#its been 8 YEARS?!?!?

[animelover329]

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been getting back into fandoms I was in between 2014 and 2020.

It's been strange. I see all of the fanart I saw during those times, and I see new fanart with it. I remember finding the fanfics and art for the first time and experience it that way too. It's like I'm falling in love with all of it again.

It's also making me feel really old. Like, the biggest one I'm looking back at right now, Yuuri!!! On Ice, it released in 2016..... and now it's 2024, and I'm not a teen anymore, and I'm not obsessing over it like I did back then. But even 8 years later, I still feel the same emotions, just with nostalgia interlaced with them.

It just feels so weird, but I love it. I love going back and being able to see things from a new perspective and being able to look at things closer.

It's a nice, bittersweet change.....

[ruporas]

captain's warm hugs! (id in alt)

[crabfungi]

Happy late valentines <3

Havent touched hs since I was but a lad... got dragged back to the pits of hell it seems

I liked the sketch lol

[lilybug-02]

"You ever wonder what would have happened if we had died for real?"

[horseshoemybeloved]

AW LORD HES DRUMMIN PATREECE ON DRUMS RED ALERT RED ALERT

[andr0nap]

experienced a naruto renaissance in april

[beananium]

*remembers the best gamefaqs forum question of all time*

[yangscowlick]

Because the “shrodinger’s queerbait” nonsense will never go away, indulge me an analogy (and a long post).

wlw ships are the “made from scratch” cake in a world where we only ever expect cake mix from the box.

Say you have a show where, in the first interaction between a male and female character, there is a red box. It could be a Betty Crocker box of cake mix. Because all it takes is just one smile — one wink — one raised eyebrow— and the fans don’t question it. We’re clearly making a cake here. The box is red.

Meanwhile, you have two female characters building their own relationship that have elements that could build to romance. There are eggs in the fridge. A few more episodes, there’s flour in the pantry. Sugar. Baking powder. Queer fans start whispering…we could be making a cake here. Other fans scoff “you will read into anything. They’re just eggs! Everyone has eggs in their fridge!” Maybe so, maybe not. They are written off as discrete ingredients, nothing to see here.

That red box is still sitting in the pantry. Obviously we’re going with that one, and it’s definitely cake mix. That guy and girl stood next to each other again.

The wlw relationship is now full-on batter. It was a cake recipe all along, but it’s not baked yet. The crowd that wrote off every ingredient is now saying the writers are just going to “squander” that box that could be ready-made cake mix or that they’re being “forced” to bake a cake with the very ingredients the writers deliberately bought and put in their pantry.

Now it’s in the oven, the cake is baking. That crowd will still insist it’s forced, or maybe its actually something else, or it’s rushed, or it’s pandering. Whether the writers painstakingly built a pantry to make the cake they truly wanted or they were cultivating good ingredients and realized they had the fixings for a more decadent cake and went there, it doesn’t matter. It’s still a recipe. One that fans who always have to piece together ingredients had hoped for or saw from the get-go, despite being scoffed at and disparaged. Just because that crowd didn’t see (or refused to see) those ingredients as part of a whole, doesn’t make it any less of a recipe.

And wlw fans shouldn’t have to keep writing essays to demonstrate that the wlw “cake” has all the ingredients every cake mix does, or keep pointing out that fans were ready to believe a cake was being baked when they saw a nondescript box, but that they’ll do anything to discredit or doubt the cake from scratch that’s now cooling off on the counter.

It is partly a function of heteronormativity from the audience in immediately seeing romance in any whisper of interaction between m/f characters and passing off all charged interactions between female characters are sisterly or platonic. And it also comes from writers, who are either being cautious so as not to spook corporate overlords or audiences, or who are preserving plausible deniability.

To take the analogy further, box cake mix is fine! It works! It is, practically speaking, what a lot of folks know by default. I thought I was a Duncan Hines girl once myself. Vanilla cake mix has the ingredients measured out, it’s a safe bet, it tastes like cake.

But it doesn’t mean every red box is cake mix. And it doesn’t make the cake that had to be pieced together from scratch due to censorship, caution, time, narrative build-up, what-have-you, any less of a cake.

[crabussy]

I like him :3

[feliichu]

8 YEARS BABEY!

[marblerose-rue]

messy thing of my lioden king

[rueclfer]

i need everyone to stop saying touya todoroki is dead unless you want me to end up in a psych ward

[patt-is-cool]

hangin out :]

[sallytwo]

be nice to me!

[nagoeunie]

x

[punktimez]

NO YAMATO!!! HOLDING IT IN DOESNT DO ANYTHING!!!!!