#it was so effective that I'm mad about it

[circuitcircus]

this just shows that trying to insist on one way of thinking on these characters is an Ouroboros and I'm saying not everyone is going to see the dynamics of these ships in the same way. fan perception still does not mean that's what should be focused on if someone else wants to ship the characters together.

like i said that same racial dynamic plays a part in how fans view labru and it's often in a worse way as many labru fans choose to see kabru's position in the castle as a way to make him a sire for laios's children a lot of the time which if you wanna go there is reminiscent of a house slave smfh

kabru quite literally put himself in that caretaker position by having himself and mithrun fall into the hole and i never said kabru was blackmailing anyone, just that he's the reason the two of them ended up traveling together in the first place. after trying to kill mithrun alongside himself if they got injured and it wasn't a needs issue it would still make sense for kabru to help him out and MITHRUN HELPS KABRU during that time too. also don't use that as a reason people shouldn't ship them as if characters with more turbulent dynamics don't exist.

you don't need to tell me that these are characters i am well aware, but i'm not the one insisting there's a moral issue with shipping them together so idk why you felt the need to bring that up to me when you're arguing about the same thing and talking about the characters safety of all things. you are being hypocritical. like marcille's explosion magic is just as potentially dangerous as teleportation but are you going to be mad at her for needing to use it?

i'm not defending them, but the canaries are all unwilling participants and are unwillingly drafted, despite what they represent, none of them want to be there and mithrun has expressed resentment in being forced to join himself. also, psychologically, being with someone in a perilous situation tends to bring you closer together and many are ignoring how the time kabru and mithrun spent together served the themes of the narrative (plus there's this thing called the florence nightingale effect). it would have been more obvious that the experience was meant to be wholly negative if that's what kui meant for it to be, but it was also played for laughs in the same way kabru forcing himself to listen to laios speak about monsters was. laios's crew goes through very similar dissent throughout the manga like chilchuck getting mad at laios for making social blunders and izutsumi needing time to warm up to everyone along with racial tensions between marcille, chilchuck and senshi.

about fandom perception, as you can see here i wrote about how fans ignore kabru to make labru work and many labru fan works show that way of thinking as well as posts labru fans create.

of course fans would mostly show the caretaker aspect of their dynamic because that's the most prominent way they were introduced but as someone who engages with kabumisu works i see that is NOOOT the only way they are portrayed. a lot of surface level labru fanart is based of their first/most prominent interaction as well.

the point to take away here is kabumisu is not the only ship in dungeon meshi or any fandom that has problems in the narrative OR the fandom so there's no real reason to come after it like this as if it's bad to ship them.

i admit ignoring racial tension isn't the way to go but as a person of color myself am saying i never saw kabumisu in a racialized way, and other people seeing it that way doesn't mean i have to just to not enjoy it when i can see the exact same fandom perception in labru works.

A healthcare worker’s take on Dungeon Meshi shipping discourse

Hiya y’all! As someone who has become a fan of Dungeon Meshi (honestly one of my favorite franchises at this moment) I’d just like to give more of a nuanced take on a shipping discourse I’ve seen. I’d like to clarify this with I am an NA. I’ve literally been recognized by the country I live in through the sunshine awards system on my contributions to my patients lives. All this to say, I know a bit about healthcare. And I also think that. Personally, people should be allowed to ship whatever they please. They shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for what they enjoy, especially if it isn’t hurting anyone.

I’d like to clarify what I am speaking on, this being the controversy surrounding the ships Mithrun and Kabru, vs Laios and Kabru. Both of which are valid ships in my opinion! I think both are great! And whichever you like you should feel comfortable and happy to indulge in it.

I work mostly with geriatric and bariatric patients, as I work on a cardiac unit. So, by proxy, I witness a lot of disabled people come through. This to say that these people HAVE partners. And their partners care for them. Such as feeding their partners if they need help eating, helping their partners feel safe if they have dementia, I have even seen someone clean their spouse after they had soiled themself. All of which are examples of love and affection, as partners. Not as a provider doing their job.

The argument i see many a time against the ship of Mithrun and Kabru, is that it is unethical. As Kabru would be a “provider” in this case, and Mithrun would be a “patient” to this I say, is Kabru being paid in this hypothetical? Is he following training he has been given? Is he following a code of ethics given to healthcare workers when he helps Mithrun with his disability? Disabled people deserve love. And they deserve a partner that cares for them. So the argument that the ship is gross is kind of… weird. Isn’t it? Again. Mithrun and Kabru as partners do not have to be your cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean that anyone who DOES ship them is gross or immoral. Helping your partner because they are disabled is an act of love, and completely different from a provider helping their patient.

Statistically, everyone will either die able bodied or live to become disabled. It happens to everyone. Disabilities are almost as much of a fact of life as breathing is. I am new to the Dungeon Meshi fandom, but the insinuation that someone able bodied cannot have a disabled partner is kind of horrible to actual able bodied/disabled partnerships? The dynamic is so common, and so to say that it is gross, almost implies that the dynamic in a day to day is gross.

This post isn’t meant to be inflammatory, there are so many dungeon meshi ships I love with all my heart. Some that are rare pairs, some that are common within the fandom. I just think that people should be more friendly with each other. Kabru has two hands guys it’s okay /j /lh. Just please be more friendly guys. Both ships are valid. But the way the fandom gets so angry over it makes me scared. And I imagine it makes other people who are new to the manga/anime a little scared too.

[waywardwhispersblaze]

about Vi's ending

So, I get that a lot of people are unsatisfied with Vi's story arc in Arcane. I feel unsatisfied too. Here are some of my reasons. I wrote this as a response to another post initially, but I wanted to elaborate a little bit more.

So we know that the question the writers had for Vi was "what would happen if Vi had no one left to protect?"

"she would fall in love" is a lovely answer. I don't hate it, but it does feel like the bare minimum they could come up with... and even that had to be stripped for time. For instance, what does she want to do for a living?

That's not a random question. Her lore in the game tells us that she ends up working as an enforcer. Arcane makes it difficult for her at the beginning (you know, the enforcers-killed-my-parents thing), but we all expect that it's coming regardless.

I know a lot of people here never liked the idea of Vi becoming an enforcer. Not me. Give me Enforcer!Vi! Just make it a story, instead of skipping over it.

They had her join the enforcers in s2 act I for all the wrong reasons (guilt + fear of losing Caitlyn + thinking violence is the answer to her problems), which is not a bad thing, that's expected at this point of the story. They did skip over her motivations and left a lot to read between the lines, and that's frustrating in itself but that's not the problem. My problem with it is that it doesn't go anywhere. How does she feel about working with them in the end? Now that she's no longer blinded by her rage towards the Chembarons and Jinx's actions? Is it really just for Caitlyn's sake? Is there room in there somewhere for wanting to be a protector to the city, like Grayson did, if she even cares about that at all? (it makes sense that she doesn't in Arcane, but what about in the future? she's still a protector at heart, even if she has no family left) If she does, how does she reconcile that with what the enforcers are to the Undercity, does she genuinely think she can do some good? I could answer some of these with "oh well, she does end up as Caitlyn's partner so I'm just gonna go with 'yes' for convenience". But I wish Arcane had answered this for me.

What about the enforcers, how do they feel about her? Do they respect her? How would she interact with them in the future? Her only friend there, Loris, died at the end of S2 (I'm annoyed about that. not mad, not sad. Just annoyed), so she's effectively alone.

I suppose the root of the problem is that I watched Arcane with the expectation that Vi would end up as a Piltover champion by the end of it. That's not an unreasonable expectation considering her lore, but I can accept that Arcane just wasn't about "ending" character stories or bringing them to their lore counterpart. That's fair. Even within the story of Arcane though, where she ends up isn't fully satisfying. She's physically in Piltover, but mentally she's in a place where she doesn't really belong anywhere except with 1 (one) person, and we still have no idea what she wants to do with her life (outside of banging Caitlyn that is). Don't get me wrong, I love caitvi! I love what they did with them as a pair! But I have so many questions about Vi specifically that are unresolved.

Maybe that's the point. Arcane's ending is an open ending after all. But Caitlyn had a story arc outside of her relationship with her. Jinx had a story arc outside of her relationship with her. Even if their overall stories are not over, the Arcane story does leave them both in a place where they have grown from what they went through and even if we never see them again, we can feel like their story had a proper conclusion. Arcane doesn't leave Vi with a conclusion outside of her romance arc. Or to be fair, maybe it is a conclusion, just no one that I like / was hoping for. I sort of get that her not being able to grow was the point (to further Jinx's development. A lot of their scenes together were always more about Jinx's development and framed from Jinx's POV, which is a different complaint and an entirely different post). Not having agency at all was the point. But where does she go from there? Genuine question. Her character arc doesn't feel finished.

A lot of my frustrations would be soothed over if we had the certainty of having spin-offs. But 1) nothing is ever certain, 2) if something's coming, it's probably far in the future, 3) if and when it does come, there's no guarantee that Vi wouldn't be more than a background character.

Unfortunately, the general feeling I get from the writers' interviews is that they do feel like they really did get her where they wanted, so I'm not particularly hopeful that they have more stories to tell with her. Outside of being Caitlyn's partner that is.

(no, I don't think they "don't care about" or "hate" her character by the way. That's twisting their words beyond recognition)

So that's why I can't feel fully satisfied with Vi's story. I still love Arcane. I'm still looking forward to seeing more of the Runeterra universe. But as someone who really liked Vi's character from the start, I'm left with crumbs. Hints of what could be, but never the full picture, and more questions than answers. And that's disheartening, to be honest.

[respectthepetty]

The blues and yellows in The Time of Fever because the happiest times are when they are with each other.

THEY WERE HAPPIEST WHEN THEY WERE TOGETHER!

Then we see them together again in Unintentional Love Story and one is completely dark and the other is still his source of happiness!

AND THIS IS WHERE WE LEAVE THEM!

Somebody slap me.

[cryptid-killjoy]

Delta loved when Frank expressed himself in ways like this, drawing in her blood. She didn't always realize it if it was on her back. Sometimes she'd see it later. Extra surprise gifts for later. How could she not love this man? So psycho for her and so damn cute. It was a winning combo.

After recomposing and letting Frank fix her shirt and wings she was too amused. Frank looked so handsome to her tonight. His grin over getting one over on Arthur even after death felt fitting somehow. She couldn't decide if it was a trick or a treat. It was probably both because it was great. She wasn't mad. For a moment she thought she should be, but she just wasn't. Maybe she liked showing off Frank won again just for old time sake. Maybe she liked when Frank teased Arthur for whatever reason. Maybe she just didn't give a fuck because she had too much real heavy shit in her mind to care about such a silly thing. Or maybe she just found it really damn funny Lil John was the one wearing her number one fan gear when Arthur seemed to be her little stalker.

Either way, she'd reply, "Yes, let's. Our guests are waiting."

Arthur would panic as expected by the couple who were both no doubt inwardly sniggering inside their heads as they walked closer to him. Every step was a doomsday closing in. Did Arthur know Frank had mind powers of some type? Sure. Did he know if it worked on ghosts? He was going to assume it did unstill he knew it otherwise. He tried so hard to clear his mind while he was trying to get his boner to settle and act natural all at once. The stairwell was too long to go rushing down for his prosthetic leg in time to look any sort of normal. But he couldn't think it through. He started to hop down steps in his haste and soon came to the realization as he heard the footsteps catching up behind him.

The more he tried to clear his head the more his thoughts raced the opposite effect happened. His head was filled with more thoughts than before. Everything he told himself not to think about came to the surface. He finally turned around and tried to stand in place on the stair and leaned like he was chilling there.

"Oh, hey guys! Fancy meeting you here of all places."

Delta stopped her feet. She watched as Arthur couldn't figure out where to comfortably fix his eyes upon either one of them. His nerves were on display. That made her grin all the more. The glace at Frank's pants and intenseness after on deliberately not looking there again, at least trying not to. He was having a hard time looking Delta in the eyes. So, of course she kept looking directly in his.

"Uh huh. Yeah, so weird finding us in our own home where we live."

She was cutting him any slack.

"Uhhhhhhhhh, right." He kept trying to keep his waistline turned slightly to the wall. He was hanging on a guard rail. "I was looking for you guys."

"So strange to find us in our own home where we live when you were looking for us."

"Heh. Yeah."

She kept right on his eyes making him all the more uncomfortable.

"Get on with it Arthur. Tell us what you were looking for us for." Still not once mentioning him standing around in the middle of a lengthy stairwell on one leg or questioning it.

"Oh uh right. Well, I'm only here for a night. I just really wanted to see you both. I've been waiting for this night." He started talking faster. "Remember when I used to get into comas, or anesthesia, or whatever and I'd manage to find you guys in death? Now I'm on the other side. It's trickier to find ways. Especially at your castle. Can't get in here."

"That's on purpose."

"Right." He stared for a second with a trying to read Delta wondering if he unwelcome or not and she gave no sign of him not counting when it came to her ghost protections. So the silence eventually was cut off by his own talking. He had to keep going.

"Well uh anyway. I keep trying to warn you and couldn't figure out how till today. I finally got in."

Delta rolled her fingers in a hurry this up motion.

"Right. Right. What I'm trying to say is there's disturbance in force."

Delta's brow went up.

"I mean there's people in Feral. Silas and the Evil Queen. She's in the swamps."

Delta's eyes narrowed. "Is that all? Just two?"

"You're mostly left with stray semi-immortal types in the depths like the pixies. But yeah, the queen's out at Skull Rock where your mother had her meetings. She was living out there with Silas. I thought you'd want to know about them."

She thought to herself, "We already have Silas." The Queen slipped under their nose.

Things Delta was realizing as he spoke. Arthur and possibly other Merry Men were still watching over Feral even after death. It was only now she was even realizing they were going by their Sherwood names in death when they were out there on the dance floor. She had to admit she hadn't thought a whole lot about the Merry Men since they left. Out of sight out mind maybe? But now that they were here it was giving her something to think about. Too much for now. She was trying to have a party. Maybe Arthur proved to be useful in the end too, not just for entertainment.

She stared at him after he gave the information, he'd been dying to give them all night. He had no idea they already had Silas locked up. Knowing the queen was out there was still helpful. She could tell he was looking for a thanks or a good job. Instead she changed the subject.

"Could have sworn I saw you earlier in the ball room with two legs."

"Me? Nah. What's a ghost need a leg for? Nah. Nah. Not me. Prosthetic ghost legs. Ha ha." He tried to play it off. His voice got higher pitched as the sentence went on.

He wasn't thinking this through. His leg was at the bottom of the winding stair. What then?

Delta looked up at Frank, "Oh, my bad. I must have miss seen."

Frank didn’t need to scour that pretty little brain to know how good Delta was feeling, her mumbles, her inability to say his name, her quivering mess of a body was loud enough. It was impossible not to feel cocky - heh heh - with his girl reacting like this. She might not have had anything else to compare it with but damn, he knew that she was enjoying this, same as he was.

His acid girl. She was melting him into her, even after they were finished, he was all over her, hands and fingers stroking the back, the wings, her upper thighs, feeling his sterile seed slipping out and pushing it back in so that they were one before they finally started to get dressed once more.

He spread the blood on her wings, before - in an almost overly cute motion - he drew a small heart on her skin with her own blood. “Art on art,” He admired his own little piece on her. She had made so many marks on him, so permanent - but he wouldn’t want to affect her perfect skin. Each scar, each freckle, each cut from the wings escaping - were exactly as it should be.

A smirk was across his face, his large eyes lingering on hers as he ‘lurched’ over her, forked tongue escaping his lips to lick at them as she bit on him so deliciously. “We both did,” He agreed. There was tension that he had needed to work off, as there always was when there was a lot of people in their space. He wouldn’t feel completely comfortable until things were as they were supposed to be. But this was a good amount of relief.

He ripped at her clothing carefully for her. Not with brute strength but with calculated rips, making it look as if it was intentional, and then the wings had all the space that they needed to come out, to spread the way that they should be. These beautiful goddamn wings, that he stroked and admired now, even while knowing there was an audience. A world of their own, acting like no one could see, no one could interrupt.

He’d been too in the zone to really tune into Arthur’s thoughts during his fuck session. He was inside of the most perfect girl alive, what kind of fool would he be if he spent that time figuring out what some bald-headed little voyeur was thinking? But now that the post-sexual haze was dissipating, he could tune on in.

And it was hilarious.

‘Not only dreaming. He’s one bit of friction away from cumming his pants,’ Frank replied to Delta, a smirk on his face as he looked in that direction as well. He could feel through Arthur that he hadn’t actually seen anything inappropriate on Delta, but oh, he caught that his dick had been sighted. Good. That just made it all the more funny.

He ran his fingers through Delta’s curls, adjusting them so they were less messy, and then bent low to kiss the top of her head. And then loud enough to let Arthur hear - “Shall we return to our guests?”

In the hopes that he would scramble around and try to get himself together. Shuffle down the stairs on his ass to try to get his other fake leg or something. There was some joy in the aardvark’s misery. But he couldn’t help letting out a chuckle, an outward expression of how much he was enjoying making the few hours that Arthur was here into something so … diabolical horny.

[deimcs]

Shar must have sensed I was enjoying myself. Kiss it better? You'll seize any opportunity, won't you? But I suppose I've been giving you plenty of encouragement.

[waspgrave]

now there was no reason for lucanis to be given purple johnny silverhand as a plot point and then never have the purple johnny silverhand utilized except for maybe 3 or 4 times in the game (if you saved Treviso, otherwise it's twice) and dialogue. Dialogue where he pretty much just says weird and funny things and occasionally gets scolded like a dog which is entertaining sure but there is Literally A Demon In One Of The Companions Why Is This Not A Bigger Deal

[freckliedan]

hi jam, what actually happened in 2012/2013? i got into the phandom in 2020, so i guess i just never fully understood? of course no worries if you don’t want to bring it up for whatever reason. (:

hi anon! i am always happy to discuss dan and phil history (editing to add: you can check out my tag on that here), especially since i've been around for long enough to have seen a Lot of it. the biggest factor is that dan and phil were outed in 2012; i have written about that before here.

i would reccomend rewatching dan's mental health series of videos (meaning of life, something i'm forgetting, daniel and depression, trying to live my truth) + BIG with the additional understanding that being outed at that point had a catastrophic impact on dan's mental health, especially considering his past traumas.

there were a lot of other reasons 2012 and 2013 were bad, some of which we knew at the time and some that we didn't.

dan's younger brother started to have social media, and fans were harassing him for information/pretending to be friends with him to get information/bullying him. that's something dan shut down HARD.

dan's grandma was also on twitter around this time iirc? so there was a very real chance he could've been outed to his family if someone had decided to cross the line in the worst way they could.

dan and phil had moved to london in 2012 without being able to afford it and without being sure they would get the bbc radio 1 jobs. so they were also under stupid amounts of financial stress while also adjusting to life in a new city when all of this happened.

2013 is also the year phil's dad was diagnosed with cancer. that's something that phil never shared until 2019 in his draw my life 2, but that's such a scary and overwhelming thing to be dealing with!

all at the same time!

the radio show era is also a time when dan and phil were so busy with projects and opportunities and saying yes to everything that it very, very clearly had a negative impact on them, which is something they have mentioned a number of times.

they were dealing with the transition into proper fame, too. i don't have enough toughts to gather about that but i'm sure someone else can speak to what that was like. a lot of youtubers of their original era left the platform at that that time due to the everything.

so. short answer. 2012-2013 was one of the most intense, overwhelming and difficult periods we know of in dan and phil's lives for so many reasons, even without factoring in the fact that they were outed. which also happened then.

they did not, in fact, have a difficult 2012 because people posted smut of them and they accidentally saw it. dan had already mentioned reading fic about himself on purpose at that point in time.

[weirdsociology]

I am genuinely not trying to sound like a dick here and I'm not mad I promise

but uh Dorothy Dunnett is not a romance writer although i certainly see why you would think she is based on the way we talk about her 😂😂

but more importantly! casual use of Harlequin as a thing not to be like is exactly the kind of bias I'm talking about! which, understandable, bc everybody does it, but also just, kind of wrong!

all that variety i pointed out before? that's the stuff harlequin (and imprints like it) publishes. there are many many fair critiques of their business model. the fact that romance is the single largest category of books sold, for instance, means that publishers like harlequin put time pressure on authors that is in my opinion a labor rights issue. and they prioritize white straight romance over diversity as most large publishers do. also they focus on category romances which are a specific thing with their own genre rules. but those are not "harlequin is trash" critiques, they're "harlequin as a capitalist endeavor" critiques.

the reasons people think of harlequin and romance novels more generally as a punching bag for poor taste are many, but there's a couple things that stand out:

- romance's primary writers and consumers have always been women, particularly teenaged girls and middle aged women, and since the inception of the modern novel there have been concerns about the deleterious moral and intellectual effects of "frivolous" (e.g. entertaining and interesting to women) fiction

- as the most popular genre of book produced by a large margin, there are unique market forces pushing romance towards publishing new work as fast as possible, which can lead to lower-quality or less polished product. also there's just more of it, which means more bad books and more good books.

- romance is the genre that probably responds the most to cultural norms, partially bc of the pace of publishing and partially bc of its character-driven focus. it's in constant dialogue with how we think about gender and sex and class in particular, and can both reinforce and deconstruct social dynamics in the kinds of stories it chooses to tell. but unlike say, scifi, which gets the treatment where we look back on 1970s scifi and want to know why it is the way it is, warts and all, we just dismiss romance as bodice-ripping and don't ask ourselves why it was written that way and what readers were getting out of it. (for instance, i could go on ALLLLL day about why it was so common for male main characters to sexually assault female main characters in 1950s romance and how that intersects with the kinds of social scripting and power dynamics women were dealing with in their own relationships with men, but i won't.)

- our culture thinks anything with a happy ending has lesser value for some reason

anyway the history and sociology of romance as a genre is fascinating and there are multiple books written about it. if romance is a thing you want to explore more, i highly recommend the lovely podcast fated mates which does not shy away from talking about the more batshit stuff (sentient object romance!) but also takes seriously romance's importance as a genre.

i will now dismount this hill i promise

Saw these tags, directed at me, on my post about how the romance genre is almost always a bunch of drama and with no actual relationships until “the final moments” or sometimes never at all:

The ace/aro hate on this website is still thriving, y’all.

Anyway, time to go show this to my boyfriend of many years to let him know that Generic Tumblr User #8762901 says we’re not in a relationship anymore because aro people aren’t allowed to date…😔

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

Hey did I ever tell y'all about the time I dreamed that I had a baby daughter called Ellie that began with my finding out I was pregnant and ended on like her third birthday?

I legitimately woke up thinking "I should go check on Ellie" and then realised she was never real and when I tell you I SOBBED. I've been haunted by an implacable sense of loss ever since. Did I travel to another dimension? Wtf happened because that was insane.

[sysig]

Haha, this Winterkov stuff is fun- where did all these other feelings come from (Patreon)

[kurokoros]

I've been seeing the "endeavor is the best written character in BNHA" take for a while and regardless of if that's true or not (because that's an opinion, not a fact) do the people saying this not think it's questionable or off-putting that the "best" written character is a middle aged man discovering after over two decades that neglecting, abusing, and overall traumatizing his wife and children is BAD and he wants to be a better person now???

[butchford]

Bitches will be like "damn am I overexaggerating how bad the current landscape is?" And then the top posts in a character tag that's not even involved will be "this post contains filtered tags [ship]"

[tackrusso]

show tempe gang crossover with the morris islanders would actually have been the best episode of bones ever. btw

[sybbi]

"If enough of us vote third party for president, we could actually GET somewhere with our policy goals!"

Baby girl you can't even get a majority of third party/independents in a single state legislature. In the past 30 years there have been seven independent/third party state governors, and of those, only three were genuinely independent. The rest either got elected as a R/D and switched mid-term when they alienated themselves from their state party, got elected as I and then switched to R/D during their terms (with some of them having served the R/D parties before), or served as proxy candidates with heavy backing and support from one of the major two parties. Even VERMONT, a relative stronghold for independent/third party candidates -- the place that brought you Bernie Sanders -- doesn't have a majority of third party candidates. And when I call them a stronghold, I mean they are the only state (I know of) that consistently elects (less than a handful of) Independent candidates to the state legislature; the place is still dominated by Ds and Rs.

"The highest power in the land can't actually be voted on so there's no reason to vote for the democrats"

Hey princess here are some high school civics question for you: How are Supreme Court judges nominated? :) By what process are they appointed? Who starts that process? :) Why is the Supreme Court considered reflective of who has won the presidency? :)

[anarkhebringer]

I woke up to this and am really thinking about this

[outofmymindbebacklater]

I can't stop watching the Percy Jackson trailer. Nobody touch me I've wanted this for years fuck.