally knowing what he is worth and asking for more

2. Katsuki’s “see ya” wasn’t a forever goodbye, but a comfortable “see ya later” in which he knows Izuku will be taking care of his business and working his way back around to Kacchan again

3. Katsuki basically told the car Izuku was his type then pointed out that Izuku was missing what was right in front of him, while the camera gave us Izuku’s PoV of Katsuki right in front of him, so do with that what you will

4. Izuku chased after Ochako to tell her he wants them to talk more after eight years of him basically isolating himself from everyone who wasn’t Kacchan, because he listened to Katsuki in the car and realized he needs to let people know when he cares about them, and we can 100% see this as a platonic-leaning interaction without stepping outside of canon (including the bro-hand-clasp)

5. Even if it’s not and they’re reconnecting to see what’s there, if the point of Katsuki’s advice was to get Izuku thinking about what he wants more, he’s gonna circle back around to Katsuki eventually. We have 430 canon chapters backing this up.

6. To reiterate: Izuku is eventually gonna be telling Kacchan how special he is to him too, we just don’t get to see it. 431 is the start of everything we ever wanted for Izuku: self- reflection, therapy, understanding his own emotions. Ochako was the first step in a long journey that, again, is going to end with Katsuki

Stay safe out there folks!! As far as I can tell MHA is still bkdk’s playground

[tossawary]

I was thinking about Fandom's Darlings recently because I encountered another case of "Yes, Your Ship Has Become Canon But At What Cost???" in the wild. Which is a mouthful, but I don't have a snappier name for these events in fandom yet.

It's when two characters get together in a story, but... their characterizations get destroyed in the process because the writers apparently 1) can't write solid romance (it's a specific skill!) and 2) also can't fit that romance into the broader story. Often, all of the supporting characters surrounding this shiny couple will ALSO suffer severe characterization damage to make this romance happen. And sometimes the larger plot and even the worldbuilding will also take hard structural hits so the story can focus on this GREAT PASSION that frankly just isn't... executed well.

Like, if a ship I dislike becomes canon, that's one thing, but if the writing for it isn't even semi-competent, that's worse!!! And the really insufferable part is actually the shippers who are not only popping bottles because their ship went canon, but will mock everyone who complains about the bad writing (or tries to earnestly analyze why exactly this conclusion sucks) as "bitter sore losers". I mean, the characters you profess to love have been turned into empty shells of themselves, the canonical partnership here is about as shallow as a puddle, and the integrity of this entire fictional world is on fire, but sure, you "won" this ship war. Congrats.

There is nothing else to do but move on, it's definitely not worth getting into it with anyone. But it REALLY sucks if you actually liked either of the characters involved or maybe even liked the ship itself, because then it's like... "I have been given an enormous cake, but it has been Poisoned. I cannot eat this, for I would choke on it. I have been Betrayed In A Fashion Most Vile." But everyone still sitting at the table tells you that you ought to be happy! At least you got some cake!

[bowandbrush]

it’s honestly scary being a fan of usagi miyamoto/yuichi whilst being in the rise fandom and not shipping leosagi,,,because it feels like everyone and their grandma likes it. like I’m sorry!! Don’t kill me please

[sastielsmanuscript-draft]

ATTENTION!

it has come to my attention that people are associating sastiel w/ w*ncest...NOT ON MY WATCH.

Now i said id be polite but yall are getting WAY too comfortable mashing up sastiel with w*ncest/w*irdcest. And the occasional "bringing sastiel down, uplifting destiel."

I need you to STOP and leave sastiel out of it. im tired of seeing them ugly fucking takes OR really interesting ones and then have w*ncest tagged RIGHT under it. STOP IT! do not act like we are outcasted losers like the rest of you (i cant believe im saying this) fake fujoshi, white woman, *ncest loving, brother sh*pping obsessed bitches on the sastiel tag. LEAVE. im tryna see some cool sastiel shit.

[thereweredragonshere]

I skip all Hiccstrid scenes in Rtte because buffstrid is not canon💔

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

hi! i saw on your shipping chart you had meenah and cronus as moirails and noted 'would have prevented all problems' and ive never really seen that take before. id love to hear your thoughts on that if you wanted to talk about them, your analysis in general is always amazing

Sure! I know this one's going to be controversial, but TBH I'm kind of fascinated by their dynamic. So please bear with me here and come into it with an open mind; I was also really surprised when I noticed what was going on.

Also, standard disclaimer that nobody has to agree with me or ship my ships, I literally don't care, HCs are valid, death of the author, etc. etc. This is just a canon discussion blog, and there's kind of a weird amount to read into in the canon between these two.

Okay, so, first of all, quick refresher on moirallegiance: it's not necessarily about being BFFs, it's very specifically about pacifying each other, keeping each other calm and stable, and preventing each other from causing harm to oneself or to others.

Ergo, the marker of moirallegiance rests not on "do these two get along as BFFs?" and instead on "do these two keep each other calm and/or mitigate each others' harm".

So with that out of the way, Cronus and Meenah. We know that Cronus has a redcrush on her, echoing Eridan's redcrush on Feferi, and that Meenah is not interested at all. Cronus shoots his shot with her, she's like ick, no & leaves, and that's that on that. Cronus then rounds on Mituna and says some unbelievably cruel and shitty stuff, but here's Point #1 - Meenah shows up again, and Cronus stops immediately, and then is noticeably calmer and friendlier to Mituna. Compare:

CRONUS: you are a brain damaged reject on a team full of rejects. a rejects reject. i vwould havwe culled you myself if that vword meant vwhat it should havwe on our planet.

-

CRONUS: vwell, this is clearly absurd, but nyeh, vwhat the heck. CRONUS: mituna, i just cant take it anymore. i think my ghost is going to kill itself. MITUNA: WH0W4H L375 FUCK!!!!! CRONUS: vwait... CRONUS: really? MITUNA: N0 0Y0 P135H3 0FF 1ND107 FUGG1NG G4R484G3  #FUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0U CRONUS: oh.

So at the very least, SOMETHING conciliatory seems to be happening here, whether that's pale or ashen. But I'm going with pale, because it continues.

Their second conversation together is really interesting - not only has Cronus stopped redflirting with her, but he no longer even seems interested. Compare this to the section with Mituna above:

CRONUS: oh sure. no grub sauce on your hands! MEENAH: wow you did it MEENAH: ampora you totally changed my mind about you lets start makin out immediately  #not CRONUS: just admit it. you havwe it vwithin you to be just as harsh to our behelmeted buddy as i am, if not more

Like, he doesn't even ACKNOWLEDGE the "let's make out #not". Not even in an indignant "see, you keep playing with my collapsing and expanding bladder based vwascular system" kind of way. Literally just breezes right by it, which says to me that he isn't even really that into her concupiscently.

But more interesting are the actual contents of the conversation. Cronus is the only person on the entire team who's able to make Meenah have misgivings about how awesome the Condy is.

MEENAH: man MEENAH: a girls gotta have fuel for her pimp ride know what im sayin MEENAH: like MEENAH: i probably took care of him good MEENAH: you know how it is someones gotta take care of the guy anyways MEENAH: and... yeah #38(

This is the first and only time that Meenah even acknowledges that the Condy - herself at her worst - is kind of shitty. This is the first and only time she's ever expressed any emotion for the Condy other than fangirlish admiration or rage against Caluborn for enslaving her. For whatever reason, she actually listens to Cronus when Cronus takes her to task, and he's actually able to make her genuinely reflect on her worst tendencies.

But maybe more damning is the fact that in their first real conversation together for nearly an eon, she almost fixes him:

MEENAH: i heard a rumor you think youre a human now MEENAH: that true CRONUS: its a privwate matter. i dont see vwhy i should havwe to talk about it vwith you, and open myself up to more of your judgmental scorn. MEENAH: sounds like another desperate cry for attention imo

[...]

CRONUS: to be honest, she might be right. sometimes i think i might only be saying im a human to get attention. maybe i should givwe it up.

Cronus's fundamental emotional problem is a sense of purposelesness and ennui. Born into a caste of high privilege, with his identity overshadowed by said position, he's been handed an unpleasant cocktail of entitlement, lack of true emotional support or connection, and lack of a real, authentic personal identity - especially because the thing he DID seem to derive a sense of identity and purpose from - his little Harry Potter wizard backstory - was driven out of him. In other words, he's kind of a shitty rich kid that doesn't really know who he is outside of that, and his humankin stuff is an attempt to fill the wizard hole without addressing his real underlying issues. It's a Bad Thing for him to be doing, and something he should drop in order to start addressing his genuine insecurities, feelings of emptiness, and lack of identity or purpose. In other words, it's harm he's performing on himself, and a single conversation with Meenah being enough to make him reconsider it? Hmmmmmm.

In fact, I'm not the only one picking up on the pale vibes. The specific way that Kankri interrupts the two reads as incredibly pick-me in pale:

KANKRI: Listen, I was d9ing y9u a fav9r. Y9u d9n't need t9 6e dating any9ne wh9 can't appreciate y9u f9r wh9 y9u really are, 9r m9re imp9rtantly, which fantasy versi9n 9f y9urself y9u m9st str9ngly identify with.

[...]

I just wanted y9u t9 kn9w that I'm here f9r y9u, and am prepared t9 lecture t9 y9u extensively, I mean, listen t9 y9u extensively, a69ut y9ur ultra-imp9rtant pr96lem.

"Don't take Meenah's advice about your problems! Take mine instead, I care about you sooo much more than she does!" lol. I have a whole essay on how Kankri and Cronus are actually super toxic for each other, in an interesting foil to Karkat and Eridan, which I'll link here in a bit (I'm on mobile RN and it's hard enough C/Ping my sources).

In any case, Kankri slides in at exactly the moment where Meenah's about to fix Cronus, and proceeds to make Cronus worse. The details are in the Cronus and Kankri essay, but TL;DR it's kind of implied that Kankri is the one who talked Cronus out of the wizard stuff in the first place, which pretty much disqualifies the two's relationship from pale, given how harmful that was. This whole thing is pretty reminiscent of Gamzee coming between Karkat and Eridan when Eridan is trying to comfort Karkat about Sollux dying, because it's implied Gamzee has a palecrush on the guy. That might be subjective, though.

What isn't subjective is the fact that Meenah unironically defends Cronus's wizard beliefs when Aranea starts shitting on them.

ARANEA: Whatever the case, it was pro8a8ly for the 8est, since pretty much everyone who had half a think pan thought [Cronus's wizard beliefs were] all a 8unch of ridiculous nonsense. MEENAH: serket why do you got to hate on other peoples religions MEENAH: dont you kno they just as much a load of crackpotty bunk as all your spiritual bullfuck ARANEA: 8ut I........ ARANEA: Yes, I guess I was out of line.

She doesn't do this for anybody else. Not long after, it turns out she's absolutely joking about defending Kurloz:

MEENAH: wow serket MEENAH: just wow so rude MEENAH: poor clown ARANEA: Don't give me that! I seem to remem8er you having more than a few unkind words for him 8ehind his 8ack. MEENAH: yeah im messin witchu he sux

And even proceeds to shit on HIS spiritual bullfuck:

MEENAH: )(ONK ARANEA: Honk honk! ::::) MEENAH: lol im glad we can both agree that clowny fuckin soda cult is the dumbest shit ever

So... weird, huh? Seems like she gives Cronus special treatment for some reason.

That's it for the diegetic stuff to go over, which, yes, means that there's a bit of non-diegetic stuff to discuss. It's not much, but here's Hussie's commentary from the Act 5 Act 2 book, on Mindfang's journal entries about Dualscar leading up to the 3x showdown (emphasis mine):

In the end, even though violets are the ruling class, she doesn't care much about them either. All she cares about is keeping her stranglehold on power with this complex, staggered, oppression-based sort of pyramid scheme. Note how it says the Condesce doesn't even know who Dualscar is. That's how insignificant he is, ultimately. Similarly, all Eridan was to Feferi after a while was a tiresome pest. The way that situation played out could also be seen as long-delayed karmic backlash for Dualscar's irrelevance to her, at least from a very Amporan point of view.

Now, while the specific context here is about how, from the point of view of a shitty entitled guy, Eridan killing Feferi is kind of a retribution for the Condy not giving a shit about Dualscar, all of Hussie's commentary is meant to be interrogated just as much as the base text, and it just makes me wonder. The dancestors very much treat their Alternian counterparts as alternate versions of themselves, consistent throughout their interactions, meaning we ought to consider Duascar and the Condesce to be versions of Cronus and Meenah.

If it is, in fact, the case that Cronus and Meenah would've made for excellent, harm-reducing moirails for each other, then murderstuck being a karmic backlash for their ultimate irrelevance to each other takes on a much greater implication - one that traces back to Cronus's classpect.

Bards start off massive karmic chain reactions, resulting in improbable victory or abject defeat, sometimes both; Hope is an aspect whose main application is making fake things real.

So I'm not saying that Cronus believing that an evil wizard attacked him when he was younger but was inadvertently sealed away and that Cronus was therefore karmically destined to defeat this wizard, but then having his beliefs shattered halfway through, led to him karmically contributing to the eventual creation of LE via his Hope abilities "inviting destruction" by making only the first half of his fake prophecy true, but - oh, no, wait, I am saying that. Man, that really sucks for everybody. If only Cronus had a friend who was, for whatever reason, willing to stick up for his dumbass wizard faith.

If only.

[the-meme-monarch]

yeah that ship is fine it's whatever (<- hates it badly but doesn't have any reason to and doesn't want to seem like an ass over it)

[bukzoo333]

ok so the thing about dean and cas…

i honestly think that if they came back with a s16 and dean and cas were reunited, they wouldn’t get together. i believe they’d be closer friends than they’ve ever been, but i truly think it’s unlikely they’d actually get together.

we know canonically that cas is in love with dean, and it’s quite obvious dean is in love with cas. that’s something i don’t need convincing of. absolutely not. i’m not blind.

but here’s the thing. i can’t really see an option for them to be together because all of their collective issues just get in the way. there’s so many things both of them would need to work on and fix before they could be in a semi-functional relationship. i just don’t see it happening.

now that doesn’t mean i’m not delusional and want it to happen because HELLO THEY ARE PATHETICALLY IN LOVE AND DESERVE TO HAVE THAT THANK YOU VERY MUCH

[ryssbelle]

Have you heard about a new ship between John Dory Delta Dawn? Though I find it kind of weird

It is on TikTok and Tumblr, If You want to check it out?

I’ve heard of it, I think their ship is as old as tbt at this point XD

I think their dynamic is really funny

[krakenshaped]

Fresh Start || Part 1 || Part 2

[loisfreakinglane]

the cangel crumbs i got in buffy season 2 just made me more in love with them than i've been in a long time. LOOK AT THOSE TWO. THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW THEY'RE GONNA BE BEST FRIENDS THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW THEY'RE GONNA FALL IN LOVE THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW THEY'RE GONNA CHANGE EACH OTHERS LIVES FOR THE BETTER