#i'm pretty sure i stopped making sense

[afurtivecake]

hate that kevriko is a rarepair, i really feel like so many of their interactions are so juicy and full of worthwhile discussions that for some reason nobody wants to indulge

i def think that rikos anger at jean was less bc of him LOOKING at kevin and more so that he was looking at KEVIN

anyway if you have thoughts and feelings to share, pls do

thank you for this ask<3 also you're so right. we don't talk about kevriko as a ship enough when there's a lot to think about there. (i am guilty of this too)

the interesting thing about kevriko is that they're almost exactly like the kind queerbaiting couple you'd have seen in late 2000's media. (1) there were so many shows with characters that had an undeniably deep and intimate connection with each other that was also really fucked-up and we, the audience, were expected to believe these were the actions of fully heterosexual men who, at best, hated each other. yeah, that's what nora has effectively created with kevriko.

i'm not saying kevriko is intentional queerbaiting; i just mean the ambiguous and open-ended nature of their relationship lends itself well to speculations about what they really felt for each other.

i'm guessing people don't ship kevriko much because it is very much a toxic and abusive relationship made worse by the horrible environment they were living in. i think there is a lot of reluctance to engage with the topic of textual abusive queer relationships. i think people are drawn to the idea of nice, healthy, wholesome queer relationships in media and shy away from ships that can't fit into that mold. which is interesting because that's not at all different from how the general public treated people who shipped those kinds of canonically straight characters with antagonistic, homoerotic relationships back then. there was always this sense of like, "why would you want to ship that when there are all these other better ships available?" why would you want to imagine a gay relationship when it's so bad and toxic when there are other more socially acceptable ships available? only real difference is that, back then "socially acceptable" strongly meant "straight". i guess what i'm saying is that it feels like people would rather kevin and riko be straight and not at all emotionally attached because that would make their relationship straightforward and palatable. it would frame them as captor and prisoner longing for escape, rather than something horrible and ugly and uncomfortably involved.

but ok let's just talk about the elephant in the room: was riko obsessively in love with kevin and repressing it?

yeah. probably. yes. in tgr, it's pretty clear that riko was insanely possessive of kevin and responded jealously whenever another man dared to get close to kevin. "but was it love?" i hear people ask. or was it selfishness, obsession, and codependency? does it really matter what you call it? it amounts to the same thing in the end.

if we can accept that andreil's relationship doesn't fit into the traditional mold of "romantic relationship" but is still intimate and loving nonetheless, then we should be able to accept that kevriko doesn't fit into the traditional mold of "abusive romantic relationship" but is nonetheless, built around emotional involvement and intimate partner abuse.

lots of works show these same aspects of an abusive relationship, but what aftg does that feels different is that it puts focus on the "relationship" aspect. simply put, aftg doesn't try to eliminate the emotional attachment kevin and riko have to each other in order paint a more stark line between victim and abuser as if attempting to signal to the audience the writer knows this relationship is Bad and Irredeemable. aftg acknowledges that being in an abusive relationship requires a heavy emotional investment on both sides.

it took emotional investment for riko to hold kevin that close and it took emotional investment for kevin to choose to stay for as long as he did. yes, there is also an element of one party having the power to enforce a relationship on their terms. but if it were as simple as seeing the power balance imbalance and thinking, "i don't have to put up with this shit anymore!" like an employee quitting their shitty job and shitty boss, then beating riko and the ravens in the finals would have fixed kevin. and we can see in tgr that it very much has not. there isn't an absence of feeling in abusive relationships. there isn't an absence of desire to be together. that's what makes extricating oneself from the them so hard.

riko was undoubtedly deeply attached to kevin and built all his future dreams around the idea that kevin would be at his side exactly where he wants him to be. he could not let go of kevin even after kevin left and he continued to act as if kevin was going to come back to him as soon as he destroyed the foxes and everything would be back on track. in a similar way, kevin has trouble letting go of riko after riko dies. we see him in tgr still pursuing excellence (exy-llence?) and fixating hard on the dream of playing in the olympics as if he's determined to carry him and riko's dream to the finish line on his own - to prove that he could do what riko could never could, alone. denying the awful emotional aspect of kevin and riko's relationship ignores the fact that being together fucked them up and that kevin is still left trying to disentangle himself from that mess.

(1) the example that springs to mind is Heroes. does anyone remember the show Heroes? sylar/mohinder, you'll always be famous to me. basically, sylar is a serial killer who is able to steal the superpower of the people he kills and mohinder is the researcher studying superpowers and this serial killer. there's one insane scene where sylar calls mohinder in distress and says shakily, "i think i did something bad," and mohinder, without missing a beat, shoots back, "you're a serial killer; you don't get the benefit of the doubt." and then there's a bit of back and forth where sylar is pleading with mohinder to just help him somehow because mohinder is the only one he can trust. and we were supposed to believe those two were heterosexual men who did not like each other at all. yeah that's how bad queerbaiting was back then.

[screwpinecaprice]

Oh oof I slipped and hit them with dark and serious beam. 😣

[divorcedfiddleford]

and you may say to yourself: "my god! what have i done?" and you may tell yourself: "this is not my beautiful wife!" and you may tell yourself: "this is not my beautiful house!" and you may ask yourself: "well, how did i get here?"

time isn't holding up, time isn't after us, time is a pony ride! (images described in alt text)

[fromtheseventhhell]

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

[revenantghost]

Getting super ill to the point that I can't write fic just after I regained the ability to do prose again wasn't on my 2025 bingo card, and yet

[doe-eyed-love]

Kinda rude that I'm not sat in someone's lap right now making out with them for hours, like just need to be touched and kissed 'til I'm breathless and my mind's all fuzzy, please and thank you

[alirhi]

It really sucks being the only one in the house that cares about something. Like, I get it's trivial, which is why I don't say anything, but god damn.

I want so badly to just stand in the middle of the living room and say "you have your own goddamn dishes. Please stop using mine."

it's just so fucking annoying to go into the cabinet to grab something and it's not there, because it's in the sink covered in gross remnants of food and germy dishwater. And I have a few things that have special significance or sentimental value to me that I'd rather not get touched at all but I have nowhere else but the kitchen to put them. Even sticking them in a separate cabinet away from everything like them hasn't helped. Stocking the main cabinet with things that are just as useful that I care less about doesn't help. All I want to do is scream at them HANDS OFF. GRAB SOMETHING ELSE. but the two things I'm most pissed off about aren't even fragile or expensive. their cheapness was actually kind of the point. their sole purpose is for a tradition my sister and I have and every time I see them dirty and thrown carelessly on the counter or in the sink I want to fucking scream.

[lurking-latinist]

.

[navree]

ironic considering that i'm a pretty staunch catholic but the interpretation of who the archangels are that i fuck with the most is actually the islamic tradition of michael, gabriel, rafael, and azrael

[crossedwiress]

close your eyes, don't you ever look back

for @daydadahlias

[adamsvanrhijn]

another day another thought about how literally all they needed to do to make the maud plotline make sense. before even making it Better. is to simply have her not go to anybody's house other than aurora's

[aromanticasterisms]

"the distance between sitting in the hands of the anemo archon statue in mondstadt and standing on the head of the statue of the omnipresent god in inazuma is exactly 6666m" how the fuck did you guys figure that out

[variantia]

BELLUM. anyway (I start too many posts with "anyway" but anyway)

whether platonically or romantically, Elsa thinks Spinner is just. pretty ? his hair, his scales, his eyes, his claws, he's just, PRETTY

and I'm sure that's wild to him bc he's like "... but you. you're." *gestures violently to her bc he doesn't want to embarrass himself by saying "a fucking snow goddess"*

how can someone who's so pretty think he's pretty ?? does not compute ? but it's the truth and she thinks he's beautiful ?

local lizard needs to lie down and process that statement for at least a week, more at 11

[fragmentedblade]

Insane that Blade during Todd's quest did basically the same thing Dan Heng was doing during this last video

[ronanlynchbf]

diversity loss! those ppl correctly gendering u assumed you're straight..