#i honestly don't care if you ship it but don't unironically say it's canon when it isn't

[wereh0gz]

Begging for ppl to understand sonamy isn't canon

[hannigramislife]

Saw your thoughts on dazai ships and wanted to hear about your take on akutagawa ships.

Entrapta voice: You're asking me about my theories?? I've waited years for someone to ask me about my theories!

Hello friend! Thanks for the ask! I love talking about Akutagawa, he is my heart and soul, so this will be fun! I will take the chance to also thank you about your interaction with my posts, it makes my day ^^

Now, let's get into it!

Shin Soukoku (Akutagawa/Atsushi) - This is everything to me. Absolutely everything. They're in love. They're soulmates. They were created by the same ring of laughter. An angel lost its wings and they both fell in Yokohama, waiting to be reunited. Sskk is the definition of "whatever souls are made of, his and mine were the same." I cannot accurately describe how happy they make me. I can't even give a coherent and objective reasoning as to why they're the best ship ever, they just are. "Just the two of us? / Do we need any more?" WHY ARE YOU RECITING YOUR WEDDING VOWS NOW, GOD–! Anyways. 1 billion/10.

Chuuaku (Chuuya/Akutagawa) - Similarly to my other post, I don't get people who have a problem with this ship. It's cute, it's beautiful, it makes me happy. I talked to my friend about this issue once; like, why is multishipping not a thing in this fandom?? Maybe I want to jump around dynamics??? Can skk give me friends to lovers?? No?? Great, Kunizai it is. Like, why can't we let people ship other shit than skk and sskk?? Anyways, Chuuya and Akutagawa care for each other, there is mutual respect, they would be a great comfort to one another. I say valid, 10/10 ship.

AkuHigu (Akutagawa/Higuchi) - I love, love, love this ship. Love them. They're so cute?? Like, I'm a die-hard sskk fan until I die, but I would LOVE to see more of this ship. The scene where Higuchi goes to save him?? Where Akutagawa gains consciousness and the first thing he does, before he can properly gather his senses, is apologize to Higuchi?? Also, the whole episode where she's stalking Gin because she thinks she's dating Akutagawa?? Their interactions in Wan?? I actually fucking love them. Every time the focus is on them, I feel like I'm watching a shoujo anime. Higuchi makes me think that Akutagawa would be a romantic. I need more of theeeeeem. Literally they're born to shoujo and forced to shounen. 10/10.

Dazaku (Dazai/Akutagawa) - Since I expressed my frustration with the fandom regarding this in the Dazai ships post, I will focus on my opinions about this ship. Honestly, it makes me feel kinda awkward? When I think of them in a romantic manner? Feels just a little bit like missing a step. However, it's an interpretation I would be open to if I could be convinced that Dazai actually, you know, likes Akutagawa? Like, you know that one scene in Lady Bird that's like "I wish you liked me / You know I love you / But do you like me?" That's how I feel the dynamic is between these two. Yes, Dazai is hoping Atsushi will be good for Akutagawa, and yes, he is happy Akutagawa stopped killing, and God knows what his plans are for the future – but do you like me? Valid ship context wise, neutral territory, I just need a little more from Dazai before I can make a final ruling.

TaniAku (Tanizaki/Akutagawa) - LISTEN GUYS. LISTEN. I BLAME BEAST FOR THIS, BUT THESE TWO ARE SO, SO, SO IMPORTANT TO MEEEE. I unironically love them. I don't care that Beast is the only canon I have to work with for this ship; it's so good. Like, the way Beast Tanizaki understood Akutagawa?? The way he supported his revenge mission from the get go?? The way he stormed the Mafia HQs and fucking held an assassin hostage just so he could help Akutagawa?? Ride or die. That bitch. I would actually die if I saw them interact in canon. Like, that's your bestie in another life. 100/10. I need them. It is a need.

TachiAku (Tachihara/Akutagawa) - I have no serious thoughts about this, to be honest. I think it would be lowkey hilarious. I haven't had nearly enough interactions between them for me to get attached to this ship in any way. Plus, now that we know more about Tachihara's...real self, I would love to see more of these two! I am going to allow this ship, and hope to see these two at least fight by each other's side in the future!

I think that's it for the most popular ones, please let me know if I forgot any ships!

[utilitycaster]

(Long ask warning)

Hello! I'm jumping on the appreciation train to say thank you so much for all of your meta and analysis! I just found your blog today, and you've already given me so much clarity and context for things I've been noticing in the CR fandom lately.

I quite literally spent my summer living under a rock (in the woods leading spelunking for scouts!) and so was completely out of the loop from early June through September. And while I am not yet caught up (I'm about to start ep. 65), I have been going through the tags and ao3, because I primarily engage with fandom through fic and I don't care about spoilers. And I can't help but notice that everything being written for c3 lately is just... monochromatic. The Hells have such interesting characters and premises. One would think they're ripe for creative and interesting fic. And yet even what little gen fic that I have seen since returning to civilization has largely been boiled down to reiterative mush with vaguely shippy overtones. I can totally see this being indicative of the cresting and waning of the Imodna and Callowmore shipping you've been discussing.

I've gotta ask though, is it really just shipping that is causing this problem? Or is there something else in the source material that you think could be affecting fic in particular?

This is the first time I've been in a fandom with ongoing source material in over a decade. I'm used to watching people beat dead horses in their own little corner, safe in the knowledge that I can block them and it isn't going to affect my experience in the slightest. I guess I'm just having a hard time believing/remembering that shipping can be this incidious.

So a couple of things: first, I was not heavily involved in fandom until Critical Role; I have a decent amount of background knowledge from being on Tumblr and because I do tend to look into/research this kind of thing because it's very interesting to me, but you will probably have better snapshot of what fandom looked like 10 years ago than I do. Second, fanfic has always been a tiny aspect of what I've engaged with and I do find the bulk of it to be dull and samey (which is why it is a tiny aspect), so again, you probably are a better judge of the quality of fanfic elsewhere.

With that said, as part of a much larger discussion of which I only have as mentioned pieces of the puzzle, I do think there's been a shift over the past decade or so of like...people expecting the source material to reflect fanfic-y desires, and resenting it when it does not; people not seeing the point in enjoying non-canon ships; and a broader theme of self-infantilization. This has to a small extent spilled over into published fiction, though thankfully there's plenty that isn't that. It's not just shipping (though that absolutely can be insidious to the point that people have been harassed and doxxed over it); I think it's a general taste for pablum that has been growing within fandom spaces.

I'll link a few posts I've made and a source that, while I cannot vouch for it per se I did read and found enlightening at the end but I think a really indicative example as of late was the fandom response to the show Good Omens (spoilers for Good Omens S2 in the next link if you are by any chance avoiding those). Obviously do not do anything obnoxious to the person who wrote this question, but there are a worrying number of people in fandom spaces who believe this unironically and uncritically: fiction exists to "save us from hurtful reality." And I do understand that the tumultuous politics and world events of the past decade are probably a factor; but I mean, have you looked at literature from the first half of the 20th century (or like. the second half, for that matter)? It is, in my opinion, only going to help put our modern world and issues in better context and honestly make you feel better in the long run if you read, say, The Great Gatsby or The Things They Carried instead of burying your head in lower case song lyrics ... (hurt/comfort, fix-it, happy ending, 6k) and like, to be clear, I have written a small portion of lower case song lyric-titled fics myself but most of them aren't terribly happy, and even so, god I'd be horrified if that was all people were reading.

We've seen it across fandom at large with the polls; I have not watched season 2 of Our Flag Means Death in part because I've realized with horror that this mentality has swept, plague-like, through that fandom; people are acting like having a canon queer ship on a small premium cable show in 2022 is world-changing and unprecedented while also kind of ignoring everything that isn't the central ship (including valid criticisms of how this takes a real-world plantation owner and turns him into a goofy fop, how there's precious few female characters and none in the main cast, and how the actually far more groundbreaking nb character is pushed aside in favor of the core M/M ship). Spoilers for Good Omens again (sorry in advance, Good Omens 2 was a realization point for me how deeply and widely this rot has set in in some places and I have a bunch of sources of people being like "guys stories require conflict and tension to be good" in response to the overwrought moaning that the story wasn't unambiguously happy) but this is another author responding to the "the desired endpoint of all fiction is obviously to have your ship living in a small house together in bliss and anything else is torment" mentality.

In addition to shipping another factor is, I think, people overidentifying with characters and as such being reluctant to actually put them through any sort of hardship, however minor. I recently reblogged a post about the origin of the concept "Mary Sue" and it led me to read a bit about its history, because it was in fact created by women. It was a woman in the Star Trek fandom who was sick of spending money to buy fanzines (pre-common home internet, let alone pre-Ao3) only to find the vast majority of the stories to be this "here is my self-insert who is perfect and beautiful and pure and every other character thinks she is the greatest even if that's entire OOC". It was a frustration with the abandonment of the characterizations in the original work. And that's true today - I have read a popular Imogen and Laudna fluff fic to see what the deal was and it stripped out so much of their premises and characterizations it was unrecognizeable as them but for the hair colors and occasional cringeworthy attempts to replicate Southern US dialect - but what was notable is that those people were at least being honest and writing OCs (though to be fair a lot of them were also young white teen girls and the only woman in TOS was black and that was probably also a factor). Now, you get people who cannot tolerate any analysis of characters that is less than flattering because instead of having an OC, they are identifying so strongly with, for example, Imogen or Ashton, that they cannot separate out the real character or understand this is not an attack on them (or, to be blunt, as someone who sees some of my own worse traits in both those characters, a necessary critique). It's not shipping, but it is that same "fiction should only ever be a soft blanket or a flattering mirror, never a dark mirror and certainly never a door" mentality.

I do place a little blame on fanfiction itself; I think having something that is roughly made to order and tells you exactly what it is up front means people start to think that is the only way, and that's why we have people claiming Chipotle is the height of cuisine while making gagging noises at the authentic Mexican restaurant except for fiction. I think fanfiction can be great; it's fun to write and I have read some great pieces. But a lot of it is mush and formulaic and as that Mary Sue history points out, always has been.

So anyway, to Bells Hells: I think past campaigns also had a lot of dull fanfiction; I think the Nein lent themselves more to poorly written angst than poorly written fluff but yeah a lot of that was really samey and bland in its own way. Fanfiction has always been formulaic to a degree but I think we're starting to see the generation of people who really have read more of that than like, books, and sure there are shitty books, but man there's a LOT of shitty fanfiction, and increasingly, I find that shitty published books are bad because they're too much like fanfiction. [If I get the chance today I have a post I want to write about the ignorance of fantasy tropes in the current fandom which I think is also driving some of this and which I alluded to in my post about shipping; like, I feel the almost automatic but oddly thought-free resistance to gods and fate and the 'right' way to respond to a tragic backstory comes from this ignorance; this also is a case in the D20 fandom when they've dipped into sci fi.] Shipping definitely is a factor, and I think again C3 has an influx of fans primarily here to ship in that "my ship must become canon and must 'win' for some arbitrary definition thereof" which is probably why so much of the fanfic sucks, but again, this is a larger self-infantilizing and entitled mentality that goes beyond mere ships.

Further reading (mostly my own posts but not exclusively)

The fandom echo chamber (also Good Omens spoilers in a broad sense), not by me

Some discussion on queerphobia being inserted only as a tool to assist with specific shipping narratives (I think this ties in again to like. people need obstacles to justify why the characters aren't already in their cottage by the sea but once the characters are together they discard these obstacles even if they are systemic and would still exist, which makes for really bad fanfic bc it's clearly poorly plotted and thought out)

Me on why this campaign isn't good for shipping but a lot of the fandom showed up primarily to ship (might be the post that prompted this ask tbf)

Fandom monocropping (not my post)

My treatise on Imogen and Laudna specifically which honestly, even now that they are canon, still largely holds up re: the fandom and a related one about similarly fluff-centric Change is Evil and the highest order of fiction is Two Blorbos In A House With Zero Problems mentality (not by me but I've been part of that discussion)

[veterveter]

Finally gathered teh courage to watch the Berlin trailer and... big cringe. i don't like the whole vibes of it, i don't believe them when they say its gonna be better than lcdp. i don't care about the new gang and andrés? i have a feeling they gonna ruin his character with this. i'm honestly glad that sergio and martin are not part of this. the only thign i'm looking forward is ralicia. (sorry for the negativity, maybe it's gonna be the best show of the century lol)

Heyheyhey!!!

Let's talk about your thoughts before I talk about mine: thank you first of all for popping by ♥️ Do come back if you'd like once you've seen the show, I'd love to hear if you still feel the same 👀 And I pretty much agree on everything you said. I don't feel like Martín would fit the tone they're going for with this show, they'd probably relegate him to being like, a fun sidekick cracking jokes or something - pass. Let me keep one half of the ship I still really like as a character. Ralicia could have actual potential though, their history seems of interest, so I hope they at least give us something there.

Other than the incessant need to turn everything into a franchise and milk audience goodwill until it runs dry, I think there's very little need for this to be about Berlín or set in the LCDP universe, if they don't really care about following up or building up on... anything, really. But I hope I'm wrong! Maybe I'm misjudging them! Maybe the advertising has done them dirty! In which case I'm so sorry to be a downer. I'm trying my hardest to not hate it on principle.

And for want of something positive to say, the smallest compliment sandwich you've ever seen: the bit they posted a couple days ago at Fontana di Trevi seemed a little promising? That was more of the vibe I wish this show had, haha.

They really want to hype up the new banda and I'm always unironically heartbroken when they call this Andrés's golden era and his dream team (I cannot remember the wording but you know what I mean). Maybe I'm overly invested and clinging too hard to the parts of pre-established canon that I like, so sue me. I know I should be taking this much less seriously and I might even enjoy it; instead I'm fretting over how I can possibly fit all these different Andréses into one person for writing purposes - let alone remaining invested in him as a character. I've already said this before, but S5 already did a world of harm in how much I like him, so.

I've had nightmares about this show, actually :D In one, they declared in the advertising that his third wife was the love of Andrés's life and if I want to know how he really felt about Martín, I should watch the show - and then proceeded to never mention him again 🔪

And haha you needn't apologise to me for the negativity - if the show turns out to be amazing, feel free to call me a fool :) Though I'm sure Pedro can carry quite a lot even if it's bad. I watched Gran Hotel last summer.

Anyway, I hope you take care, anon!! Do come back to me if you'd like, and have a lovely rest of the year :)

And buena suerte.

[kachikirby]

If you do not mind, I am going to politely add my two cents.

-

I will start by saying I do agree with a lot of your points about headcanons. There definitely has been an increase in people being like "so-and-so headcanon is so stupid I hate it" posts in ESPECIALLY the last month or so, from what I've honestly noticed. It has to stop.

Like isn't the best part about Kirby that it's so open to interpretation that you can make anything with the universe? And if you don't like an interpretation, you can... just ignore it, you know?

-

Now, for the shipping thing, let me preface this by saying that I *do* have an OC x canon ship for MK, BUT I did not start making material for it until 2022 so no one can hold it against me.

I will straight up say, I DO NOT have a problem with metadede shippers, hell a lot of them I would consider friends or at least acquaintances.

What I DO have a problem with is when the shippers go and claim that it is unironically canon. While I haven't seen anything for it recently, I saw it a lot on Twitter around the time KF2 came out, and I will be completely honest, it REALLY soured my opinion on the ship. Like I don't care for it now, but I hated it during that time period, not only because it was everywhere, but because everyone was acting like it was officially canon. (Again, I came from the land of "hard to tell what is a joke and what isn't" known as Twitter, so that sort of gives you an idea of my thought process.)

It's like that one Tumblr post I saw talking about how "there is, in fact, a "platonic explanation for this" if you're not a coward" and that's kind of what I always think of when it comes to KF2. (no offense to any mtdd shippers) It just kinda felt lonely at times as someone who saw their relationship as platonic. (More specifically, I hc them extremely specifically as "bros that would punch each other in the face for a million dollars")

I will, say, though, if anything is to blame imo, one of which is probably Tumblr's honestly garbage way of muting tags, where it doesn't completely remove them from a person's feed. Say what you want about Twitter, but at least the muting tag function worked.

but anyway these are my thoughts.

alright, this goes out to you guys. just gonna build off of this post

(THIS IS ALL JUST MY OPINION, NOT FACT!)

soooo I think the reason there are so many contrasting headcanons is not only because of the open interpretations the games leave, but because of what kinds of kirby media people are introduced to at first. you got the main games, the anime, the mangas, the light novels, etc. which. wow that's a lot of material you can build on. AND CONSIDERING THE AMOUT OF LORE EACH OF THESE TOPICS ARE COOKING???? DAWG WH

and I GUESS I can understand why some hcs are so bizarre in other people's eyes. but the way this fandom handles those different headcanons is...a lil bad.

YES I KNOW THIS ISN'T SPECIFIC TO THE KIRBY FANDOM, but the whole reason why I'm making this is to at least understand why people take it so close to heart.

and. not calling anyone out. but I do see quite a lot of posts with people (critiquing? complaining?) about how popular headcanons "ruin" the fandom (and this goes with ships too, but I'll get into that later) and all I gotta ask is

does it really??? does it really ruin the fandom?

I'm just gonna say. no. it doesn't.

you are focusing on a small percentage out of...oh idk...AN ENTIRE FANBASE? at LEAST open up a little and find a new circle if it is bothering you that much. or better yet. BLOCK! filter out tags!

with the amout of differing kirby medias, please understand that there will be headcanons that will oppose yours and that's okay! just don't be a jerk about it!

--

NOW. with the ships. specifically metadede. gonna try to put my overwhelming bias aside for this one I promise.

though metadede is the most popular ship in the fandom, it still comes with it's critics. and some are. actually valid! such as their relationship doesn't immediately have to be romantic. it can be seen as platonic! and I can understand why people feel that way.

but things get sour when people immediately try to crap on it because in their eyes, and correct me if I'm wrong here, metadede overshadows every other ship in the fandom. you hardly get to hear about their rarepair because of how metadede is everywhere.

if you take a step back and really look. there is a reason it is so popular. because of the LARGE amounts of media they have together. in the games. in the mangas. in smash. in official art. I mean if you wanna count the anime go ahead.

what I'm trying to say here is that compared to any other character interactions, meta knight and dedede are definitely up there for the most interaction in the franchise. and I'm not trying to downplay any rarepairs or other ships with a smaller fanbase.

BUT DON'T BLAME THE SHIPPERS! they are only doing the same as anyone else, they are going off of what they are given by canon and simply building off of that.

though, because I am a metadede shipper myself, you can take this segment with a grain of salt.

---

in conclusion...people can have their different takes. and that's okay! having different opinions is what builds this fandom and draws the attention of so many. but please! do not take any of these takes personal!

If there is a point in here you would like to argue against or build on, feel free to do so. I'm open to any other views.

[neon-lights-stardust-nights]

🌈💖💫 for whoever you want.

I had to kinda squint at my ships for a while, before saying "fuck it" and putting a handful on a wheel to get the ones I'm comparing/contrasting for this. That said, the wheel decided that we'd be doing Moon Knight and 2BDAMNED for this one!

🌈 How do different muses think of the same partner?

That's unironically a very good question for them, since the S/Is are similar enough that you could call them different iterations of themselves. (I dunno, sometimes the traits of mine that I exaggerate or leave out depends on the series?) F94G VS Amalg with their respective partners...

F94G and 2BDAMNED. I think 2BDAMNED is weirdly more internally affectionate than Moon Knight is with Amalg? I think 2BDAMNED comes across like a cat or a raven kinda. He brings faer "shiny things" (things he remembers faer name dropping a year ago as things fae enjoys) and preforms more small gestures that have that "oh, he cares" vibe to them. 2BDAMNED is intricately aware of "oh, that look means you need space" and "that sight means you've been having a rough day." His calculating nature has ironically made him a wonderful partner, because he's studied F94G just as intensely as any science project.

Moon Knight, conversely, doesn't entirely know what to do with Amalg. He's very used to socializing with people who are more capable at it, and despite his tendencies, he's still a Marvel comic character. He can at least "emote properly" and shit. (Whatever emoting properly means, fellow neurodivergents who don't know how to emote say WHAAAAAAAAAT?) This leads to more fumbling between them, especially since Amalg doesn't really attempt to bridge that gap exactly? Less that Amalg refuses to communicate, and more that fae doesn't really try to emote better. Amalg is perfectly happy this way, and fae will clarify on how fae feels at any given moment, but it takes Moon Knight (or any of his other alters) making the effort to ASK when they're confused. Moon Knight ends up viewing Amalg as something more alien than 2BDAMNED ends up viewing F94G because of that. He loves Amalg, he just... Has no idea what to DO with Amalg at any given moment.

💖How did their first impressions go down? What initially attracted them to their crush/partner?

2BDAMNED honestly wrote F94G off at first! As interesting as a new breed (literally) of soldier created by The Auditor And Crew was? Fae seemed pretty fragile. If they were trying to make soldiers who fought longer, not harder, fae didn't really seem the ticket for it. F94G could move at Sonic the Hedgehog speeds, sure, but fae was entirely a glass canon. It wasn't until he had to actual speak to faer more regularly while helping faer hide from The Auditor that he began to get to know faer, and by proxy, took an interest. After he saw faer rip off the half-mask and get engulfed in black flames for the first time, he decidedly wanted faer as a science experiment. Romance was the sort of thing he fumbled his way into from there.

Moon Knight and Amalg, conversely, had a very different first meeting (as well as a first "yeah, I'd kiss that.") Amalg was the one to get interested first, pursuing Moon Knight more than Moon Knight pursued Amalg. He kind of assumed at first that (since Amalg can fuse with people and utilize their powers while fused) fae was here to get a test ride on him (and subsequently kept reminding faer he wasn't exactly very super.) Worst case, he wondered if fae was going to kill him, since fae could CONSUME the people fae fused with (though fae'd only done it once as known to any public form.) It was Amalg's persistence though that got him to reel back some, since Amalg at that point clearly understood his humanity. Amalg didn't even seem interested in fusing together with him, more interested in HIM as a PERSON. That was when he learned weird monsters could be sweeties.

💫 Which ship happens faster? Why?

Honestly, I think Moon Knight and Amalg. 2BDAMNED and F94G had way more push and pull. F94G being an experiment was way more hesitant to be with someone clearly studying faer from all angles. It doesn't help that 2BDAMNED could be a bit of a little shit. During blow ups or episodes of anger, going as far to openly predict things fae was thinking of doing and such to show off how much he's managed to dissect faer in a limited span of time. They had a much slower burn than just... Local Creature Who Can Fuse With Others Falls For Human, More At Eleven.