#it's one of those things that is very much highlighted in fanon but in canon it's like??? do they even talk about this

[cybernaght]

The fandom echo chamber: fanon, microanalysis and conspiracy brain 

As someone who has been in fandom spaces, on and off, for 20 years, I find some fascinating trends popping up in the last decade that I thought to be fandom-specific but clearly aren’t. So, I would like to do a little examination of where those things come from, how they are engaged with, and what it says about the way we consume media. This is a think piece, of sorts, with my brain being the main source. As such, we will spend some time down the memory lane of a fandom-focused millennial.

This is largely brought about by Good Omens. But it’s also not really about Good Omens at all.

Part one. Fanon.

The way we see characters in any story is always skewed by our very selves. This is a neutral statement, and it does not have a value judgement. It’s simply unavoidable. We recognise aspects of them, love aspects of them, and choose aspects of them to highlight based entirely on our own vision of the universe. 

Recognition comes into this. There is a reason so many protagonists of romance novels have a “blank slate” problem. Even when they do not, we love characters who are like us or versions of us that we would like to be. And when we say “we”, I also mean, “me”. 

(I remember very clearly this realisation hit me after a whole season of Doctor Who with writing which I hated utterly when I questioned why I still clung so incredibly hard to Clara Oswald as my favourite companion. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. Oh. Well. That would do it, wouldn’t it?)

Then, there is projection, and, again, this is a neutral statement. Projection exists, and it is completely normal and, dare I say it, valid way of engaging with — well, anything. Is the character queer? Trans? Neurodivergent? Are they in love? Do they like chocolate? Are they a cat person? Well, yes, if this is what the text says, but if the text does not say anything… You tell me. Please, do tell me. Because, in that moment of projection, they are yours. 

And then, there is fandom osmosis, and that is the most fascinating one of them all, the one that is not very easy to note while you are inside the echo chamber. It’s the way we collectively, consciously or not, make decisions on who or what the characters are, what their relationships are, and what happens to them.  

(Back when I was writing egregiously long Guardian recaps on this blog I actually asked if Shen Wei’s power being learning actually was stated anywhere in the canon of the show. Because I had no idea. I have read and reread dozen of fanfics where that is the case, and at some point through enough repetition, it became reality.)

We are all kind of making our own reality here, aren’t we? 

Back when things were happening in a much less centralised manner - in closed livejournal groups, and forums of all shapes and sizes - I don’t remember there being quite as much universally agreed upon fanon. Frankly, I don’t remember much of universally agreed upon anything. But now, everything is in one place: we have this, and we have AO3, and it’s wonderful, it really is so much easier to navigate, but it’s also one gigantic reality-shifting echo chamber, with blogs, reblogs, trends, and rituals. 

Accessibility plays its part, too. If you were, say, in Life on Mars (UK) fandom between seasons, and you wanted to post your speculation fic, you had to have had an account, and then find and gain access to one of the bigger groups (lifein1973 was my poison, but ymmv), and then, if you feel brave you may post it, but also, you may want to do so from your alt account if you wanted to keep yours separate, and then you would have to go through the whole process again. And I’m not saying that fan creations then were somehow inherently better for it than fan creations now (although Life on Mars Hiatus Era is perhaps a bad example - because some of the Speculation Fic there was breathtaking), but there is something to say about the ease of access that made the fandoms go through a big bang of sorts.

(I mean, come on, I can just come here and post this - and I am certain people will read it, and this blog is a pandemic cope baby about Chinese television for goodness sake.)

The canon transformations that happen in the fandom echo chamber truly are fascinating to witness as someone who is more or less a fandom butterfly. I get into something, float around for a bit, then get into something else and move on. I might come back eventually when the need arises, but I don’t sustain a hiatus mind-state. This means that when I float away and return, I find some very intriguing stuff.

Let’s actually look at Good Omens here. Season two aired, and I found it spectacular in its cosy and anguished way; deliberately and intelligently fanfic-y in its plot building; simple but subversive, and so very tender. (I will have to circle back to this eventually, because, truly, I love how deliberately it takes the tropes and shatters them - it’s glorious). And, to me - a person who read the book, watched the first season, hung around AO3 for a few weeks and moved on - absolutely on-point in terms of characterisation. 

So imagine my surprise when the fandom disagreed so vehemently that there are actual multi-tiered theories on how characters were not in possession of their senses. Nothing there, in my mind, ever contradicted any of the stated text, as it stood. This remained a strange little mystery until I did what I always do when I flutter close to an ongoing fandom.

I loaded AO3 and sorted the existing fic by popularity. And there it was, all there: the actual earth-shattering mutual devotion of the angel and the demon; willingness to Fall; openness and long heart-aching confession speeches. There was all of the fanon surrounding Aziraphale and Crowley, which, to me, read as out of character, and to one for whom they became the reality over the last four years, read as truth. 

Again, only neutral statements here. This is not a bad thing, and neither this is a good thing, this is just something that happens, after a while, especially when there are years for the fandom-born ideas to bounce around and stew. I can’t help but think that so much of what we see as real in spaces such as this one is a chimaera of the actual source and all the collective fan additions which had time and space to grow, change, develop, and inspire, reverberating over and over again, until the echoes fill the entirety of the space. 

Eventually, this chimaera becomes a reality. 

Part two. Microanalysis 

Here are my two suppositions on the matter:

1. Some writers really love breadcrumb storytelling. 

Russel T Davies, for instance, on his run of Doctor Who (and, if you are reading it much later - I do mean the original one), loved that technique for his seasonal arcs. What is a Bad Wolf? Who is Harold Saxon? Well, you can watch very very carefully, make a theory, and see it proven right or wrong by the end of the season. 

Naturally, mystery box writers are all about breadcrumb storytelling: your Losts and your Westworlds are all about giving you snippets to get your brain firing, almost challenging you to figure things out just ahead of the reveal. 

2. We, as humans, love breadcrumbs.

And why wouldn’t we? Breadcrumbs are delicious. They are, however, a seasoning, or a coating. They are not the meal. 

Too much metaphor?

Let’s unpack it and start from the beginning.

Pattern recognition colours every aspect of our lives, and it colours the way we view art to a great extent. I think we truly underestimate how much it’s influenced by our lived experiences.

If you are, broadly speaking, living somewhere in Western/North-Western Europe in the 14th century, and you see a painting in which there is a very very large figure surrounded by some smaller figures and holding really tiny figures, you may know absolutely nothing about who those figures are, but you know that the big figure is the Important One, and the small ones are Less Important Ones, and the tiny ones are In Their Care. You know where your reverence would lie, looking at this picture. And, I imagine, as someone living in the 14th century, you may be inspired to a sense of awe looking at this composition, because in the world you live in, this is how art works. 

If you, on the other hand, watch a piece of recorded media and see the eyes of two characters meet as the violins swell, you know what you are being told at that moment. You don’t have to have a film degree to feel a sort of way when you see a green-tinged pallet used, when cross-cuts use juxtaposing images, or notice where your focus is pulled in any given shot. This stuff - this recognition of patterns - has been trained into us by the simple fact that we live in this time, on this planet, and we have been doing so long enough to have engaged recorded media for a period of time. 

As humans, we notice things. Our brains flare up when they see something they recognise, and then we seek to find other similar details and form a bigger picture. This often happens unconsciously, but sometimes it does not. Sometimes we do it on purpose: finding breadcrumbs in stories is a little bit like solving a mystery. It allows us to stretch that brain muscle that puts two and two together. It makes us feel clever. 

So yes, we love breadcrumbs, and, frankly, quite a lot of storytelling takes advantage of this. It’s very useful for foreshadowing, creating thematic coherence, or introducing narrative parallels and complexity. It’s useful for nudging the viewer into one or the other emotional direction, or to cue them into what will happen in the next moment, or what exactly is the one important detail they should pay attention to.

Because this is something media does intentionally, and something we pick up both consciously and not, it is very hard to know when to stop. We don't really ever know when all of the breadcrumbs have been collected. It becomes very easy to get carried away. There is a very specific kind of pleasure in digging into content frame by frame, soundbite by soundbite, chasing that pleasure of finding. 

But it is almost never breadcrumbs all the way down. They are techniques to help us focus on the main event: the story. I truly believe those who make media want it to reach the widest possible audience, and that includes all of us who like to watch every single thing ever created with our Media Analysis Goggles on and those who are just here to enjoy the twists and turns of the story at the pace offered to them. And I think, sometimes in our chase to collect and understand every little clue we forget that media is not made to just cater for us.

One can call it missing a forest for the trees. But I would hate to mix my metaphors, so let’s call it missing a schnitzel for the breadcrumbs. 

Part three. The Conspiracy Brain. 

If you are there with me, in the midst of the excited frenzy, chasing after all those delicious breadcrumbs, then patterns can grow, merge together, and become all-encompassing theories. Let’s call them conspiracy theories, even though this is not what they truly are.

So, why do we believe in conspiracy theories?

One, Because We Have Been Lied To. 

All conspiracies start with distrust.

If you are in fandom spaces - especially if you are in fandom spaces which revolve around a queer fictional couple - especially-especially if you have been in such spaces for a period of time, you have most certainly been lied to at one point or another. 

We don’t even have to talk about Sherlock - and let’s not do that - but do you remember Merlin? Because I remember Merlin. Specifically, I remember the publicity surrounding the first season, with its weaponised usage of “bromance” and assertions that this whole thing is a love story of sorts, and then the daunting realisation that this was all a stunt, deliberately orchestrated to gather viewership. 

And, because we were lied to in such a deliberate manner for such an extensive period of time, I genuinely believe that it forever altered our pattern recognition habits, because what was this if not encouragement to read into things? Now we are trained to read between the lines or see little cries for help where they might not be. Because we were told, over and over again, that we should.

(Yes, I think we are all existing in these spaces coloured by the trauma of queer-bating. I am, however, looking forward to a world where I can unlearn all of that.)

Two, Cognitive Dissonance.

The chain reaction works a bit like this: the world is wrong - it can’t possibly be wrong by coincidence - this must be on purpose - someone is responsible for it.

Being Lied To is a preamble, but cognitive dissonance is where it all originates. In so many cross-fandom theories I have noticed a four-step process:

A) this is not good

B) this author could not have made a mistake 

C) this must be done on purpose

D) here is why 

(Funny thing is, I have been on the receiving end of the small conspiracy spiral, and it is a very interesting experience. Not relevant to this conversation is the fact that a lot of my job revolves around storytelling. What is relevant is that my hobbies also revolve around storytelling. And one of them is DnD. Now, imagine my genuine shock when one of the players I am currently writing a campaign for noticed a small detail that did not make a logical sense within the complexity of the world, and latched on to it as something clearly indicating some kind of a secret subplot. Their thinking process also went a bit like this: this detail is not a good piece of writing — this DM knows how to tell stories well — this is obviously there on purpose. It was not there on purpose. I created a clumsy shorthand. I erred, in that pesky manner humans tend to. And, seeing this entire thought process recited to me directly in the moment, I felt somewhere between flattered and mortified.)

This whole line of thinking, I think, exists on a knife’s edge between veneration and brutal criticism, relentlessly dissecting everything “wrong”, with a reverent “but this is deliberate” attached to it like a vice, because it is preferable to a simple conclusion that the author let you down, in one way or another. 

Three, Intentionality 

I believe that there is no right or wrong way of engaging with stories, regardless of their medium, and assuming no one gets hurt in the process. While in a strictly academic way, there is a “correct” way of reading (and reading into) media, we here are largely not academics but consumers; consumption is subjective.

However, this all changes when intentionality is ascribed. 

The one I find particularly fascinating is the intentionality of “making it bad on purpose” because, as open-minded as I intend to always be, this just does not happen.

It certainly does not happen in long-form media. Even in the bread-crumb mystery box-type long-form media. 

When television programs underdeliver, they also underperform, and then they get cancelled.

If all the elements of Westworld Season 4 that did not sit together in a completely satisfactory way were written deliberately as some sort of deconstruction for the final season to explore, then it failed because that final season will now never come.

(There will likely never be a Secret Fourth Episode.)

And look, I am not here to refute your theories. Creativity is fun, and theorising is fantastic. 

But, perhaps, when the line of thought ventures into the “bad on purpose” territory, it could be recognised for what it is: disappointment and optimism, attempting to coexist in a single space. And I relate to that, I do, and I am sorry that there is even a need for this line of thinking. It’s always so incredibly disappointing that a creator you believed to be devoid of flaws makes something that does not hit in the way you hoped it would. It’s pretty heartbreaking. 

Unfortunately, people make mistakes. We are all fallible that way. 

Four, Wildfire.

Then, when the crumbs are found, a theory is crafted, and intentionality is ascribed, all that needs to happen is for it to catch on. And hey, what better place for it than this massive hollow funnel that we exist in, where thoughts, ideas and interpretations reverberate so much they become inextricable from the source material in collective consciousness. 

Conspiracy theories create alternate realities, very much like we all do here. 

So where are we now?

I am not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong; what is true, and what is not. We are all entitled to engage with anything we wish, in whichever way we wish to do it. This is not it, at all. 

All I am saying is… listen.

Do you hear that echo? 

I do. 

[buddiebeginz]

You do remember that those pride post excluding Eddie only showed up after some Buddie fans very deliberately excluded and outright erased Tommy and the Bucktommy realtionship from their pride posts and still called them "happy pride for all the canon(!) queer characters of 9-1-1"? You wouldn't call that homophobic?

Actually what happened was the 911 news account made a post for pride that included multiple queer characters and ships (both canon and not) including Buddie and B/T. (You can't see B/T in this screenshot but you could in the og twitter post. They are in the top left corner.)

After that was posted some B*mmy fans did not like that Buddie was included even though Eddie has been headcanoned to be queer pretty much since he showed up on 911 and Buddie has been a popular queer (non canon) ship since s2 as well.

So they harassed the 911 news account over this. Some of them even decided to make their own 911 news account because they decided that news account was too biased (solely because they had included a non canon ship in a pride post I guess). The B/T shippers then made their own pride post on their new account highlighting canon queer characters and it didn't include Eddie or Buddie. I believe not long after that they took down their news account. Not sure if it was because of lack of interest or because people were calling them out on the ridiculousness of it all or what.

There was also this:

I've also seen multiple gifsets, tweets, and comments on various posts made this month making it clear that B*mmy stans think only canon queer characters and ships deserve to be celebrated.

Also the posts you're talking about the ones Buddie shippers made some that looked like this👇 happened after we started seeing you attacking Eddie and Buddie. Especially when you all have continually been saying that canon is all that matters.

I find it seriously hypocritical and offensive to call us homophobic when you lot just don't seem to even understand queer history. Lgbtq people have ALWAYS headcanoned characters and ships and while getting canon representation is great and important it doesn't negate those characters and ships that people have seen as queer for years.

A lot of lgbtq people love and relate and feel seen by Eddie and Buddie. And while we want them to be canon of course, just the fact that these characters exist and we can see ourselves in their journey matters.

You don't have to like Eddie or ship Buddie and you certainly don't have to include them in the stuff you make and that goes the same for us not having to include B/T or T*mmy in our stuff either. The problem comes when some in your fandom try to act like you're in charge of the entire 911 fandom and even apparently in charge of the correct way pride month is supposed to be celebrated.

A lot of you were Buddie shippers for YEARS and you had no problem headcanoning Eddie as anything but straight and shipping Buddie. There never used to be any issue with celebrating them during pride I've been around fandom for years and there's been Buddie pride stuff made since s2.

I guess things changed when you all decided to jump ship after Buck kissed a guy. And you know what that's your right. You have the right to ship whoever you want. But you don't get to decide that canon characters and ships matter more than fanon ones.

I also think your fandom needs to find some new ways to disagree with people because calling us homophobic every chance you all get is only making you look bad.

[lunchtimebedamned1997]

Fanfic Recommendations, Installment #1!

This is a long one! But even if you don't read all of my words here, you should definitely read theirs!

. ★.`.☆...☆.`.★ .

It feels as though it would be some sort of terrible crime not to highlight the most wonderful fic series that has been circulating its way through the Hazbin Hotel fandom over the last little stretch of time. Yes indeedy, I’m speaking of nothing other than the meteor shower series by spoondrifts on A03 (and ofc as @cringefailvox here on lovely tumblr!)

               This enthralling little series is currently comprised of two parts; time has changed the metaphor and its sequel, dragging its tail in the sea.

Herein we get the most delectable example of polyam, QPR, label-less goodness that I dare say there has been a gaping lack of up until now! (and if I am mistaken, I am happy to be so so wrong so long as you send all those good fics my way!!! My perceptions are fallible)

And who might make up the delightful QPR trio featured in this story? Why, none other than our most beloved Alastor, Rosie, and Vox!

I will admit to you, my dear reader, that I was skeptical of how this trio would function together. A fool, even. But the fanart (here for pt.1 fanart) (and here for pt.2 art) drew me in, it delighted me, and the writing, well, the writing simply blew me away.

How lovely it is to sit down and read such gorgeous, thoughtful, and perfectly complicated renditions of these characters. One that deeply explores the bounds of non-traditional connections, and the twisting, complicated ways we can come to find others in our hearts. Because it seems that even in hell, there can be things that make you feel foreign amongst your peers. That is, if you don’t let yourself be known.

The way Spoondrifts dives into the mentality of the three characters is such a joy to read that I scarcely think I have adequate words to express how exactly it is I feel.

To be Queer in any form is such a varied array of experiences, indescribably vast; and while labels can often be a freedom for some, especially as a place of belonging, or a reaffirmation of identity – or even simply that labels often act as a gateway to community and support – there are many that feel labels restrict them. That those labels are another set of rules they don’t fit neatly into, a chafing reminder of common-society’s boundaries in a place that is supposed to offer refuge.

This is precisely why many have embraced and reclaimed the word "queer" itself as a catch-all term for ‘outside the cis-het bubble’.

Yet, we often jump, especially in fiction, to labeling exactly who and what a character may be. Defining their relationships with immense detail, and fighting ruthlessly over canon vs. fanon vs. fanon-but-less-popular. Yet, here in this fanfic, we see a shining example of the complicated web of queer experiences. Of connection. Of love and care.

A refreshing lens to be sure.

It is a story that says ‘these characters are enough, as flawed and rotten and lovely as they are, and so are you.’ – and isn’t that the very crux of this fandom itself? Is the commentary on Christian religion and the people that claim to uphold it, not in and of itself a similar thing? A story that says ‘you can be terrible and wonderful. You can be awful and be loved. You can be different and be whole.’

In watching the series itself, there was something cathartic for me, too personal for me to write in too great of detail in the here and now. But it made me feel loved. It made me feel like even if I wasn’t perfect, I could still have worth. That I could make mistakes, and still be allowed the grace of second chances if I’m willing to learn and grow from any of the mistakes I'll inevitably make on this complicated journey of life. And so, so much more.

That is how this fanfiction made me feel. Loved. Warm. Safe. Free to be a mess of a human (because aren’t we all?). And still at the end of the day be worthy. To, someday, be loved and cared for in whatever ways I need. That none of us are too much or too little.

I’ve been straying away from labels myself over the years, knowing I fit into a few different nooks and crannies within our vast umbrella, but not quite vibing with a lot of the words anymore. Life is, after all, a journey of discovery; and I’d be a fool to say I know and understand all of myself when I’m not yet even 24 – and fics like this, this fic, made my chest ache in the way the thought of kissing a woman once did. Maybe there’s something there for me to discover, maybe there isn’t. Perhaps it’s just my neurodivergences and my queerness aligning into a desire - and deeply rooted fear - for being seen.

But regardless of how you do or don’t identify, I think anyone would feel a deep fondness for the bonds within this story – though if you align with any of it yourself, it may of course hit you even more profoundly.

The pacing of the story is beyond impeccable and it never once feels stuck in a ‘set of locations’. The world of the pride ring feels sprawling and alive within these words despite spending most of our time within Rosie’s domain.

The care and thought that was given to each character and their depictions - just, damn. Every action felt grounded, understandable for each individual character, and kept you wanting more of each and every bit. Elements of canon were woven into a beautiful tapestry of fanon that feels so real and so right, that if Viv said it was true in a parallel version of Hazbin-Hell, I would believe you in a heartbeat.

The three characters play off of each other beautifully and enticingly, without sacrificing an ounce of what makes them (particularly Al and Vox) ripe for a good ‘you fucking dumbass, get it through your head’ shoulder-shake.

I can’t say too much more without simply gushing over every sentence and ruining the experience for those who have not yet read it, but let me just say: wow. As well as: Thank you, Spoondrifts. What a lovely gift you’ve given us. Thank you for your words. For this exploration of relationships, and hearts that beat a little funny.

[julieverne]

genuine question, how much of The Actual Show rizzoli and isles like, open to the idea of rizzles? Like I adore all of your fics, and I would watch *that* show, but how much of it is fanon vs queerbait vs subtext vs actual canon?

Season 1-4 it genuinely looks like they're headed for a Rizzles endgame. Season 5 is ok but they're taking a step back. Season 6 and 7 they're strangers that are sometimes in the same room. The showrunner changed then and only watched the first and last episodes of the preceding seasons - which were heavy on how much these two women loved and relied on each other, so I don't know why so much went wrong there.

Some of it's scripted, some of it's not. But it's not in the good-natured Xena way of 'oh they're together but the studio won't let us show that so we get around the censors' way. It's 'suburban housewives were our target audience but Sasha and Angie can't keep their hands off each other and now most of our audience is lesbians'.

There was a really great recap on AfterEllen but all the pictures have been taken down. But the genuine chemistry the actresses had in those first few seasons is worth watching. This is the ship that launched a hundred fics for me. In the first run people must have been watching and waiting for something to happen and it never did.

They didn't need to be endgame. They just needed to be something other than strangers in the last two seasons.

So it's a weird show; there's no series bible, no two seasons carry the same vibe, one season is straight-up slapstick. There's plot holes in the backstories and the pets get fridged. Watching Bones really highlights how seat-of-the-pants Rizzoli and Isles was.

But despite all that:

Totally Gratuitous, Totally Gay Touching

Righteous Ponytail of Justice

Sasha Alexander in every outfit

Angie Harmon not knowing what a tomboy is and just standing and sitting in the most homosexual of ways

Senior Criminalist Susie Chang is gold in every scene

Hurt/Comfort

All of the above are good reasons to watch the show, but the hurt/comfort is paramount. Terrible things happen to these women, and season 1-4 they generally end up alone at home together curled up on the couch comforting each other.

Quick warning: season 1 is darker and probably better in terms of plot and cohesion. I rank the show seasons 4, 2, 3, 1, 5, 6, 7.

And now, more evidence of the TGTGT:

I'm not going to try to convince someone to watch a 2010 show with no payoff in 2023 when we have better shows. But it has its place in the queer hall of fame for a reason.

And the show for its time did okay. They did have murdering lesbians, but they also had lesbians mums, and lesbian colleagues. They had a transgender judge that was treated with respect when they figured it out as part of their investigation. It hasn't aged poorly in that sense. The show had a lot of potential, and it flopped when they veered away from the subtext. But as a studio that was a risk they had to take - I doubt they had many male audiences and even now most shows still cater to that demographic. So for a show that really was about women - two women that were very close - to do so well, it had to do certain things. But the show had so much potential that never came to fruition.

One last thing - the books themselves are completely different. The characters share the same names and live in Boston, but that's about the end of the similarities. Tess Gerritsen herself seems very tickled and amused by the fact that this bizarre show exists and that she has a cult lesbian following because of it, and I love her for that and I love that for her. If you ever do watch season 7, she has a cameo in an episode which is precious.

[angelsdean]

It's funny for me that fanon Sam is, following his time at Stanford, thee greatest of ally and defensor of human rights, while canonically college turns him into a judgemental snob - frowning upon winning money as a hunter, saving the prisoners, etc, etc (snobbish s1 Sammy my beloved !!!) (PS: also his alternative self in Lebanon XD)

no literallly. sam wanted to fit in so hard at stanford he drank some of the snobby rich kid kool-aid. and like, dissecting that is infinitely more interesting to me than perfect liberal and allyTM fanon sam. like i wanna know what sam's problem is sjdkfdfk. s1 does a great job of creating this dichotomy, esp in the very early eps, where dean represents the hunting world, the fringes of society, the outcasts and Other, and sam is coming out of this perfect idealized world that was college, where he absorbed some of those snobby ideals, as a way to reject his family / lifestyle (tho mostly as a way to reject JOHN and john's ideas of what sam's life should be). But then we see sam throughout those early episodes making choices that actively lead him further down the road of hunting, choices that have him rejecting "normal society" and choosing this journey, this quest, taking up the mantle and following john's path.

(there are lot of examples and maybe i'll make a post abt them all one day but one that always stands out to me is in 1x06 Skin, where the conflict is about the isolation of hunting vs the desire for community and connection to the outside world. it seems like dean is pro-cut ties with the world, but why? well, we later learn in 1x13 he tried to let an outsider into his world and cassie rejected him for it. but sam, at the start of the ep, is trying to have the best of both worlds. he thinks he can keep his outsider friends while still hunting. then by the end of the ep, his friend now knows all about hunting and wants to stay in touch. and sam shuts her out and says she probs won't hear from him anytime soon. and it's just so bonkers to me !! but he's making that choice, he's choosing hunting and slowly rejecting and cutting ties to his idealized stanford life.)

and he wants it, is the thing. he's on a one track mind: find john, find the demon, kill it and avenge jess and mary.

this got long-winded but anyway, i think all that s1 snobbery is SO crucial to sam's journey, it's important we see it, it's important we see where he was coming from, how stanford had begun to change and shape him in different ways, how stanford was symbolic of this total opposite to hunting, it's the snobby rich who don't care about the people on the fringes, it's studying LAW while holding beliefs that all people in prison are not "innocent" and a ghost killing them off isn't the biggest deal. and then dean + the hunting lifestyle is meant to be the juxtaposition to that. he's living on the fringes of society, he's Other. That's why the shifter in Skin identifies with dean so much, aside from the queer metaphors. The shifter choosing fresh-off-of-ivy-league sam would not make for the same kind of parallel, as much as sam has his psychic kid stuff going on, that's only barely begun at this point. He doesn't yet think he's a freak for being psychic or the demon blood stuff, he doesn't even know abt any of that. But paralleling the shifter with dean highlighted the isolating, othering nature of hunting, in an episode where the "brother conflict" was isolation vs community. And through the shifter we learn that dean didn't Want to be a hunter either. He had dreams, wanted friends. And sam hears all of this, and still at the end of the episode chooses to reject his friend's offer to keep in touch. Taking another step away from the idealized stanford life and another step down the path of hunting + his revenge quest. And it's so goddamn interesting and delicious and fascinating to me !!!! fanon sam could never

[coldshrugs]

1, 10, 12 + 22? i hope work gets better!! 🩷

thanks gigi!! :>

1. the character everyone gets wrong

hmmm this is a tough one for me to answer because i think interpretation is influenced by so many different things. i will instead say i prefer and most enjoy interpretations of characters that fall in a similar place as my own? reading fics that veer super sharply away from the conclusions i’ve made is just not enjoyable for me. it’s fun for some folks, and i’m happy that’s an experience they get a kick out of! but i just want to stay cozy in my lane lmao

10. worst part of fanon

estimeric. tbh. (please. tag it so it can filter out of my dash, i'm begging)

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

LYSE!!!! i love her so much. i love her raw honesty about what she doesn’t know and the extent of her abilities, how she tries so hard anyway. i love that the people around her might’ve picked up on her act but still let her grieve in her own wild-ass way. i know there’s a lot of contention about her appearance vs the inspiration for ala mhigo, and i am 100% an advocate for adding more visibly black and brown characters to this game, but i think as a whole she gets too much shit for this aspect of her character, as if white-passing people of color aren’t a very real thing. if someone is discounting her whole arc because of this, i simply do not value their opinion about it tbh. my own wol’s relationship with lyse is strained (it’s the zenos situationship…) but as the player, i love her :>

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

maybe they’re not ignored, because it’s impossible to miss them, but i LOVE the company of heroes T^T yes the pre-titan quests are tedious, but those guys are so much fun. and revisiting them in the endwalker role quests was a highlight for me.

[lostcauses-noregrets]

What's the appeal of Marleyan Erwin? Everytime I begin reading one of those fics, I'm unsure what I'm supposed to get from it. I'm not saying they're bad! Just that I have trouble figuring them out. I figured you might be able to shine a light on it, having been on the fandom longer.

I’m not sure I’m the best person to answer this because I tend to avoid Marley Erwin fics too.  What I will say though is that fics that portray a darker version of Erwin’s character are not at all uncommon.  They’ve been around since the dawn of the fandom and Marley Erwin is just one of the more recent manifestations of that trend. See also dark Ackerbond fics which have become popular recently, some of which I’ve really enjoyed.  

In the early days of the fandom, the manga and the anime gave us very little insight into Erwin’s character.  For a long time he appeared to be the archetype of the ruthless military commander who used people as pawns and thought nothing of throwing his soldiers’ lives away.  Callous ruthless Erwin was a pretty common trope at this time, particularly in Ereri fics.  As the series progressed and we really got to see the complexity of Erwin’s character and the depth of his relationship with Levi, a lot of writers followed suit with more nuanced sympathetic portrayals of Erwin’s character.  The dark Erwin tropes never quite went away though, and I think that’s at least partly due to the fact that he is such a complex well-written character.  There are so many sides to Erwin that I can understand why some writers want to push his characterisation to one extreme or the other, and Marley set fics provide a pretty obvious way to do that.  

Personally speaking, I’ve never been a huge fan of dark Erwin fics (he suffers enough in canon thank you very much). I tend to gravitate towards fics that stick more closely to canon characterisation, but that’s just my preference. The thing to remember about fanfic is that it doesn’t have to follow canon plot or characterisation. The whole point of fanfic, is that it’s supposed to be transformative. 

One thing I have noticed is that the further out we get from the end of the series, (it’s already two years since the manga ended), the more popular fanon characterisation has drifted from canon.  That's not a criticism, I think it's inevitable to some extent.  Once characters are “freed” from canon, authors perhaps feel they have more freedom to transform them in ever more creative ways.  After Midnight Sun, I remember someone (maybe even me, who knows 😅) saying “Erwin belongs to us now.”  

It’s also true that tropes come and go.  Each new influx of fans discovers these characters in their own way and develops their own tropes and headcanons.  If you stick around for long enough you tend to notice that different iterations of the same tropes come around time and again.  One of the reasons Marley Erwin fics don’t really appeal to me is that is that the characterisation treads similar ground to manipulative Erwin fics from the early days of the fandom.  Again though, that’s just my preference.  There is no right or wrong way to write these characters, and the fact that writers are continually reinventing and exploring Erwin’s character just goes to highlight what a brilliantly complex and compelling character he is. It bodes well for the enduring popularity of the ship and longevity of the fandom.

Sorry this has become a bit of a ramble and I’m not sure if I’ve answered your question.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that we all have our own preferences when it comes to characterisation.  The Eruri fandom has been blessed with so many amazing writers over the years and I’m discovering new authors every day, so if a particular trope, such as Marley Erwin, doesn’t do it for you, there are plenty more to choose from.

[egg-emperor]

I'm glad my perspective and opinion has changed, especially on Eggman in Frontiers and how I can say I'm at least ranging in interested in to liking all aspects of his and Sage's portrayals and combined dynamic now. Despite everything that happened the past few months, it feels like a happy ending to not feel bitter anymore and be at peace.

It's unfortunate that I'm this late to understanding the entire picture despite small details I did catch onto even at the beginning- but I think what didn't help is, besides the four Eggman scenes that were leaked, my next look were memos spammed on my dash with wild assumptions treated as fact and were quick to upset me without full context.

Even when I got to play the game a couple of days early and had a headstart to give it more of a chance to form my own opinion before it really blew up, I was too pissed and tired to give a chance or pay enough attention to what was going on because of my reaction to those leaks. It significantly lowered my amount of interest and excitement.

You must understand- I was so excited for a main story game again after five years, to see what Eggman was up to, to see him finally be newly simultaneously voiced and animated again for the first time in years. Years of waiting only to have a lot shoved in my face out of order and context wasn't nice, so I went from excited to confused and angry fast.

At first I really thought they fucked up my favorite character ever and I was devastated. He's very important to me and I was looking forward to seeing what writing and animation there was to enjoy and what kind of analysis and appreciation posts I could make. It was even one of the things that kept me pushing through hard times for years to see.

It was easy to believe that the worst had happened when a loud majority of fandom were saying it. But over time, the more I looked, the more I was like wait the reasons I say that I don't like Eggman's portrayal or the dynamic with Sage actually aren't present in the game, I just wasn't agreeing with how it was being seen as in the fandom specifically.

I realized that was the case with the Maria Egg memo right away when I reacted with confusion to how people got the idea that Eggman was neglected in childhood from it (only for Flynn to also say that isn't implied) but then realized it's the same case with the dynamic with Sage, Eggman's morality or lack of, and everything else much later.

Then I was like oh wait so it's just the same old story when it comes to canon vs fanon lol. Idk where my head was at up until I had this huge sense of clarity, I was a mess XD But everyone who sensibly offered new perspective without insulting or casting me out helped and I'm very thankful for the respect, patience, and for taking the time to explain.

Truth is, I actually love being proven wrong when people actually take the facts into account and provide supporting evidence for their beliefs, instead of insisting I like something just because they do (especially when it's for reasons not actually present in the game) because I want to learn. I judged too quickly, I was too harsh, I realize there's a lot more to be enjoyed.

I don't want to be miserable and hate things like some think, it's not fun. my criticisms only ever come from a place of great passion. I care and want the best out of Eggman characterization and for them to keep all the things that make him so great and lovable present in him. I'm really happy to know he hasn't gone anywhere and I can enjoy it!

I'm glad I love canon Frontiers Eggman, I'm just not a fan of the most popular fan interpretation right now because I feel that, just like me initially, some are overlooking details, context, and moments that make Eggman and Sage's portrayals and dynamic a lot more complicated and complex as commonly depicted and I hope to highlight them in my posts.

I'm really happy and relieved that it turned out to actually be something I can find interesting and enjoy and inspires exploration and creativity in me to analyze, appreciate, and create from! It's what I was really hoping to feel all along and in the end my love for Eggman remains as strong and enthusiastic as ever 🥰💜🥚

[floralovebot]

Any criticism of the fanon versions of the Trix?

Yes actually! I feel like their fanon versions aren't as bad but it's definitely there.

Imo, the worst one is Stormy as it's often racist as fuck. I get that it's very easy to assume she's black or mixed because of her hair and that she is canonically a very chaotic witch, but the fanon version goes overboard and erases literally every other part of her personality. People make it seem like her entire personality is just being the Angry One who can't control herself. And that specific fanon version is more often seen with the redesigns of her being explicitly black (and usually with much darker skin).

In canon, Stormy does get annoyed and mad pretty quickly, but she can control herself and her magic. She also has tons of moments where she's calm, teasing the others, making jokes, having fun and laughing, etc. I just really hate seeing those Oh She's So Angry Hates Everyone And That's All headcanons cause like? No? She's a (fairly) normal teenage girl who also likes to cause problems on purpose. And her being more open with her emotions than the others doesn't mean that she can't control them or that she's Always Angry.

Darcy's fanon version tends to be a bit nicer but I think that's often because people think she's hot and they want to see her in control. Fanon!Darcy is very "always suave hot girl always calm never shows emotion stronger than icy etcetc". It tends to exaggerate her better qualities instead and gets rid of things like her quick to annoyance attitude or her occasional Very Emotional When Things Go Wrong side. People tend to project on Darcy a lot more than the others so her fanon version is a lot nicer and a little more in tune with canon. It just cherry picks her personality really badly. (I've noticed people also think she's the Good trix just because she fell in love with Riven and felt bad for him which,,,)

I feel like Icy tends to get understood a lot more since she is the Main Trix and Bloom's counterpart so we see more of her and her internal dialogue which really helps. But she does still have a fanon version! Fanon!Icy typically goes in one of two ways: she's either the Super Cool (heheh) Witch who doesn't care about Bloom at all and would immediately drop her sisters and she's just so unemotional and uncaring and yaddayadda. Or she's the extremely emotional, cares so much, cries every day, Bloom always gets under her skin no matter what, thinks about Bloom all day every day, would kill herself for her sisters, can't control her powers, etc.

Like... usually Fanon Versions of characters tend to highlight and exaggerate specific qualities that the fandom likes and disregard everything else, especially if it "goes against" that fanon. So for the trix specifically, Stormy always gets the Angry And Wild trope, Darcy gets the Mature Hot Girl trope, and Icy gets one of those two depending on which aspects of her people are focusing on.

[welcome-to-grayspace]

Aight let's get some things here out of the way.

#1: I chose to reply rather than reblog because this is in fact an omori blog for omori fans that will tear into you for this one, and I felt it would be unfair to risk a bunch of people dogpiling on you at once. If you accept that though, then so be it.

#2: I never once said that it was just "too smart for you to understand", I said that it uses symbolic writing whereas you seem to prefer more literal writing. Neither is bad or better than the other, but silent hill is very literal and omori is very symbolic. Those are just the facts.

The point i was making was not that you cannot understand symbolism but rather that they're different forms of storytelling and it is unfair to expect one to fit the other's expectations and standards. It wouldn't be fair if I went into a piece of media that's very upfront with its writing expecting the symbolism of the blue curtains in some of its scenes to hold weight and then say that it's "shitty writing" if it doesn't, and it wouldn't be fair to go into a heavily symbolic piece of media and expect it to just spell everything out for me and get mad when it doesn't. Different formats, different rules. #3:

>>proceeds to use a screenshot of me pointing out CANON content in the game's code and calls it "fanon". ok buddy #4: "where's the foreshadowing?"/"Blackspace didn't have foreshadowing"

I could talk about this all day. This might be a long fucking post.

- The first scare of the game is Basil saying "Mari... She's-" before we see a photo of sunny's broken violin at the bottom of the stairs. The first. Scare. In the psych horror game.

- Basil's Something is designed to look like mari's body on the floor.

- At night we can SEE what looks like a body/mass of black hair in front of the stairs for a second before it fades - the way sunny represses an entire room of his house (the one his violin is stored in) to the point where he can't see the door most of the time. It appears briefly at night occasionally. If you interact with the blank wall it says "There is Nothing Here."

- The way he visibly backs away when everyone else is talking about/accepting mari's death in front of the treehouse (again, an obvious sign of anxiety/guilt no one else in the scene is expressing)

- the fact that sunny was the one who scribbled out the photos of mari (something you can find out in blackspace even in hikikomori routes where sunny has no other reason to know that the photos had been scribbled on)

- There's a blackspace room where an adult is chopping down a tree. They say "You are not my son." It (+ sunny's dad leaving after the incident) implies that his parents knew what really happened.

- There are blackspace rooms where the scrolling background literally contains photos from the truth sequence. This is the full background from the forest of stumps.

- Every interaction with basil results in an immediate reaction of fear, anxiety, and overwhelming guilt from basil. which would make no fucking sense if it was just a suicide that had very little to do with him. it's meant to make you ask questions. There's a whole conversation about it - every piece of dialogue in deeper well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCsWB156qdw Just to highlight a few lines: "They are the only ones who know... and one has carried it with her to her grave." "Your dear sister MARI with a bad knee... you could not bear for her to die again, so she was given the safety of a picnic blanket." (+ related to this, every instance of "the truth" being alluded to in this scene and every prior instance of mari being known to have a bad knee, what caused her to fall so easily after being pushed by someone so much younger than her in the first place) - the entire disappearance of basil as associated with sunny's trauma and guilt related to what he and basil did. Why would sunny repress basil of all people if mari had committed suicide? It's meant to make you ask questions. Honestly this is just shit I could think of off the top of my head. Others can add more if they feel like it. I could make a huge deep dive into every piece of foreshadowing in this game and it would be hours long. I'm sure other people have, and you can look into it for yourself if you'd like. but honestly after reading through your other posts it doesn't seem like you're willing to argue in good faith and I'll most likely just block and move on sometime after this. I could discuss a lot of your other posts with you but I don't see anything productive coming from it. You don't seem willing to consider other perspectives or, despite the amount of posts you've made about it, like someone who actually wants to understand this game or its messages. You've decided that it's bad and you don't care if your reasoning for it being bad is actually substantiated or not, you just want everyone to know that you think it's bad. My closing statement is that I hope you grow past this and also maybe catch up on some media literacy. Enjoy the rest of your day, or don't. Not my problem.

Fortunately, that's where the posts come in.

"In a story where we view everything from Sunny's perspective, someone who's been repressing everything about this incident so deeply"

You know what other work of fiction does this exact "protagonist with repressed memories has to face the truth of having killed their loved one" plot but does it way better? Silent Hill 2.

SH2's plot twist is that its main protagonist, James Sunderland, killed his wife Mary three years before the game's events and repressed the memory of the murder, convincing himself that Mary actually died of a terminal illness she was suffering from at the time he killed her. The terminal illness is a heavy factor in the murder - because it disfigured Mary and made her confront her own mortality at the age of 25, she repeatedly lashed out at James, who tried to take care of her despite his own despair. Eventually, watching his wife wither away and being powerless to do anything about it, Mary's mood-swings, resentment of the burden she put on him and a desire to relieve her of the misery she was in drove James to smother her with a pillow.

The reason I'm bringing it up is because SH2 actually foreshadows its twist - three out of the four characters James meets throughout the game vaguely reference that James' relationship with Mary wasn't as good as James implies it was, the fourth character (whom you fight as a boss and who killed a dog at some point before coming to Silent Hill) alludes to the fact that James must be a murderer too if he is in the town in the first place, Pyramid Head's design being based on a painting of an executioner and him pursuing James over the course of the game implies James is a criminal who wants to be punished, one of the locations James has to go through is literally a prison, etc. The "Hallway" conversation I've linked in the paragraph above is used by the game to show how James and Mary's relationship worsened after she contracted her illness; as I said, the dialogue clearly implies Mary had such mood-swings pretty frequently.

OMORI doesn't have much foreshadowing for the real cause of Mari's death, nor does it have anything similar to the "Hallway" conversation to show how harsh she got with Sunny. A good chunk of the hints the game provides (Omori's Furious emotion showing a single eye similar to Mari's hanged body, Something in the Water's little hanged bodies, Something's general design) would lead the player to believe Mari did kill herself before the story swerves around in its last hour and reveals that Sunny committed manslaughter. The only hints I could call hints are the prevalence of staircases in cutscenes before Sunny fights his fears and maybe the storage room, but even then my point stands - it's just not enough.

(oh, I also remembered the "You did it" poster in Orange Oasis. Which is an optional location, thus making crucial foreshadowing very easily missed. lol and lmao)

That brings me to your next point.

"I don't really see where a direct explanation of the build-up to the fight beyond that would fit."

Black Space.

Since it (ostensibly) represents Sunny's unpredictable subconscious, you could just make it the framing device for Sunny's backstory akin to Bojack Horseman's Time's Arrow, an episode where a character's backstory memories (traumatic and otherwise) are filtered through her emotional perception of the events at the time they happened and her unstable mental state in the present day.

A very good example of how Time's Arrow manages to convey trauma without sacrificing story is its signature scene - a formative memory from the character's childhood, in which she sees her father callously dispose of her beloved toy by burning it in the fireplace while telling her to keep her emotions in check and not to cry lest she ends up like her mother, who was lobotomized some time ago and consequently became a shadow of her former self. Since everything the audience sees in this episode is filtered through the character's emotions, her father's callousness is represented by the aforementioned fireplace behind him becoming a wall of hellfire, while her mother's status as a shadow of her former self is represented by her being a literal shadow with the lobotomy scar highlighted.

That brings me to your next point.

"A lot of the build-up due to that is expressed metaphorically through Headspace and Black Space."

Where? Literally where?

What, am I supposed to see the room with the "Peter Griffin chokes on a rice cake"-like BGM as a representation of the Deep emotional pain Sunny experienced as a result of Mari's scolding? lmao

That brings me to your next point.

Again, I was talking about the game not showing us the deterioration of Sunny and Mari's relationship over the course of their practicing. You seem to have missed that point completely, but just to make something clear

The parallel you're talking about doesn't even work. Mari was dead the moment she hit the bottom of the staircase. Basil was still alive and in active danger of dying, which means that he was able to be rescued.

Mari wasn't.

"Lots of people see spaceboy as a parallel to hero but no one thinks if sweetheart (and her chase of perfectionism all throughout the game) is a parallel for mari."

Actually, a lot of people do. It's the only theory about her I've seen floating around when people discuss the meaning she supposedly has, and I've been lurking around in this fandom for quite a while now.

By the way,

>>"People aren't just filling it in themselves like fanfiction" >>proceeds to use fanon interpretations as an argument

If that style of writing isn't something you like, that's ok! Completely understandable, not everyone wants to pick through the details for things like that

Implying that the work you're defending is just Too Genius™ for your interlocutor to understand isn't a great way to endear them to your argument.

But I wouldn't necessarily call it bad writing. You're allowed to not like something without it being inherently bad or poorly made.

The inverse is also true - you're allowed to like something without it being good! What constitutes a "good" work of fiction is subjective, after all. I have my own fair share of works I'm really fond of despite how shitty they are lol

Just don't get all defensive and insist that the work you like is too Subtle and Intricate to understand when someone points out the very glaring and numerous flaws.

(also bro really said "agree to disagree" and then wrote me a giant reply justifying their opinion lmao)

@welcome-to-grayspace

[narcissa-black-supermacy]

Ohh elaborate on the Mena house of Black :D

ok so. I think after all the time i spent ranting about this, it's time for the official dissertation. If someone reads this and is still not convinced that the Blacks are mena-coded, talk to me (that's a threat). @soloorganaas feel free to add on if i missed something

Note: MENA is short for the geographical region of Middle East-North Africa which includes a variety of ethnicities and cultures that share certain traits and stereotypes I'll be addressing here.

Disclaimer: I have lived my entire life in the Levant. I am speaking from my own experience with these cultures not within British diaspora. If anybody can provide input on that, it will be great.

my main points (going from the more superficial things to the more niche topics)

Very obvious non-white features and appearance among the majority of the members

French being used as a second native language in many mena regions ("toujours pur")

Big, multi-sibling families in comparison to most pure-bloods in canon

Cousin intermarriage (is second cousin marriage incest?)

Frequent reuse of names

The tapestry

Pure-blood mania as a parallel to mena religious Sectarianism

12GP being located at the heart of muggle London

Family values, betrayal and "all or nothing" approach (= mena blood feud culture)

JKR's tendency to let her internal biases seep through her writing unintentionally

Let's tackle these one by one, I will try to be short (HA that's funny. under the cut):

(I will highlight the main points in bold for those of you who don't want to read through all of my ramblings)

Very obvious non-white features and appearance. I think this one is self-explanatory. Sirius, Bellatrix, Regulus, Walburga - except for Narcissa, who is intentionally altered to resemble the Malfoys since page one, all of the Black are described to have very non-white features and appearance. Black curly hair and grey eyes are extremely common in the NA + Levant region, regardless of skin colour.

The most wide-spread fanon ethnicity for the Blacks appears to be French. Genuinely no idea where that came from. I am guessing that some of it stems from the "toujours pur" line, to which, I must point out: tons of regions in MENA have been French colonies. French is taught at schools (I learned French at school before English), spoken alongside Arabic/Hebrew/etc within the family, used for things like slogans and mottos. Kill the idea that French is only spoke in France and if a character speaks French it gives us a clear idea of where they come from.

This is something I don't see talked about, but the Blacks have very abnormally large families in comparison to the rest of the pure-bloods we are presented with in canon. Most are only children (James, Remus, Peter, Draco, Lucius, so on) and the only exception to the rule is the Weasleys, who are constantly ridiculed for it by others. Cygnus and Druella have 3 daughters. Walburga has 2 sons and she comes from a family of 3 siblings. Orion's parents are 3 siblings, Walburga's parents are 3. The generation before their parents are 4 siblings. The one before it is 4 as well. Anyway. There's a pattern. See? The average number of children for the Blacks appears to be 3, while for most pure-blood families, even 2 is way above the average.

Cousin intermarriage - also pretty self explanatory? Might be a bit of a harmful stereotype here, but it's true - second cousin intermarriage is not seen as a big deal in most MENA cultures, to this day, and definitely not back then. It is much more widespread than in most European cultures, I believe.

Reuse of names - another very common trait in all MENA cultures. My husband has 7 Mordechai's and 8 Moris'es just in the last 3 generations of his family. Half of my cousins are called Muhammad. Typical.

The tapestry - another example of something that's portrayed as strange in canon, but is actually typical MENA culture. I don't think I know a single Arab or Jewish family that does not have some kind of equivalent of the Black family tapestry showing off their lineage generations back. And the disowned family members get taken off, yes, that's a thing.

Pure-blood mania as a parallel to MENA religious sectarianism Now, THIS is something I want to focus on. Most MENA cultures are very sectarian. Not in a "well, duh, it's the middle east" kind of way - I am talking about the most progressive regions and cities. People will consider themselves progressive, support women's and LGBT rights, but still view intermarriage as a dirty thing. Religious intermarriage between the different sects of Christians, Jews, Shias, Sunnis etc is strictly forbidden and frowned upon almost everywhere. Now, you might say - well, isn't this just a general pure-blood thing? No. The Blacks are NOT modal pure-bloods. They are a very radical, extreme version of it. I would argue that the average pure-bloods look like the Malfoys - who are stated to be rather moderate, not accepting muggle-borns, but having no problem with half-bloods. The Blacks' pure-blood mania dates back to before Voldemort's rise, it's a family trait passed through generations, and it goes beyond the regular pure-blood snobbism. This is typical, by-the-book sectarianism.

12GP being located at the heart of muggle London This is an interesting one, I think, because it might not be as obvious as the others. The Blacks are very known bigots and muggle-haters, but surprisingly, unlike most pure-bloods we know (even the muggle friendly ones!), their house is located at the HEART of muggle London. Why the hell is that? This actually makes PERFECT SENSE if you understand how Sectarianism works, which ties back to point N 7. Typical religious sectarianism does NOT look like western racism or bigotry. Sectarianism is NOT hatred or fear. Different sects across MENA work together, study together, even make friends on occasion, but they make this very strict separation between accepting the presence of someone different in their immediate surroundings, and actually letting them into their circle. In other words: we can work with muggle-borns and blood-traitors. We can study with them. They are allowed to exist. Actually, we will go out of our way to live among them, state our existence, remind them who is the boss, but we will not engage. We will not marry them, we will not let them into our house. This is sectarianism. It's a behaviour VERY specific to the Blacks in the HP universe, not pure-bloods in general.

Family values, betrayal and "all or nothing" approach (= mena blood feud culture) Blood feud culture is a strong thing in all MENA cultures, even to this day. Blood feud can be used to mean revenge on someone who hurt a member of your family, OR it can also mean "honour killing" within the family itself. If a member of the family is considered to be a disgrace and brings shame with a certain type of their behaviour (that is typically a young unmarried woman who slept with a man outside of a permitted relationship, an openly LGBT individual, someone who speaks against the political stance of the family). Reminds you of something? Yep. Disownment, disinheritance, the only thing we do not see here is the Blacks actively seeking to kill the members who have left. Again, this is NOT typical pure-bloods behaviour, this is something we see specifically within their family. Just like with Sectarianism, this is classic, by-the-book Blood Feud culture and honour killing.

JKR's tendency to let her internal biases seep through her writing unintentionally Do I think JKR consciously sat down and said "let's write the Blacks as mena-coded characters"? Of course not. Just like she did not intend for many things to come off the way they did (like wolfstar, desi potters, etc), but that happened. I think it's natural that when you are raised with certain biases and stereotypes towards a certain group, it will seep through when you're writing characters that are meant to be "evil" and "bad". Again, maybe it's just me. But there are simply way too many similarities and coincidences. I remember reading and watching HP with my siblings when the books/movies were just coming out, and we were all 100% convinced that the Blacks being Arab is just... common knowledge. It wasn't until I started engaging with the Western fandom that I realised it wasn't.

This is all, I think. Well, not nearly all, but these are my main points. It's been long overdue. Feel free to shoot me an ask if you want me to elaborate on something.

[danny-chase]

The whole 'Lazarus Pit Madness' sounds like something some author decided to explore in a fic and suddenly BAM, everyone was using that or thinking it was canon. It happens a lot in the fandom, like Stephanie loving waffles or baby stalker Tim Drake. Honestly I'm really curious if the whole "Bruce started using Jason's death as a cautionary tale/he dismissed Jason's accomplishments as Robin" is true or also popular fanon. Any thoughts on that one?

So like... it's hard to say and it's also tricky territory because author's 100% come off as victim blamey when they have characters talk about Jason as Robin because they needed to somehow justify Tim being Robin after Jason died.

Some of this also has to do with the differences between pre-crisis and post-crisis Jason. A lot of the way fandom thinks of Jason's time as Robin seems to be influenced by both - the stealing tires off the Batmobile comes from post-crisis and the happy go lucky kid comes more from pre-crisis. Post-crisis Jason also wasn't around for a ton of time before he died, but he's the one all forms of modern Jason are based off of (in flashbacks as well). (And side note, it's not 100% clear how much of pre-crisis appearances carried over, but I'm 95% sure Jason's appearances in The New Teen Titans/The New Titans carry over because of a few lines surrounding Dick reacting to Jason's death).

Part of the reason fandom claims Jason was turned into a cautionary tale by Bruce is that whenever characters think about Jason they describe him as reckless. These characters do not remember pre-crisis Jason. This is the Jason they remember:

Batman (1940) #415

In this case Jason attacks Crane by himself, putting on a gas mask and throwing a bucket down to smash the glass... despite Bruce telling him not to. He does succeed at taking down the scarecrow but Bruce is annoyed because he didn't follow the instructions and doesn't want him "taking any unnecessary risk before I think he's ready."

It's hardly the only time Bruce scolds Jason for being reckless, in post-crisis, Jason swaps himself for hostages in his very first mission

Batman (1940) #410

(He's also a little nerd which is hilarious like do you mind if i stay up to do extra homework ssbjfjeksks). But I do want to highlight here that at least at first Bruce saw the recklessness not as a problem. In the issue after this he's momentarily dissapointed by Jason losing his temper against Two-Face (he just found out Two-Face was presumed responsible for his father's death).

In #416 Brue calls Jason "sloppy" while narrating and notes that it's not easy keeping him alive. Dick is annoyed because Jason messed up his drug bust (by the end of the issue they do kick ass together and Dick leaves on good terms).

By #421 we're here

Batman (1940) #421

Notably after this is the Felipe Garzonas case and Jason dies shortly after. My point in all this is laying out the context in which Bruce viewed Jason leading up to his death.

Here's some of his narration from #426, the first issue of death in the family.

"I should have known something like this would happen. Robin-- Jason Todd-- had been acting odd of late. Very moody. Resentful. Reckless. That attitude is about to get him killed."

"He obviously has a dangerously high level of aggressive energy to work off."

Basically Bruce comes to the conclusion that he should have like gotten Jason help coping with his parents deaths before he started training him to be Robin and fires Jason from Robin, and from there you know the story. All of this is to point out that Bruce watched Jason steadily grow more violent and reckless up to his death (and before I get angry anons saying all those people deserved it, yes the reason for Jason's actions is understandable, but to Bruce, this is what he's observing). I've seen people almost be surprised when it comes up in recent canon (most recently with the Nightwing Annual). But they started the whole "Jason is reckless" thing right after post-crisis hit.

Now with this added context, when the characters talk about Jason post him dying what they're saying isn't quite as idk damning. Jason dying also recontextualized how Bruce saw his relationship with Dick (remember when he said being reckless was something Dick would have done)

From The New Titans #55

Bruce: "You were lucky. When you didn't listen to me, your injuries weren't fatal. Of course, by the time I properly trained you--"

Dick: "Bruce, c'mon... lay off. I'm not here to fight."

And later

Bruce: "Why did I think I needed a partner? They slow you down! They make you worry about them rather than doing your job! He wouldn't listen. He wanted to do everything his way. He was just like you. In a few years I would have had to fire him as I did to you."

And so to some extent Dick has also been recontextualized as a reckless Robin in the modern era, most notably in his Robin: Year One story and in his origin story which has been told countless times. So this phenomenon isn't unique to Jason it's part of how DC justifies Bruce taking the first two Robins in, in the first place.

Now getting to the times in canon where Jason's been discussed to the younger members of the Batfam. First off we have Tim, who already knows Jason died and wasn't really told anything about it. In his introduction he kind of has a weird bias against Jason.

From Batman (1940) #440

Tim (narrating): "He [Bruce] seemed happier with Dick."

He also is pretty obsessed with Dick. Even recounting their first meeting he talks about remembering nothing about the circus except Dick and the show, and had tons of nightmares due to the whole watching Dick's parents die thing, which cemented the quadruple flip in his brain. So he's pretty biased. Anyways, no one actually told him what really happens and he makes a lot of assumptions about Jason, based on the news reports and clips he's seen of post-crisis Jason (he was also following the news on Dick as well). Here's how he talks about Jason (and remember, Dick and Bruce haven't actually told him anything about Jason):

He's kinder in his analysis of Jason here, Detective Comics #618:

Tim (narrating): "When Gotham needed him, he was there. When the Batman needed him, he was there. He was a hero. But he was nothing special, really. Just a boy, who was taught-- trained-- brought to his full potential by someone who knew how. Just a boy... like me. I can do it. I know I can. One day I'll be as good as Jason. One day I'll wear the suit."

From Batman (1940) #445, he's more judgemental:

Tim (narrating): "You think my anger will boil over, the way Jason's did. I can assure you, it won't."

And in the next issue he hallucinates/dreams (he wakes up at the end) Dick and Jason and here's what his mind conjures up:

Batman (1940) #456

😬😬😬😬 So 100% Jason was turned into a cautionary tale here, but it wasn't by Bruce it was by Tim. It's not completely bad takes all the time, though, the arc shows he feels pressure to live up to the mantle's expectations (Dick making the mantle a world wide icon and Jason dying for it are 2 things he cites).

Now the next time I recall Jason being brought up by Tim is when Dick and Tim have the following conversation, and for context this is also the issue where Dick tells the story of almost getting beaten to death by Two Face.

Robin (1993) #0 aka Tim forces Dick to talk about his trauma because we needed exposition

Dick (about Two Face story): "Look, can we talk about this later?"

Tim: "I'm sorry, Nightwing. It's just that you can answer lot of questions for me."

Dick: "Okay, fire another one at me."

Tim: "How about Jason Todd?"

Dick: "You don't throw softballs, do you? Jason was a different case. He was a street kid, a thief. Batman saw something in Jason-- a toughness. Maybe he decided it was time for a new kind of Robin. Jason had the right stuff. He held his own against the worst Gotham had to offer. But Jason was reckless. The role of Robin turned him into a daredevil. He took chances. Openly defied Batman's orders."

<cutting in for a second, you'll notice Dick is repeating to Tim something Bruce told him back in their fight in The New Titans #55>

Dick: "And that's what killed him. He went solo against the Joker. I never thought there'd be another Robin after that."

And I'm not sure why Dick came to this conclusion, unlike Tim he wasn't following the news, and he met Jason. Bruce never actually told Dick how Jason died, so my assumption is that at some point he read the case file, which may or may not have had Bruce noting that he fired Jason for being reckless right before Jason died. And the whole "he died because he was like you" thing definitely left an impact onto how Dick saw Jason. Dick's not lecturing Tim here though about some kind of cautionary tale, Tim asked about Jason and he answered based off his post-crisis memories of Jason.

Post this, Tim brings Jason up in this argument insinuating he thinks Jason was reckless:

Teen Titans (2003) #6

Bruce: "You need to listen to reason, Robin. You're acting too emotional. Disobeying orders, like--"

Tim: "Like Jason?"

Bruce: "You're nothing like Jason."

And being willing to bring up Jason in arguments isn't a one time thing.

Batman: Gotham Knights #26

Dick: "One: as long as you're with Batman-- or me-- you're safe. Neither of us would ever let anything happen to you. Two: We don't quit. Not once has anyone who knows Batman's mission failed to get up again after being knocked down. And three: Batman doesn't kill. Not ever."

Tim: "One: Jason Todd. Two: James Gordon. Three: So far. Sorry."

Which is off the beaten track of cautionary tale but it's still not very respectful of Jason's memory (at least he apologizes in Gotham Knights though).

So that's it for Tim, moving onto Cass. This is the first time Jason's brought up by Bruce to a protege (that I've found). For context Cass lost her perfect fighting skills and Bruce fires her from Batgirl because he doesn't want her getting killed:

Batgirl (2000) #7

This is a pretty far cry from the Bruce we saw before, talking about how reckless Jason was and how Dick was lucky, etc. etc. Out of universe I think this is partly because we don't need to justify Cass becoming Batgirl the way there needed to be justification for Tim (your average joe) becoming Robin. In universe it could point to Bruce having some growth and accepting that all of them are reckless (unfortunately he looses it by the time UTRH happens). To me Jason isn't a cautionary tale here, rather he's the reason Bruce is so committed to keeping his proteges safe.

However probably the scene that people took and ran with is this one (link) from Detective Comics #790. Bruce draws parallels between Jason and Steph here, describing them both at reckless (again, he's not wrong, but he's still a hypocrite), and saying "maybe it's not too late for Stephanie." But he doesn't use this as a cautionary tale for someone straight to their face, he's telling this to Cass, and only Cass. He doesn't go blabbing this theory to Barbara, Dick, or Tim. And it does come out of a legitimate concern of seeing areas where Steph and Jason were similar. However he is using Jason's death to justify keeping Steph out of action. (Side note: which is complete bullshit, the way he treats Steph screams of misogyny because she's not all that much different than Tim and it's implied by Alfred he used her as Robin to bait Tim into coming back) Anyways, this all happens right before War Games and so... this was basically a scene foreshadowing Steph's death.

Something else to point out is Cass notes that no one ever talks about Jason. They don't bring him up willy nilly - neither Dick or Bruce likes talking about Jason.

Onto Damian. I think if Dick tried lecturing Damian about how he needs to be careful or something because Jason died, Damian would call him a loser. After the events of Battle for the Cowl, Damian does his homework on the Red Hood, as even though no one told him anything, he knows enough to insult Jason.

Batman & Robin (2009) #5

Dick: "Jason Todd. Be careful, he's--"

Damian: "The second Robin, the one after you. He looked different the last time we slapped him around."

<side note: the last time they "slapped him around" jason shot damian in the chest and nearly killed him but go off damian 😂>

Damian: "Back for more? I heard you had your brains beaten out by the Joker, but I had no idea you were this big of an idiot."

<side note again: Jason is firmly established as a villain at this point, Damian has 0 allegiances to him and no reason to be kind, especially because Jason nearly killed him last time>

Later in this issue we get Dick's incredibly brief explanation to Damian being:

Dick: "Bruce thought he could save Jason... and he might have if the Joker hadn't gotten to him first with a crowbar and high explosives."

So to Damian, Jason was very much not a cautionary tale.

As for the other kids? Steph never even heard about Jason, because the writers never took her as a serious part of the Batfam (outside of maybe Dixon, who's own writing was steeped in misogyny). Duke roasts Jason for dying, which is hilarious, but in the new52 and rebirth Jason's alive, so there's not really a point to cautionary tales. I don't even know if Harper knows he died.

TL;DR: In the comics I've read, Jason's not treated as a cautionary tale by Bruce for the most part, with a couple exceptions that I've listed here. It's not anywhere close to the magnitude of what fandom makes it out to be 🤷‍♀️

[undertale-data]

[Image Description: an Undertale chat box with the name "Frisk" in its center, between a talksprite of Frisk's monotone face on the left and the EGG, a sun, and "WED", taken from the Dating Hub, on the right. End I.D.]

Frisk received a total of 59 votes, meaning that 2.2% of responders picked them as a favorite. However, these numbers only tell part of the story. In our analysis of which characters people create content of, Frisk was the third most popular, beaten only by Papyrus and Sans. This implies that a lot of fans care deeply about Frisk, but for whatever reason, they are not usually fans’ number one choice. This makes our data on them somewhat limited, but there are still some interesting repeated sentiments. They were also often brought up by people who claimed they liked too many characters to choose, so we analyzed those responses as well.

Many loved the ambiguous nature of Frisk’s character. The empty spaces in their characterization allow some fans to project onto them easily.

Some go as far as calling Frisk “a blank slate for the player,” although this is not technically true, as they are revealed to be their own person at the end of the True Pacifist route. This reveal was pointed out by a few responders, and many more love that their character raises interesting questions about how much of the game is based on Frisk’s choices, and how much is the player’s.

Frisk is also canonically nonbinary, which is very important to many responders. Our demographics analysis revealed that a very large portion of the Undertale fandom is nonbinary or questioning their gender, and it may be representation like Frisk that drew them into the game. Others noted being surprised by a nonbinary main character, and only realizing that being nonbinary was an option at all because of them.

There are also many fans who love to see the variety of fanon interpretations for them. Most commonly, fans pointed out the common headcanons that Frisk is nonverbal and/or autistic.

They tend to be demonized less than Chara, but many fans do find it interesting to explore their role as the catalyst for both the best and worst endings in the game. Many enjoy exploring the moral questions this brings up,

Many love that the few things that the game does reveal about Frisk show that they are a complex character with a distinct personality, although their backstory and motivations are never revealed. They are often seen as a cute little kid with an unhappy past, who makes mistakes even when doing their best, but, despite everything, continues moving forward.

Highlights: (under the cut)

I love how their personality is often portrayed in the fandom : very stone faced and ‘dry’ but silly, confident, and clever.

amazing child filled with compassion and determination

The interface between the player and Frisk makes for a fascinating moral question, about free will, and how much you can expect a child to do

Frisk was also my first real introduction to trans/nonbinary people, and some fanart/writing of them introduced me to what autism could look like outside of mainstream media. (I'm a trans and autistic teen, for reference.)

We went through what Frisk went through and felt at times determined and hopeless as them. They held us and we held them and after everything we’re still us.

i like the variability of interpretations for both them and chara. they can be sweet or an asshole (plus many many more traits) and it can all fit into canon!

Frisk may be more open to fandom interpretation, but honestly, that's probably why I like them the most. I like imagining a scrappy young kid doing their best, committing mistakes, living and laughing... I like the fanon character traits that have established themselves independent from what few canon facts we know. I like the few sprinkled-in tidbits we DO get. A character so malleable and yet with defining borders.

Because of the choices, everything Frisk does, can change the route of that world, and the little details that happen with their choices, I love that because, let everything open to happen, do you want to make friends with Toriel? you can, do you want to put hot cats on your head, well Sans do that for you, do you want to have a bad time? You can.

[Image Description: A wordcloud in the shape of Frisk’s full body sprite on a white background. Their face, hair, and feet are brown, their shirt is blue and purple, and their eyes and mouth are black. Their face has been left free of text. Some of the most visible words are: Frisk, Player, Love, Kind, Kid, Person, and Game, which represent the most common words in the essays people wrote about them. End of ID]

Read the full list of responses shared with permission by clicking this link.

[theangelshavethephonebox]

Hiiii

Welcome to the decaverse, I'll be your guide (to misquote a popular Who person). I saw in the notes that @interestingturnofthetables wants to know about this too, so, tagging you!

This was literally posted a couple days ago, so, perfect timing!

I'd also like to highlight:

yeah, wiki is good but they don't have enough detail, which is why I made my own wiki! It's for the deca fic, though, not doctor who's deca as a whole, and is rather sparse atm (I'm working on it!) but I hope it will be useful for this exact purpose in the future

Divided Loyalties, a past doctor adventure by Gary Russell, was where it all began in terms of the Deca. It's a good read, and not too long- I have pdfs in my pinned post, or you can buy your own copy! They're super cheap. I bought mine on eBay for £2

There are lots of other Whoniverse stories that mention the Deca, but really they just give us little pieces, tidbits to piece together, like "oh yeah I was in the deca haha. Remember that time I nearly killed our teacher". It's usually quite limited like that.

However, there are some stories which reveal more. Usually these ones are about the doctor's childhood, more than the deca as a whole- for example, "Master", the 49th Main Range audio by big finish, is where the whole Torvic thing comes from. You know, that one time the Doctor killed his and the Master's bully to save the Master's life, and then they burned his body together, and then the Doctor was overcome with such guilt that he made a deal with Death to make the Master think he was the one who did the murder? Hahahaha such a normal thing to happen. We're all normal over here I promise (:

(that last sentence was a lie)

So yeah, mostly stories give us little tidbits, but some are a bit bigger, deca-wise. However, most of it is down to fanon.

This fandom survives, thrives, and is wholly maintained on our fanfic. Specifically, The Deca Series, also called 'the deca fic' by Barnable on AO3. This is the lifeblood of our fandom. It's super long and very good and to me is more canon than divided Loyalties lol. Here's a link to the first chapter:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18218900/chapters/43101983

But there are also loads of other amazing fics, poems, art, animatics, and so much more! This fandom is small but everyone has something to offer, from 600000 word fics to gorgeous art to theories to questions. I'd recommend searching in the Tumblr tags "the deca" or "doctor who academy era" to find out more!

Search AO3 for things like "the deca", or tags like "the deca" "doctor who academy era - freeform", etc to find amazing fics!

Also, I know it's all redlinked atm, but I've been trying to put together a list of every deca story, so, see the "doctor who" section of this page and then maybe go to TARDIS.wiki/wiki and have a look at any stories you don't recognise?

Okay, now, fanon. Honestly the fanon is considered more key/more true than canon by a lot of fans lol. Anywhere, here are kind of the big ones:

*takes a big breath in* Millennia has blue hair (will be canon soon if all goes according to plan) Ushas is a dinosaur autistic (basically canon) who dates Magnus (canon) who is the unofficial leader of the Deca and has insane UST with Mortimus (fanon) who is a stoner (will be canon soon I promise, I'm working on it) and kind of a slut and also we have rich boy Koschei who had a shit childhood (basically canon) and is in a toxic but loving relationship with Theta (basically canon) who fucking hates Vansell (canon). Vansell is a weasel shithead but also he and Thete have definitely hatefucked. And Theta is trans.

I think those are the main things... Oh, and, if you don't know about Vansell, it's all in divided Loyalties. Basically, Theta stole a TARDIS with Millennia and Rallon, met the toymaker, got his friends killed (well, taken over by the TM/turned into a doll), and came back to find that Vansell had been working for the CIA all along and had turned him in and so gets expelled.

That's why we hate Vansell on this blog. Fuck that guy all my homies hatefuck Vansell.

I'm actually in the process of making a masterpost of my deca headcanons, including deca fanon, so tell me if you want me to tag you in that for when I finally post it in like 507 years probably lol

Okay, I think that's it! Tell me if you need anything else, I like talking about this a lot hehe

helloooo

is there any sort of guide to the all lore of the deca group?

I am REALLY loving it but I dunno where do I gather l o r e info for writing and stuff

is there some basic fanons I should know?? what audios I should listen to??

all I did was reading wiki pages but I suppose they don't have enough details

so please I need someone to guide me before I start writing long angsty fic based on my guesses aidhaodnakdnkqapdiiqjsnfn

[jackoshadows]

I don't know why is so hard for neutrals to just let us enjoy things. I don't mind letting them enjoy things, it's just that they get mad that we like the key five characters and want to make content for them. Why can't we have events and such? Nobody is saying they can't enjoy their faves. Is just so petty and mean.

Its a form of fandom elitism wherein they hold that their enjoyment and understanding of the material is higher than that of us lesser plebs because they 'analyze' how GRRM is borrowing from 'Heart of Darkness' 🤣🤣 while we are simply enjoying gifsets of our favorite characters.

What got me was the same person who said that they were sick of Jon and Arya - because of one day of Jon & Arya content - and how people didn't really understand that Arya's story was not about Jon, then went on to make some nonsensical comparison of Quentyn's journey to heart of darkness 🤣🤣 because only they understand the themes of these books you see? And by the way, who was saying that Arya's story was fully about Jon? These are the kind of strawman arguments these people make to depict other fans as less than them. Jon is an important part of Arya's story, but no one was saying that he's the only part of her story. It's Jon month, we were celebrating this aspect of Jon's story, not reducing Arya to Jon.

But this is typical of these people and their strawman arguments.

If we highlight that Arya is canonically pretty the strawman argument is why are people reducing Arya to her appearance, that is not important and those who did this are pedophiles sexualizing her. If we highlight Arya's relationship with Jon, the strawman argument is that we are making Arya's story to be all about Jon when she's an important character in her own right and has other things to do.

It's like we have to always choose for Arya. And we only have to choose their version of the story.

And secondly notice how none of their ire is for any Sansa content - which is like 50% of what fandom produces on places like Tumblr. Sansa has the most fanon stuff that I have seen for any character in ASoIaF. Fanon Sansa is almost unrecognizable from the book version and we don't get any of these people lecturing the plebs about how they are wrong about Sansa. The target of these people are always, always Jon, Arya and Dany stans.

On any given day, the Arya and Jon tags would have so much Sansa content. There would be like fifty different versions of 'The same blood runs through you blah blah' and 'It would be so sweet to see him again', there's so much fanart, there's so much fanon stuff for Sansa - and these people have no complaints about any of that. They reblog, they enjoy, they comment. So they don't even have a problem with main characters per se. It's only Jon, Dany and Arya that triggers them something awful.

Sansa is a very popular character, which granted she's the type of character tumblr and reddit dudebros love. But that's what highlights fandom hypocrisy and double standards. We get a month for actual book Jon Snow and his canon relationships and story arc and there's so much outrage about it - why are we clogging the tags, why are we making Arya's story to be about Jon, hosting 'Sun Dragon' week and giving Aegon Jon's story, hosting Sansa month the same time as Arya month and then they have the gall to act as if they are above drama and fandom wank after being this pissy and entitled.

ASoIaF fandom is unfortunately trash. And I am not sure how much longer I am going to be sticking around when there's no new content and it's just assholes creating drama every other day.

[avenger-hawk]

i never really understood why people ship itachi and shisui. i mean didn't shisui tell him to see him as an older brother? and we didn't see much of their relationship anyway so nothing about them seems romantic or sexual to me. and it wasn't the same as say narusasu where their whole relationship is layed out for us to see. i know shiita is not really your topic of interest but what do you think?

I’m not a big fan of Shiita cause I find it boring, but I can see why people ship them. First of all people ship characters for much less than the moments Itachi and Shisui have together in the anime (cause in the manga there’s pretty much nothing)...tbh I ship characters for interacting even less, for their potential or whatever. So I can’t judge shiita shippers, because like I wrote here and here, Shisui and Itachi share values and ideals, they spent a lot of time together and they trusted each other, even Itachi who never trusts anyone trusted Shisui, so it’s a lot.

About elements seemingly romantic or se/xual actually how many characters have se/xually charged moments? not many, and yet ppl ship them lol. Like me. Or heterosexual couples, they have no se/xually charged moment and yet...

Sometimes a good close combat fight is enough to suggest something se/xual that might happen/be imagined, sometimes a few words are. Sometimes you don’t need much to have a glimpse of how some characters’ relationships and dynamics are. Team Taka, for example, don’t have much screen time, but you can totally understand the bond between them. And if you want to see them as brotherly, ok, if you want to see more, there is space for it as well. That’s how shipping works.

What bothers me about Shiita is fanon, because some fandom headcanons became the norm, so (and I’m not referring to anyone in particular, don’t feel attacked. I just remember random things I saw online) there is kinda shy Itachi who enjoys to become a submissive bottom with Shisui (I mean there are controlling people/characters who like to be sub and this fan opinion makes sense, but now it’s the only one and I’d like to see more variety, because the opposite makes sense too), Shisui who’s a dork even tho he was one of the most feared Konoha shinobi and he was the one who influenced Itachi’s ideals, and Sasuke being the third weel, always jealous and possessive of Itachi even tho he was never like this in canon and he respected Shisui very much (in the anime he calls him Shisui-san when he was a child).

Another thing that bothers me is the ‘wholesome’ concept that now gets applied to that ship and from which a lot of ppl seem to judge those tho like different stuff in fictional pairings. Ofc wholesome is an option and it makes a lot of sense for them, but there can be more.

(also in the past I wrote a darkfic where there is shiita. needless to say it wasn’t received well in that fandom lol)

Since you mentioned NS I have the same problem with that fandom’s portrayal cause despite the many moments they have, and despite the ending, which highlighted how unhealthy and un-wholesome their relationship is, they misinterpret both characters and they reduce them in an ooc couple made of a grumpy selfish drama queen and a selfless ball of sunshine, and both are wrong because Sasuke is a selfless character who’s passive in relationships and Nar is a very assertive personality who’s not selfless at all and who’s totally dominant and possessive to Sasuke. But I have a whole tag abt how I see them.