#look i know this is stupid fandom shipping discourse and it doesn’t matter but i’m the kind of person who should be engaging in it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ljf613 · 4 years ago

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So could you please explain Sessrin to me? I'm not in the fandom nor have I watched the show but from what little I've been told the antis (as usual) have completely mischaracterized the whole thing.

P. S. Can we please ban grooming from the fandom lexicon? It lacks semantic meaning other than age gap bad.

Well, it’s been a while since I last saw/read Inuyasha, and I’m super-behind on Yashahime, but I do love SessRin and am pretty bummed about the amount of hate this ship has been getting lately, so I’m going to do my best to share why I love these two so much.

First off, anyone who uses the word ‘grooming’ either doesn’t know what that word means, or was not seeing the same story I was. The definition of grooming is “befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, and sometimes the family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse.” This never happened. Sesshomaru did not look at this traumatiized child and go “hmm, how I can I best get her to trust me so that I can convince her to sleep with me” or whatever-- in fact, a large part of their dynamic is Rin choosing, over and over, to stand by him even as he is actively trying to push her away. (And considering that I suspect many of these antis are also Sesshomaru fans, the fact that they’re so quick to launch such a serious and out-of-character accusation at him is rather strange.)

Here’s their story in a nutshell (and, again, I may be slightly misremembering details, it’s been a while): Rin, whose entire family was slaughtered by human bandits, comes across Sesshomaru in the woods and is initially terrified because, you know, demon. However, despite her fear, she realizes that he’s been injured and incapacitated, and does her best to try and help him (cleaning his wounds, getting him food and water, etc). Sesshomaru, who, up until this point, has been a fairly typical demonic antagonist with your standard mindset of, “humans are stupid, selfish, and weak,” is understandably bewildered by this, and tries to scare her off. It doesn’t really work. This goes on for some time. (Several days? Weeks? IDEK.) One day, after Rin returns to her village, a tribe of demons arrives and kills everyone. Rin tries to run back to the woods and escape, but the demons eventually catch and kill her. Sesshomaru finds her body, and, for some reason even he doesn’t understand, decides to use his magic sword that brings people back from the dead (yes he has one of those) to revive her. (This is significant because up until this point he has never even used the sword, as he hated the fact that he’d gotten the stupid healing sword while his little brother got the cool, killing sword.) And Rin, who has no one left and no home to go back to, decides to travel with him. (One of the interesting things here is that, despite the fact that she was killed by demons, Rin is actually more afraid of humans, because they’re the ones who murdered her family.)

Their relationship throughout the course of the story is fascinating. At first glance, it might seem like Sesshomaru is always the one saving her, but she saves him too. Rin forced him to acknowledge that the world wasn’t black-and-white, that humans were complex, that just because he didn’t like someone or something didn’t mean it didn’t have a right to exist. Sesshomaru’s arc is subtle, but by the end of the story, he’s fighting side by side with the heroes-- something that would never have happened if he hadn’t met Rin.

Now, the thing here is that, for most of the story Rin is eight years old. Their relationship is never, ever shown as sexual, but there’s clearly love there, and the implication the story ends with is that they will likely get together once Rin is older. I’ve heard antis say that they read the relationship as being more along the lines of “Sesshomaru ‘adopts’ Rin,” which explains a lot. However, I personally never saw it that way. They were partners-- just because Rin didn’t take out a sword and fight off anyone who tried to hurt Sesshomaru doesn’t mean she she was primarily on the receiving end of the relationship. (In a story about battling evil, where nearly all of the characters are these awesome fighters, it’s pretty cool to see a character who is not a warrior, who just gives and loves and trusts and cares, and is never treated as lesser by either the characters or the narrative because of this. I really love Rin.) I think it’s a cultural thing-- people are used to the narrative of ‘coldhearted bachelor meets and adopts lovable scamp who reminds him how to love again’ and are primed to see it even in a story from an entirely different culture set five hundred years in the past.

(Part of it is also about shipping wars-- many of the antis ship Sesshomaru with other characters, particularly Kagura, and would rather make the argument about morality versus just saying that they would prefer something a little different.)

Here’s where I admit it gets a little bit sticky: How much of this is Rin just imprinting on Sesshomaru and using him as an excuse to avoid her trauma surrounding other humans? And the narrative did a great job of resolving this dilemma. Near the end of the story, Rin leaves Sesshomaru. She goes to live among humans, to learn how to be human again, so that once she’s an adult, she has the agency to make an informed decision about what she really wants.

There happens to be an audio-drama CD that was released in Japan sometime after the show ended, which is set just after the original story ends (when Rin is eleven). In it, Sesshomaru says something to Rin which is referred to by one of the other characters as a ‘proposal.’ Now, I don’t follow anti discourse, so I’m not sure if they know about it, but I can imagine they’d have a field day with that one. “Omigoodness, he proposed to an eleven year old, that’s so creepy.” However, there’s some context involved. The word ‘proposal’ is used by one of the other characters-- who happens to have time-travelled from five hundred years later (that is, the present day). The whole plot of the CD starts when she complains to her husband/lover/whatever-their-relationship-status-is-supposed-to-be that he never actually proposed to her, and since he doesn’t know what a proposal is (because, again, culture gap), he thinks it’s some sort of monster she wants him to go fight for her before they can actually be married, and hilaraity ensues. She calls Sesshomaru’s words to Rin a proposal as in “see, that’s what a proposal is supposed to look like.” It has very little to do with SessRin in and of themselves.

For reference, here’s what Sesshomaru actually said in this so-called ‘proposal’ (thanks to @inu-drama for the translation):

“Rin, have you grown accustomed to life in the village? No one is bullying you or anything? Did you make a kimono out of the cloth I gave you the other day? When you are troubled, or anxious, or sad, or any other time, feel free to call on me. I will come to you immediately. Even if we are far apart, if you call my name I will absolutely come flying to you. If you cannot speak, you can whistle. Whistle through your fingers, if you like. Distance is no object. Our hearts are tied together. With the power of trust, there is nothing to fear. Simply having that feeling should be enough to fill your heart. That is why it is fine for things to remain as they are for now. We have plenty of time. You can examine your heart at your own pace. Until then, take care of yourself.”

(Is there something inherently creepy or predatory about that?)

To me, SessRin is about love, in its purest form. It’s about believing in someone when the rest of the world is against them. It’s about choosing the person who chooses you. It’s about learning and growing and changing together.

What’s that quote-- I think it was from Dawson’s Creek or something? “What's a soulmate?” “It's uh... Well, it's like a best friend but more. It's the one person in the world that knows you better than anyone else. It's someone who makes you a better person. Actually, they don't make you a better person, you do that yourself - because they inspire you. A soulmate is someone who you carry with you forever. It's the one person who knew you and accepted you and believed in you before anyone else did, or when no one else would. And no matter what happens, you will always love them. Nothing can ever change that.” Yeah, that one. That’s what SessRin is about.

#inuyasha #thoughts #sessxrin #sesshomaru #rin #anti anti #love is a choice #otp: nothing was worth losing her

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threewaysdivided · 3 years ago

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Yes, the weak writing in TOA is what mellowed me out on the series. Despite my distaste for all the decisions after the first third of the movie I can't say it disappointed me because no matter how excited I was I didn’t have high expectations because I know what it's like. It's funny because I never completed the series. I got through half of Trollhunters and 3lbelow before I just had to leave. It took me a month to finish Wizards and that one's my favorite. So yeah.

(Following on from this ask.)

That's fair. Like I said before, I'm in a pretty similar boat when it comes to Tales of Arcadia. Trollhunters was good and - barring a couple of episodes which I fast-forwarded through because the tropes/ execution of the premise wasn't for me - I had a really enjoyable time with it. But then it reached the end and it felt like there were a lot of questions (changelings etc.), worldbuilding (heartstones etc.) and general complexities (Merlin as he was talked about throughout the series vs Merlin as he appeared at the end) that were left hanging to a frustrating degree.

Now, in fairness, I tend to experience "wait, that's it?"-ism at the end of a lot of TV shows that run for more than a single season - it's probably just the nature of the medium/production environment that makes it hard to match the impact of hours of build-up in just a handful of final episodes, especially since a lot of shows won't know they're on their final season until that season - but with Trollhunters, it was a very intense feeling of "wait, that's it?".

Part of the reason why I initially watched 3Below was that I had hoped it would continue building on the unanswered lore questions from the first series (a fairly common thing for sequels/ spinoffs to do) but instead it took a hard right-turn into aliens and sci-fi. And - much as Douxie is probably my favourite ToA protagonist - by Wizards it became clear that even when we were going back (heh) to the more Troll-adjacent fantasy world, most of those questions still weren't going to be satisfyingly answered, if at all.

Part of me wonders if this might be a small blind-spot of Del Toro's when combined with Netflix, since outside of ToA most of his resume is film, and film has different structural/ worldbuilding/ storytelling conventions due to the much shorter run time. A 'film ending' would probably feel underdeveloped at the end of a TV series because shows by necessity have to add and flesh out more concepts to fill their run time. Just speculation through.

By about halfway through 3Below I was definitely watching more out of a sense of analytical curiosity and 'might as well see it through' than because I was still invested and suspending my disbelief. If I'd made it dedicated watch (rather than something to have on while sewing the Purrloin Plush) I probably would have stopped at about midway through 3Below, so I totally get where you're coming from with that.

As a sidenote: The way Wizards handled the Merlin/amulet/Morgana's-hand point from Trollhunters felt almost like a cop-out to me. Like they were trying to walk back/ distance Merlin from the morally callous nature Trollhunters both showed and suggested in some antagonists' dialogue, by making it seem like far less of a deliberate scheme from him, having her turn 'bad' for unrelated reasons ahead of time and someone else being the one to actually cut her hand off. Which kind of retroactively makes it weird that she claims he "took her hand" in the first series. That line made it seem more morally complex (that maybe she became a villain' because she was directly betrayed/ wronged by one of the heroes) but then her character gets weirdly flattened. Tales of Arcadia's moral stance on Merlin is just very unclear and strange in general.

With all that said though, I think there is value sometimes in going in to something with no expectations - or knowing/ expecting it to be bad - as an exercise in analysing storytelling. One upside is what you said; because you're not really invested/ aiming to become invested you don't end up being as disappointed by bad writing. (It's that weird sort of optimistic pessimism - if you expect the worst then you'll either be right or pleasantly surprised).

Consuming media with the intent to dissect it from the start does give a different experience... but then again no-one watches True Crime Documentaries or Mayday: Air Disaster because they want to experience a perfectly normal day where everything goes well and no-one gets hurt. Some days you just want to watch a train wreck in slow motion and try to work out what went wrong.

I actually did this with Dreamwork's Voltron - I went in having already read discussions, watched a full analysis and knowing it was going to go downhill, because I was curious to see how it was going fall apart so thoroughly that the fandom almost unanimously agrees that it's a mess. Funnily enough I was kind of surprised: not because it wasn't bad (although the first three seasons are genuinely fun) but because it got bad in ways I didn't expect. Most of the discourse I had seen was ship-related so I'd sort of expected a generically mediocre story with some 'Kataang vs Zutara' level character chemistry fanning the flames, but no - the central narrative and structure of Voltron just completely falls apart. It's wild.

And - much as it's always is sad when a series doesn't live up to it's potential - I kind of prefer when a story 'shows its hand' so to speak fairly early on in terms of writing weaknesses. For me, it's almost more tolerable to see the flaws and accept that you have to look past them as the price of entry. It lets you manage your expectations - you're consuming the story in spite of known problems, so it doesn't feel as bad if/when those flaws get big enough to make the story not worth continuing with.

Call it honesty, or maybe just closure, but I'd rather a series that's kind of stupid from the start to one that starts off strong/competent and then gets really unexpectedly stupid all at once. The former tends to sting a lot less.

#trollhunters #trollhunters: rise of the titans #tales of arcadia #Really starting to make me realise I have a strange relationship with ToA #I don't dislike it. but. I also don't feel any surprise that the flaws that were there right from Series 1 toppled it #It could have been better #and it's sad that it wasn't #But it's also kind of exactly what I knew I signed up when I continued past Series 1 despite my feelings about those flaws #So I don't feel mislead or like it in any way made a false promise about it's trajectory/ themes/ quality #(You already know which series I DO feel that way about)#also I feel like the way each Series ends with characters from the next series popping up to help with plot feels too Deus Ex Machina #Definitely the worse offender was when Aja and Krel just showed up and solved the Lightning in a Bottle puzzle for the Trollhunters gang #At the cost of building any metaphorical answer or having Jim Toby and Claire do proper problem solving #Aja and Krel were such a weird way to handle it since it didn't even really build much mystery for who/what they were #3Below kind of makes it better in retrospect but in Trollhunters it's still 'weird exchange students show up with solution just go with it'#very strange choice #Voltron is the only series where I got to the point of saying 'I give up' 'I cannot tell what will happen next' OUT LOUD while watching #ATLAS turning into another robot very much broke my brain and punted the remains of my suspension of disbelief into the sun #youmaycallmeyourhigness #3WD Answers

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shizzlinghotbrason · 4 years ago

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ok so nearly everyone in the fandom is doing this and as sad as it is that we need to remind these simple things to people, I feel the need to talk about this too.

I won't make this too painfully long because I know y'all most likely already know this and I just wanna put out a basic list of shit you should always follow in the fandom. But for those who don't, a lot of fan content creators, be it artists or writers or just general fans trying to enjoy their time, have been leaving/quitting the fandom.

Why are they leaving, you ask? Toxicity. Toxicity nearly everywhere. People can't hold respectful debates or discourses on interesting topics regarding characters/the books/ships anymore without someone toxicly stating that only their opinion is correct, and going off on anyone who has different opinions carried with a lot of aggressive, rude and shallow behaviour. Fanartists have gotten death threats and are scared of drawing art for the Riordanverse without getting anxious af.

Now the thing is, having done those (eXcepT for the death threats) doesn't automatically make u an entirely shitty person. Maybe you made a mistake and came off as rude without rlly meaning to. That's okay. Here's how to identify if u ever did so, and to change that behaviour. Again, it's okay to make mistakes, but we rn as a fandom srsly need to try to turn things around.

Some basic shit you should remember being a part of the fandom:

• NO NSFW STUFF WITH MINORS!!! That means fanarts, fanfics etc. But here's the shocking thing- when someone does this, you can actually hold them accountable WITHOUT SENDING DEATH THREATS AND CROSSING THE BOUNDARIES! Cuz doing that only makes YOU stoop just as low. Pl e a s e remember that always and be respectful whatever you do.

• That being said, ppl are allowed to write nsfw stuff IF said characters are aged up, aka 18+. Ofc, it's a must that they put a content warning beforehand because many people may not want to read that. BUT, if you don't want to read it and if they've aged up the characters so nothing's morally wrong or gross, then please do NOT hate the author in the comments, do NOT report their post/account. Seriously dude, they gave warnings, if you don't want to read it just scroll past it's not that hard. Unless it's with minors, you shouldn't be reporting innocent ppl's accounts like that.

• one thing that I've seen a lack of in the fandom are trigger warnings. I've seen several fics whose covers are literally of blood. And entire chapters were written with intricate graphic descriptions yet with no trigger warnings or a tw wayyy down in the caption. you never know what may be triggering to someone if a lot of ppl see ur content but the least u can do is put trigger warnings on the most common stuff. I get that it may look aesthetically matching if it's a murder mystery sorta fic but isn't the well being of people more important?

• look I'm not saying you're not allowed to have opinions, but the problem is when you start treating your opinions like facts. I can't count the times I've seen someone state their opinion like it's facts and then trash on other's for having a different opinion. PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE DIFFERENT OPINIONS. Stop attacking people for liking Jason more than Percy or vice versa, there's no rule that you absolutely have to like one or the other, ppl can like who they want. When you're stating UR opinion, it would be nice if you used stuff like "I personally think that..." or "... that's just my opinion" because again, Ur opinion is just that, not a fact.

• if you can't have discourses or discussions about certain topics respectfully and nicely then don't have them. if someone's done nothing wrong but state their opinions and you don't like it, don't go attacking them. if you don't have anything good to say, shut up and just scroll past. it's not that hard. we don't need any more negativity in the fandom. If you feel like you're about to snap, mute or block the account you don't like and move on with life. But for the love of GOD don't go out of your way to be agresive or hateful to ppl. They have feelings too and run fan accounts for fun, not to get upset and hurt.

• when a fan account owner has made a post saying what they think of a certain topic, and you comment saying you think they're wrong and they reply that you didn't get the point of their post, then chances are you most probably actually did not understand what they were saying. when this happens, pls don't go on forcing ur opinion onto them as if you got what they meant when you didn't. Maybe next time when someone says you didn't get what they were saying, ask them nicely to explain it to you instead of going off like that?

• firstly, shame on you if you've ever run a hate account. just why? how much more negativity do you want to add? if you come across a hate account please please report it and block it and tell your friends to do the same. if you're targeted in a hate post, I'm so sorry, please know that they're shallow ppl just trying to make you feel shitty, you're dont have a trashy fan account; what they say is false and done purely to spite. report and block them.

• I know Rick has written a lot of racist bullcrap and hasn't batted an eye when we complained about them, but that still doesn't give you the right to send him death threats. Again, no death threats to anyone, yikes.

• don't use fanart that's racist. don't repost them either. Piper has feathers in it? don't repost it. also if you can't exactly and properly credit artists, don't repost their art saying "credits to the artist". I've done that before too but now I understand that's not right.

• also, while we're at it, can we all please universally agree on non-racist fanon stuff and get rid of racist canon stuff? like Piper and feathers, and piper & hazel with colourful and golden eyes, Piper's stupid not like other girls behaviour, and all the other bullshit Rick has put into the books. We as a fandom don't accept it and pretend they do not exist, no racism in this place 🥰‼️

• ppl are allowed to have their own headcannons, it doesn't matter what's cannon. Don't go "but in the books it's.." because in the books there's a lot of shit, and besides, if someone wants to headcannon Percy as brown? black? totally alright! they're allowed to do so! don't go bUt pErCy iSnT pOc iN tHe bOoKs. same goes with sexualities and etc headcannons. as long as they're not erasing the already representation of a minority, it's okay to have headcannons of your own. Like Hazel is canonically black and we should respect that and bring out the best of that, yk what I mean?

That's all I have to say for now. I'm usually a very light-hearted cursed meme account on here but things are getting out of hand. I was wanting to make my 8 yr old brother get into the Riordanverse fandom but seeing the situation of the fandom rn scares me. We need to think about the kids in the future who'll be in this fandom, whose lives will be changed and shaped by these books. Surely, the older people in the fandom before us would be utterly disappointed at what it's become and it's our job to constantly look out for the fandom.

If you're leaving/have left the fandom, I'm so sorry that it got to that point, but ur wellbeing comes first, do what you feel is necessary to feel better, all of us send lots of positive vibes towards your way! and to the peeps who've still decided to stay in the fandom and use their account to talk about this issue, I cannot express how thankful I am of you for doing such an important thing right now. And to everyone - as Harry Styles once said - treat people with kindness.

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agnesmontague · 4 years ago

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do u consider yourself an anti anti

this feels exceptionally bait-y, but i will try to answer it in as much good faith as possible

short answer: more or less, but not in as many words, because let’s be real here, “anti-anti” just sounds...really stupid to me as a word? like a playground insult or something?? it’s also not NEARLY nuanced as a term to encompass however a given person feels on the subject. i’ve also seen the term “pro-shipper” used a lot, which i also don’t tend to apply to myself all that much, because i don’t think this is a discourse that should be strictly limited to “shipping” or just fandom spaces.

long answer: if i were to unpack this a bit, while i’m not of the opinion that fiction has no effect on reality whatsoever, it does mean that i don’t think there is a strict 1-to-1 correlation btwn what one creates or consumes in one’s media and what one believes and/or does in the waking world, so to speak. enjoying the nbc show hannibal doesn’t make you pro-cannibalism, even if hannibal lecter is your favourite character. nor do i believe the writers of the show are pro-cannibalism simply by virtue of having depicted it in a charismatic light in their work. i also think there is a crucial distinction to be made in terms of contextualization--to take dubcon for example, i think there is a very important difference btwn, say, a fic that is tagged and warned for in order to let potential readers know that it contains material that could be triggering, and a fic whose writer treats the whole concept like a joke or “not a big deal.”

i think when the consumption of fiction starts to revolve around the axis of which specific tropes or concepts are “good” or “bad”, the discourse gets supremely restrictive and the ideology puritanical; suddenly it’s a matter of who can avoid ticking the most number of boxes on someone’s “problematic” list, instead of looking at the work holistically or within an appropriate context. art can be a lot of things, and creating it is definitely an act of social communion but at the same time it can serve any purpose from personal expression, to working out one’s trauma, to simply having fun. this is doubly true in fandom spaces where the works of art in question aren’t usually meant to be consumed by an audience beyond the in-group of people who are familiar with the source material, and therefore by definition more of a secluded (if not private) space. this is triply true for adults-only spaces where adults can explore darker themes without worrying about negatively impacting minors (in theory, anyway). restricting what is “appropriate” in these spaces simply based on questions like “does this contain a certain ship” or “does this involve x character” without stopping to consider the myriad elements of context and nuance that surround the work, in my experience, leads to a really toxic and media illiterate viewpoint.

i also dislike the term “anti-anti” because it implies that i don’t understand the whole “anti” stance, because that’s not really true either; i used to consider myself an “anti” up until i hit my 20s, and even though i stopped because i felt like it was the most futile and useless form of online “”activism”” i could possibly practice, i still do remember why my own feelings of dislike and disgust towards certain trends in media and real life caused me to feel like i had to protect myself somehow by loudly denouncing such trends in the hopes of shaming people into agreeing with me (for the record, though, i can say with utter confidence that i never harassed or sent derogatory messages to anyone). i also think that the surge of “anti” thoughts and behavior in younger people online owes a lot to the failure of previous generations to foster a safer space for them in general. so while i disagree heavily with “antis” in a lot of respects, i’m also not exactly willing to chalk it all up to some conservative idiocy. there’s been a lot of debate on whether “anti mentality” has any correlation to ideologies like terfism or cultishness, and while i definitely see many overlaps there (and am suitably alarmed by them), i’m also uncomfortable with painting it all in such broad and uncharitable strokes.

this doesn’t cover everything i have to say on the subject, but i hope that answers your question.

#long post #sorry for the wall of text #also note that i won't be fielding any more questions on the subject #ive procrastinated enough as it is

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raayllum · 4 years ago

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the part in your last post where u said “i’m obssessed with rayllum” made me remember of when some ppl on twitter were like “it’s so uncomfortable seeing adults obsessed about shipps with teenage characters” and. it’s not that deep?? 😭😭 it’s just a bunch of drawings/PIXELS in a screen?? 😭😭😭 i get that fiction can influence reality but Damn, some people take it *too* far

if fiction could screw with people like that i’d be fucked bc i was reading greek mythology (incest, murder, people killing their own children, and more) from age six. and my book of myths was sanitized, sure, but barely. but i’m not. if anything, my long held interest in mythology has added a lot of joy and light to my life, including helping me earn my english degree, in which how literature affects reality is literally something i’ve taken courses on. the anti vs. everyone else discourse stretches back to plato and aristotle, so you can imagine how tired i am of it. because while fiction can influence reality, fiction is not reality, and treating fiction like it’s reality is what’s actually harmful.

it’s also not uncommon or weird at all that adults — people who were once *gasp* teenagers themselves — would enjoy revisiting that time in their lives vicariously and with beautiful hindsight in hand? like “coming of age” films and anything with child or teen protagonists are written by adults. looks like we have to chuck out the entire varied YA genre because the authors like ships between their teenage characters.

it’s also like when i was fourteen, my fave ship was between two side characters who were 13 and 14. but i shipped them and wrote stuff about them well beyond that age, because i exist in reality and grow beyond the source material, and it’s not that much of a stretch that i would want to take those characters with me and have those characters exist beyond the limits (age or otherwise) of their source material, too.

then when i was 16, my favourite ship was between characters who i always saw as 25 and 23 years old. sometimes in my fics they were even 28 and 26. because it’s almost like i’m drawn to dynamics and change and interesting development more than any arbitrary idea that i should only like couples who are my age. (not even getting into how much younger fandom shits on older fans in their 30s and 40s who — like me — probably grew up in fandom since their teen years). which is stupid, to say the least.

and now i’m here at 20 (aka i only just stopped being a teenager like 1-2 years ago) and my favourite ship is rayllum, who are each a month shy of their 15 and 16th birthdays respectively. and like my other ships, i’m gonna love ‘em forever, and we don’t know how old they’ll be by the time the series is over. maybe they’ll be my age (and i would’ve surpassed that likely by the time the saga is over anyway) or maybe they’ll only be 17.

really, any argument against adult fans being invested in certain aspects of a source material shows a complete ignorance for fandom history from the 60s — fandom has always 90% been an adult space and still is — but just shows a complete lack of like, empathy and long term thinking. like zero braincells and imagination.

i’m writing a series where my main characters, at the start, are between the ages of 11-15. by the end, they’re 16-20. i started writing them when i was 12 and i’m probably only going to have the whole series finished and published when i’m 35. can i not dedicate 20+ years of my life to writing about teenagers that i created and the war they’re going through and the relationships they have??

because yeah, they’re teenagers, that’s where the series starts and ends, but i know exactly what they’re like in their 30s and 40s and further?? i know who has kids and who doesn’t?? and i write about it in my own little document that will never be published because it doesn’t matter within the series as a whole, but it’s still fun. and the only main difference between having fun with my own canon and having fun with someone else’s is ownership.

like if i imagine my own characters in ways that are technically canon, because they’re mine, figuring out life in their 20s and including sexual relationships sometimes and child rearing etc., then why can’t i do that with the characters of a source material i didn’t create firsthand? there’s no imagination difference.

but then, according to that sort of twitter thinking, aging up teenage characters to ages that adults probably relate to more, for a variety of reasons, is also wrong. so then you’re circling back to having adult fans only being able to write about the characters as teens — which goes back to the shaming principle i mentioned earlier.

which comes back to using shame to make people feel guilty for liking the characters they like with a convenient moral panic with dangerous and desensitizing insinuations. (ever heard of alarm fatigue?) because that’s not what the late 1800s women’s movement did to sex workers or born out of puritanical christian / terf or aphobic rhetoric (teens can’t be ace bc teens should be sexless, etc).

not to mention, it acts like teenagers are a monolith who not only can’t know how to curate their own content (infantilization + helicopter parenting) but that it’s not important for them to learn critical thinking skills. (shocking that twitter is seeing the meltdown of that and poor reading comprehension now). it acts like teenagers never like any “problematic” ship. that “protect the children” rhetoric never means harassing said children. like my worst experience when i was in an anti infested fandom was when i was sixteen year old (questioning) sex repulsed asexual and i was called a pedophile by grown adults, bc i protected my privacy rights and didn’t have my age online, and bc i shipped two characters who didn’t have canon ages in the show and i saw as 25 and 23. (there was age discourse over the 23 year old, who was an alien, and dated another alien who was 10,000s of years older than her but looked like he was in his twenties, and then she dated a teenager. so. very objectively clear, isn’t it? *eye roll*) like if you need to know someone’s a minor so you won’t repeatedly and violently harass them with moral & illegal accusations — although i’m sure i would’ve been harassed anyway — they’re not the problem here.

which is to say: twitter anti rhetoric? tis bullshit

#anti purity culture #thanks for asking #anonymous #fandom nonsense #twitter #anyway cheers to that nonnie #Anonymous

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transsexualhamlet · 4 years ago

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tg anime vs manga *sighs*

i have the power of hyperfixation and anime on my side! AAAAAAAA

Ok now that we’ve gotten the sins of re post out of the way we need to discuss this. And I just feel that this needs to be covered because I can’t ever get away from constant discourse on this, mostly fueled by manga readers who feel entitled to always think they’re superior for reading the manga, that the manga is the only real canon, that it’s more complex or better, I’m so fucking tired of it. I am also a manga reader, and I tend to get like that sometimes too with many series (for example no. 6 and the promised neverland.) I get it. It can be really annoying to see something butchered on screen to what the original is, changed or represented differently or given a different message or simplified. But just. Some people like the anime and it’s not a goddamn holy war for y’all to fight. It only makes anime fans not want to read the thing even more yknow cause manga readers are pretentious assholes, and I am aware of this as one of them.

(again ok i’d like to mention i know this fandom is basically dead but a certain p*nterest is always like 4 years behind on fandoms so i keep fucking running into Discourse that’s like, still current, whenever i want old random ass content) (and youtube, why do i look at youtube comments, because I personally enjoy being offended? yeah probably)

And that brings me to the point of this anime vs manga.

This is a lot harder to compare than a lot of other series, because there are just... so many more differences not just in the style and vibe but the story itself.

Disclaimer, I’ve never watched the anime for :re and i don’t intend to, because I honestly have no earthly clue how tf you can get from the highly diverged tokyo ghoul root A to re and make it make sense, and I don’t really want A ruined for me. So you can call me biased towards the manga in the case of re, i guess (which makes my eventual conclusion even more strong I’d say) Honestly I just see them as two completely different stories, the manga’s version connecting with re and A just like... ending there. So how we’re drawing the lines is basically tokyo ghoul A versus the manga and :re. God, I know this isn’t a fair fight because I already hate re so much, but I feel like the manga’s story is much more intertwined with :re than the anime’s is, so that’s what we’re going with.

oh god also another disclaimer this opinion is coming from the biggest fucking kanehide whore, you can disregard anything i say if you ship The Straights and/or do not care for my boi hide

To be honest, if I can take my own conclusions and liberties to the story, I like both versions, each have their pros and cons and kind of a conflicting message. They can’t really coexist. Usually I’d consume all versions and then create one consistent canon in my head for what I accept as the true events (for example my main owari no seraph, first season of the anime is canon but after that we only follow the manga since those can come together and make sense.) but it’s very hard to do that in tokyo ghoul, since I must confess... I really like root A. Like of course, it’s a lot different from the manga, but tbh I think it’s super valid. (unlike most Fans TM like this Fan TM who i’m sending this post to just to spite their singular Youtube Comment Section Discourse, yes I did write this post for you and many others like you) But the ideas that make up root A conflict a lot with the ones of the manga, so I just have to accept that they’re separate things and treat them as such.

Now to break it down so people can understand where I’m coming from I guess? God this is already so long here’s a read more

The Case for The Manga (including :re manga)

More Lore + Plot Shit: One of the main reasons that manga readers are pretentious little bitches is a valid reason, namely that, as is the case with most manga, there’s simply more to it than people can fit into an anime. (Although people need to understand that’s because,,, it’s simply a different medium, so it will have different pluses and minuses, such as for example a soundtrack, color, moving pictures,,, you know, all that. Anime onlys don’t say that the anime is better by stating these things that a manga won’t have... because they’re fucking obvious. So manga readers should stop acting like an anime is inherently sub-par for being less in depth, but we digress.) I can understand that reading the manga is kind of important for wanting to understand the lore (though there are like so many other reasons ppl might want to watch it other than to get the lore) and without the explanation of how all this came to be and how it works, everything tends to be really mysterious, confusing, and seemingly random. It’s really nice to know what’s all going on, of course, and stuff like the washuus, rize’s backstory, the explanation for like, kaneki in general, all that- if you’re looking for like, plot shit, manga is definitely your go to. But like, sometimes, you like, don’t actually care about those things.

Haise: Of course one of the most important things about well, including re is that I fucking love Haise. Like he is my favorite Kaneki. He’s just so wonderful, look at him in he glasses and he floofy hair and he striped pants and he energy boxers and he s p i c e and he MOM. And I really like how they took Kaneki’s character and developed it more with Haise, you can see his turnaround from innocent--> Emo--> Trying To Be Innocent Again But Failing and I think that’s really sweet tbh. I rejected that at first because I didn’t understand it but once I actually read re I thought it made a lot of sense and was a logical thing to do with his character. (though, uh, moving forward, after his hair changes again i disagree with it, haise 1.0 is a good take and i love him and i want the best for him) I could go on I’ve already written a post of what I think is wrong with :re so if you want to hear my take on kaneki’s 37 pokemon evolutions that’s in there

Good New Characters: And of course there are my favorite bitches such as quinx squad, oh my god, there was a terminal lack of dumbass squad vibes in the original and ishida fucking gave it to us, I love them, I love them with all my heart and I think that if I wasn’t attached to them I’d probably just cancel all of :re but like this is just my personal problem. God I love them. Ishida always pulls through with characters I’m now too attached to.

Vore Lmao:Ok like hear me out. I just get a laugh out of it every time the manga has to remind me of this little fucking fact. Like ok I just. Cannot get over it. It’s so serious about it too and like I realize it’s a serious deal but o h m y g o d

Ok and now that we’ve got that little rant over I do want to say that it is like actually really important past the “lmao that’s pretty gay” bit, like??? In some ways it’s more fitting than the anime because well, ishida’s point always seems to be “what would mentally and physically hurt kaneki the most right now” and does it because that’s who this bitch is. But it just?? Kind of makes a bit more sense for the storyline if we’re being picky here, it’s so,,, painfully on point? Like the entire reason he gave in to Being A Ghoul and all was so he could save his friends and shit (i actually do not remember if this was a thing in the manga but like? when he was being tortured and he like imagined hide being really mad at him and getting killed by jason and shit?) LIKE AND THEN HE GOES AND HAS TO BASICALLY BE THE PERPETRATOR OF THAT HIMSELF, FUCK, it’s a lose/lose situation of “don’t do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer” or “do the bad thing and watch your friends suffer but like, later” ishida please

The meaning of Hide being alive: Ok this is just me crying over chapter 75 still but like. Instead of in the anime, where hide’s point seems to be that instead of letting kaneki sacrifice anything more he’d be the one to give his life up and such, and save kaneki, in the anime tbh he just really wanted to be with kaneki right then?? and like ouch but understanding that in the manga he wasn’t just planning on dying and leaving kaneki to deal with it afterward he wanted to go on and continue to try to help the guy no matter the shit he had to go through, no matter if the dude just like forgot that he existed for two years and all- LIKE UH CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW HIDE DOESN’T EVEN EXPECT ANY APOLOGY? like kaneki’s like “OH MY GOD I’M SUCH A TERRIBLE PERSON” and hide’s like lmao nah it’s cool i’m thriving- that his big motto was “live” rather than “peace out motherfuckers it’s been fun”. Cause. Fucking. Ishida. Can’t kill off characters well but like at least he made keeping this one alive justified.

The D e t a i l s: Ok well I feel like this is something everyone knows but the anime is missing a lot of really,,, crunchy details that the manga throws in there, like, well, kaneki’s fucking,,, bones thing, and other assorted details, g o d like those are missable if you want to never understand half the memes but also like,,, sometimes you just gotta read that shit. It also like, makes more sense when you do but sometimes it’s just stupid things that aren’t important but are fucking hilarious.

The Flavor: In general I’d say the greatest difference between the anime and the manga is the general flavor of the thing, the vibe in the manga is a lot, to be frank, darker and grosser and bloodier than the anime, which is a lot more focused on being pretty and Tragic than “HOLY SHIT WTF” but like. That’s valid. With that comes it being a lot more, real, and although the art may not be as polished as the anime’s, sometimes that’s exactly what you need, and the really gritty sketchy shit that’s in the manga sometimes is exactly what it’s supposed to be for the manga. (in the anime, i’d say that the colored and polished style fits it better, so we’re good there.) It’s a lot more real, in the manga, when the anime hesitates to “go there” a lot (and well, sometimes that’s welcome, but sometimes it’s like y o u g u y s c o m e o n r e a l l y maybe i DID want to see that did you ever think of that)

So like, to sum it up i’d just like to say it’s more detailed, sharper and darker and is simply So Much. There is just More Content

The Case for Root A

ON THE OTHER HAND, (buckle up fuckers)

Depth of Emotion (that Ishida was too much of a pissbaby for): God like you know what I mean if you read the last post, we spent a whole episode on these gay fucks in root A, with backstory and dreams and drawn out suspense and emotion and GUYS LOOK AT THEM NO REALLY OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS whereas hide’s limelight in the manga is a whole... two pages, oh whoopee, and that’s mostly due to the fact of ishida putting himself in a spot of “oh fuck goddamn if i drew that in i’d get flagged for gay porn” but that’s his own fault, so he downplays the whole scene and really keeps it in the dark, whereas in this anime it’s understandably a lot less,,, like that, but how it plays out here is simply... really nice and makes you cry and shit, whereas in the manga I’d go “oh god oh damn oh fuck” *laughs my ass off because i really can’t take this seriously*. You get just... more here.

To elaborate on this, in the anime, as a gay fucking bastard, I can get practically an endless amount of content from episode twelve, and endlessly stew over all Those Things about it, every hard hitting line, the expressions, the music making it even sadder, the ways the VAs say the words, the cinematic beauty of the blood dripping on the floor and like how it’s supposed to make you think it’s kaneki’s, GOD I COULD FUCKING GO ON, but if we want to get that in the manga...

we get three incredibly basic lines, a blackout, and then a “QUICK LET’S MOVE ON TO SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE ANYONE NOTICES THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT HAHA”

So if we want to have more, we need to write it. (sadly) None of it is ever played out canonically so like,,, all we can do is infer and make shit up. It’s like, I am a writer so like that’s my whole job but I really would rather have more content, and have the content that’s there get to be emotional instead of *blank face* “this is plot that is happening, sadly” but like maybe it’s just bc i’m gay

Really Fucking Beautiful (aesthetically as well as story-wise): This kind of just goes hand in hand with the depth of emotion bit, and I think it can’t really compared to the manga here because I’m gay so I see pretty colors and cry so the anime is understandably appealing for me, but I’m also talking emotionally, yeah. There’s a lot of plotlines and implications of the story that are really well played out, I always love to watch the original because it does a very good job handling a lot of the harder topics and stuff that makes the whole thing worthwhile- like the whole point you’re supposed to see that the ghouls and humans are both just as monstrous when you break it down, that there are good and bad people on both sides, everyone just wants to live and feel good in their own life and perspective, everyone has reasons that justify their behaviour in their mind, sometimes you just can’t win no matter what, all that... they’re all really important messages and make the whole story, and they were handled much more delicately and with more expertise in the anime.

It’s hard to pin down, but I feel like the manga was just based more on Fight Scenes Characters OoH Fake Science and kind of just gave kaneki infinite power ups after Trying Harder no offense, obviously those things were there and they were still very good in the manga it’s just sometimes they were cheapened a lot by ishida really not keeping track of what he’s trying to say with his story and sacrificing it a lot for “BUT WHAT IF KANEKI’S HAIR AND IDEALS CHANGED AGAIN” instead of making it a whole cohesive work. (and yes, I am VERY aware of your “well aCtuAlLy the hair represents his sanity” thing i know i know and i’m about to rip it to fucking shreds so)

Understandable Character Development And Staying True To It: Which brings me to this point, character development. This was another thing that was just... handled with more expertise in the anime, whoever was in charge of it. Mostly this has to do with Kaneki, since like, no offense but he’s the only one who ever gets much character development other than like, juuzou (asmr you only get character development if your hair color changes) oh and i guess there’s tsukiyama but he’s someone who shouldn’t have gotten character development. Touka gets character development only before re for some reason, and like tbh that’s kind of it. I do think Juuzou’s character development was valid, because well... it made sense? I complained about it before because I was like “well he just turns into spicy L” but i’ve since changed my opinion, he’s best boy. But Kaneki? They went way overboard with him in the manga, and generally? Calm tf down ishida.

Breaking it down, one of the main things that most of the tried and true manga stans seem to hate about the anime the most is Kaneki going over to Aogiri in root A. Since they’re much more acclimated to the manga, they don’t understand why he would do that (quoting a particular ‘probably made sense in the manga!’ yes i know that whole thing was poking fun at the show and i felt it lmao) and they just pin it to “ahaha he has now become Edgy for the fans ehehe time to make fun of him” and TO BE FAIR YOU’D BE COMPLETELY RIGHT. I love to make fun of Kaneki when he does his edgy bitch thing because that’s what he is. A basic edgy bitch who is just,,, such a main character. But like. He does actually have his reasons despite popular opinion and to be honest I think they’re a bit more valid than in the manga, where he’s just like “well I’ve been tortured, that was not pleasant and i kinda did a bad thing, let’s go back to anteiku but i’m just gonna Try Harder To Fight this time”. I can understand that, but like, it seems like in the manga every Character Development of kaneki is some form of “i will now be stronger” except for the singular “I will now be a different person” which, well, we’ll get to that.

In the anime though, even if it seems like more of a basic edgy bitch move, it’s like?? It makes perfect sense to me, and to be honest more than the manga does? Obviously he doesn’t wanna be best bros with Aogiri, he realizes they’re all bad people who have done really terrible things, but the fact is he now sees himself as the same thing, he now understands their motives because in his mind he is also now Bad TM. His whole character development of being tortured was that peace wasn’t an option no matter how much he wanted it, he couldn’t live being a pacifist and the world was forcing him to give the “i am the only one that understands! we need to stop fighting!” bullshit up because there was no way to achieve it. He realized if he kept himself the way he was more people he loved would be hurt like they already had because he couldn’t, so he doesn’t just Decide To Become Stronger, he gives up his humanity. And that includes basically letting himself defend his own actions and try to do “the right thing”.

Him then joining aogiri makes sense because well. They’re the people who are the strongest, who have the power, who are the same as he sees himself. He still wants to protect the people he loves, he just also realizes he can’t do it by working with them since he now understands that their more peaceful ways will by definition get them fucking killed. His understanding is flawed, of course. He’s not really right. But this is his understanding and from that it makes perfect sense for him to join up with aogiri and try to still do as much as possible from that standpoint, realizing that most likely the people he’s trying to protect will hate him for it. I think that makes sense to me, what do you not understand about it? (I also understand that may make some people mad because he’d Doing Bad Things but I point to you he’s so soft, remember when he was really nice to naki when he was literally the one who killed the guy naki was crying about? remember when he was doing a raid and he saw that guy hiding and he never mentioned it? remember like the seventy times he Cried TM, yeah he’s problematic obviously but if you want problematic I’ll point you to a certain fucking black reaper. Shironeki has nothing on that asshole.)

I think what Kaneki did in the manga was fine, but in general the anime (again) had more depth of understanding and emotion versus a steady Try Harder Get Stronger shonen deal, which, well, fair, but like, nah. Continuing why I think the anime dealt it better is the ending of A, which was a lot more well rounded then *kaneki gets stabbed and then there’s a lot of random plot shit going on in the background*. Here Kaneki then got to round out the end of his character development by realizing slowly through the second half of this season, him becoming a kakuja and then basically deciding like, not to

((kakuja kaneki was dealt with again different in the anime and manga because he basically stopped trying to use it in the anime bc he realized it was a bad fucking idea but this goes along with the ‘his character development of “i’m gonna do bad things for good reasons” --> “actually no wait that was a bad idea” was actually done in root A instead of being dragged out into :re and it’s appropriate for its own medium and the messages it’s trying to get across so manga loyalists hate it’ but we digress))

So in root A we got to see him actually develop and realize himself through the second half of the season starting with cochlea, his interactions with Amon, and ultimately through Hide, that he’d been doing the wrong thing by becoming more monstrous/fighting harder because what he did was ended up forgetting the most important thing, *smiles in gay* HIDE.(well, his humanity. yeah. i cite the terrible opening for root A with the fun ‘the hands taking off kaneki’s mask are hide’s’ bit.) He then remembered again why he wanted so bad to stop the war between humans and ghouls, he wanted to be able to live in peace and not have to be a monster- something that was not dealt with in the manga (though for understandable reasons of We Need To Fuck With Him In Re More, they then didn’t deliver on creating something like that later so I take this.)

That’s most of the difference between the original manga and anime, but I’d also like to discuss (briefly, I’ve already yelled about them) the ridiculous amount of hurdles ishida went through to fuck with kaneki in the manga, Of course there is the fact that well, the slower transition of his character does make some more sense for the manga because if you take :re into consideration, his eight billion character changes are more tolerable when they haven’t like, already happened before in the manga (just the anime). It makes more sense there for Haise to be tormented by past kaneki telling him He’s Too Weak because in the manga he hasn’t already had that development prior to “dying”, and he lost his memories still believing he had to be strong even if he did bad things, whereas in the anime it doesn’t track because at the end like i just said he kind of gives up his ghoulhood on purpose because he realizes that joining aogiri and fighting and shit was really wrong because, hide. So I can see why those character decisions were not made in the original when planning for :re, but... the fact remains that those previous decisions do not make up for how absolutely weak :re’s game ended up being with kaneki.

So tldr this entire section, All the manga’s defense of how they handled Kaneki’s development is basically void because all those choices were buildup for development in :re which ishida then COMPLETELY fell down on. So the alternative is better.

And now comes my yelling about how exactly Ishida fucked it up: hair colors and kaneki’s 80 kanekis. If black is supposed to represent sane and white is supposed to represent insane or, whatever, i dunno, who tf thought black reaper kaneki was sane? Who tf would think kaneki in the end isn’t? I haven’t looked into this really, and I’d really love it if someone explained it to me the way ishida was going for bc I do not understand it. Like that tracks with Juuzou, and with Kaneki up to Haise Original, but they don’t really make a cohesive sense seeing as after Haise’s hair color changed again that whole deal kind of goes to shit. Not to mention... I just... they completely failed to make those character changes actually part of the story, I’m mostly complaining about black reaper haise, none of him makes any sense. What’s his deal? He wants to protect who he loves? Tracks with the ghouls but fun fact he abandoned his kids? He actually cared for them? What then, he wants to be the strongest as possible? Sure but then?? Why?? I don’t understand his motives at all.

We also didn’t get to see him get his memories back either, which I was actually very much looking forward to, it just,,, like all of a sudden he’s talking with eto about yoshimura and i’m like bruh when tf did that happen? It’s bad, and although chapter 74-76 is super valid, and his change back into white hair kaneki makes sense, I also have the complaint about how haise basically disappeared just like he was worried he would. I think that was bad and I’ve said that already, it doesn’t make sense, he just literally throws those entire two years away to go back to the way he was before he was with the CCG and just forgets everything he’s wanted for the last few years? Fiction logic test fucking failed, and you’ve also broken my heart. Love Haise. You got rid of him. I love kaneki too but like. Why don’t they just. Like. Merge. He is one whole complex person, not one and an imposter, god.

This is a big negative for re and the manga, so automatically a positive for root A where I simply Do Not Have To Deal With That Bullshit and the character development actually makes sense. I can understand the decisions in the original manga could have set up for good development in :re, but they completely failed to deliver.

root a didn’t fast forward to re at the end god damn let us process this shit first before you try to connect it to something else: The thing with this point is that it’s really difficult to separate the original manga from the continuing story in :re because the thing intertwines so much and immediately moves us forward with a ton of plot points for the next part of the story before we’re done with this climax and the end of this story. Sometimes that’s ok and I can see doing that from an author’s perspective because you want people to continue reading your story instead of taking that as the end but it’s really annoying on a reader’s end, because I’m picky and I want to be able to just be able to enjoy my original canon without it like, metaphorically touching :re on a plate. It’s something that I don’t even do with my own longer stories, like for example I have like a trilogy of >100k fics that like, well i’m technically not done with them but like.

People really like the first one because it’s more focused on a more popular ship and basic elements people like about the thing, and then by the second book it moves on to talk more about the plot and lore and brings in more secondary characters. And so I knew that a lot of the readers of the first one wouldn’t want to have to deal with a lot of the “oh well stuff is happening elsewhere that will effect stuff later!!!” random plot shit that none of my readers actually cared about. So I kept it to wrapping up the points of the first book and then leaving the introduction of new characters and plot for the people who actually wanted to read it. Ishida didn’t do that, and of course it’s within his right to like?? Want to promote the next series but I’d have enjoyed it more if we ended it at kaneki’s “death” and wrapping up the deals with the rest of the characters instead of quickly shoving in the beginning of seventy more plotlines before the book ends. Like honey I simply do not have the reading comprehension for that. In the anime we get something that... makes sense.

In the anime, however, it’s quite the opposite, for example the reveals like Eto=owl=takatsuki sen were pushed before that and they saved episode twelve for, well, the end bit. Like what was actually the ending. There were detriments to this I had to say (LIKE GUYS I GET IT HE’S CARRYING HIDE HE’S CARRYING HIM I GET IT YOU’VE BEEN DOING IT FOR HALF THE EPISODE NOW OK I UNDERSTAND CAN WE MOVE ON) But like, I prefer the concept of a simple idea with as much emotion squeezed out of it as possible to a ton of confusing and contradicting ideas that are touched on for a second before moving on. So the *cries for half an hour* ending was much more appealing to me, and I can keep that separate in my head from any of the ideas that :re creates, letting me pretend it doesnt exist and imagine that’s the end and there’s nothing else to worry about. If we want to move forward and hear more, then we can, but it isn’t necessary like it is with the manga.

No Bad Takes that are hard to pry apart from good plot and characters:This is basically the downsides of the new characters, which is well, if I had to make a whole ~keep reading~ post about how problematic everything in re was that does have to count as a downside. I love the new characters, but they also come intertwined with a thousand really bad takes on like, everything, and of course I can ignore it and just act as though they were written in like, to be perfectly honest, a non transphobic way, it’s a real downside when the original anime was pretty pain-free in the way of their takes on their characters. They fucked everyone up in re and I will not elaborate, we’ve talked about this, it’s just the anime, and which i mean season 1 and root A, don’t really have any bad takes I need to try to get rid of, it’s surprisingly something I have little complaint about at all and I ALWAYS have complaints.

Hide!!!!: Obviously, you can tell that a lot of my opinions are going to be hide based because he’s the only thing I ever think about. But we have to take into account just how... hide???? This goes a lot into the depth of emotion bit but it also offers the other side of the argument for Hide’s part in the :re manga, which well. Was mostly chapter 75 if we’re going to be perfectly honest here. He doesn’t get any other limelight. Even in the chapter where Kaneki meets him again he gets a whole what, three pages? In the manga, he has an extremely valid deal about basically, living, keeping going no matter what, and that is a fitting part for the manga, considering the rest of the points there ride more on Keep Fighting instead of Think About Your Emotions And Morals, but honestly chapter 75 was really valid. So why do I still think the anime’s version where he like (ok I don’t know about the re anime we’ve discussed this, i don’t even know how they choose to explain that) he like, dies in kaneki’s arms is better overall? Again, I would have totally accepted that deal if it was made a part of the story because it made me cry, it was super valid, and if they’d continued in that way I would have agreed with it completely over that. But the fact is again that they failed to deliver, and Hide got largely ignored, suffered so much with so little outcome. There was so much buildup and it was incredibly valid, but when the time came for them to meet again and basically show... why it was important that Hide lived in the end?

They didn’t. They straight up didn’t. Kaneki’s like “oh sorry bro... glad you’re alive and all...” *goes off and fights* and like? Honestly? @everlastingspiral is right, if that’s all they’re gonna do with him what’s the point of keeping him alive? I love every single panel of him and I wouldn’t have read re if he didn’t, but hide gets absolutely NO payoff. For letting kaneki literally vore his entire mouth off, leaving him disfigured and unable to talk, then kind of disappearing for two years and doing seemingly nothing but trying to help kaneki even though he’d forgotten the guy existed, risks his life like a thousand fucking times, eventually gets back to him and the dude’s running a fucking anti-human organization, helps him like Not Be A Volitile Pile Of Flesh Anymore and then what should have been a very important moment of them meeting again gets completely overshadowed by touka and random plot shit and more fights and they barely interact, they don’t even hug or anything, they barely talk, and at the end hide is still there but to be honest he’s gotten absolutely no thanks for all he did and ishida acts at the end as though he’s done very well with hide and gives him a tiny bit at the end throwing in a tragic backstory for fun (which hot take he really didn’t fucking need on top of it all) and... there’s no real hint that Kaneki is better off with Hide there, even though there should be. In 75, in his dream, kaneki is sobbing and crying and all like i’m so lonely without you but when they actually meet each other again? “yo” “hey” “uh sorry about,,, the thing,,, you know” “nah man it’s ok” “let me talk about myself for a bit” “yes you always do do you want to hear what I’ve been up to” “not really” “that’s fine i’m only here to support you”

...So you can understand why I’ve gone a bit sour on that. If that’s all you’re going to give him? Hot take? Let him die. Hide deserves better. (and i will deliver that in writing, but for the purposes of canon.)

In the anime, however (not counting re again... although he still gets the short end of the stick just in the original manga too compared to the anime) he’s properly dealt with! he gets his proper limelight and he gets acknowledged for what he’s done thusfar in the story, which is already so much. Kaneki then realizes that, but it’s already too late (or it isn’t, and they like negotiate with the ccg and then they get to live happily ever after) either way he gets appreciated and he gets hurt, but it’s properly acknowledged. And after all that, after saving kaneki and getting him to the cafe and doing it all while bleeding the fuck out, he gets to spend that time with kaneki and die in kaneki’s arms. And frankly? That’s all I think he’s ever needed. It’s really poetic and pretty and brings kaneki’s character around full circle, and even if it’s overly sappy, cliche, drawn out... he gets the attention he’s due and he gets a fucking break. He wanted to show Kaneki he wanted to do something for him and save him instead of the other way around, but then HE GOT ACKNOWLEDGED FOR THAT, instead of just well, tirelessly working towards it forever and having to be content to be a background character with practically no value to Kaneki anymore.

Keeps The Same Vibe: The big thing about this is that with the manga and with re, shit just goes all over the place, and I feel like I’ve amply showed that already through this essay or whatever this is. Again about the consistency and the professionalism, It’s a concise story that makes more sense than the manga while also being simply neater and more deep, making sure all the points, themes and messages work together and make sense to create a cohesive deal even if it’s not as long. (the manga is like ishida had a TON of good ideas for an essay but then fleshed out the thing ten minutes before deadline and managed to completely lose what his original thesis was even if the thing was 10 pages long.) Basically. yeah. That kind of sums it up, my last point concerns the ending.

Not Cheap Ending: If you want to hear my take about how absolutely terrible re’s ending was, check out my The Many Sins Of Tokyo Ghoul :Re post, and we’ve discussed how the original’s manga ending was bad and well not really an ending, it just leaves you unfulfilled and takes you into “well I guess I have to start a whole nother sequel series ig...” but root A like? Actually ends it? If a reader didn’t know that there was any content after that, they could pretty much infer that hide’s death or almost death whatever you inferred out of that ending (again we’re ignoring re) allowed Kaneki to finish his character development and realize they needed to stop the war, which basically tracks with what’s going on in everyone else’s perspective- eto’s problem with the world because of what happened with everything, is basically like, all of aogiri, juuzou and shinohara, amon and akira and kaneki and they can realize all they have to do is just sit down and fucking stop it because none of them want to be fighting, hide is the catalyst for that because the CCG can see how Kaneki cares for him? And it’s so open ended that you could just like literally believe that and there’d be no way for that canon to tell you otherwise, or you could go onto re and whatever if you wanted to. I think that’s the best thing.

In conclusion, both have valid points, and in general I’d say that the manga goes better with :re and the anime is better as a stand alone but if I had to choose overall, this particular anime is better (taking into account only seasons 1 and 2), for mostly the reasons of favoring a simpler story taken with much more care and depth versus a more complex story with many, MANY imperfect elements, and I am aware I will get shot on sight for this opinion. So sue me.

#tokyo ghoul #hideyoshi nagachika #kaneki ken #tokyo ghoul :re #essay post #god i've been writing this for so fucking long #but i'm right #y'all fuckers asked for a fight? you're getting a fight #rowan's hyperfixation essays

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bloody-wonder · 4 years ago

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What are your favorite tropes?

thank you very much for being interested. here’s a post that’s ungodly long.

i love revenge stories. forget and forgive? how about no. i don’t believe in god or higher forces that distribute justice irl so even in stories where such forces actually exist i like when characters take matters into their own hands. will it make them happy or bring closure at least? i don’t care. for me it’s not so much about making the character who’s been wronged happy again as ensuring that the offending character isn’t happy. it’s all about bad karma. revenge stories are still done fairly often, so probably this would be the one popular trope that i like (idk if i can call it overdone though).

when a character does some favor for a stranger in the first half of the story to have it returned to them in the second half. i guess it comes from fairy tales: a hero rescues a person at the beginning of the story and later when the hero is in trouble and needs help it turns out that the person they rescued is very powerful and they just happen to ride by and help the hero out. it’s all about good karma. plus just generally i like when characters you thought were episodic turn out to be important later in the story.

when characters have to join forces with their antagonists to defeat a common enemy - both when it leads to them questioning why they are antagonists and becoming friends OR when they remain antagonists even after their enemy is defeated. the former situation is more common but it often isn’t executed very well in that the conflict between these characters isn’t resolved in a satisfying way - they just spend some time around each other and are like okay i forgive you we’re friends now which is frustrating. the latter scenario wouldn’t have such an issue but it’s very rare, i can’t even think of an example. a perfect situation ofc would be if after defeating the common enemy one side is ready to set their differences aside forever and the other one is not which leads to some delicious tragedy in the end (and to fandom discourse about whether person b should’ve forginen person a or whether they had every right not to).

forbidden romance. not of the montague / capulet kind, but of the actual “forbidden by society for valid reasons” kind. i don’t seek out books like this bcs all you will find is icky problematic romance books for people who have certain kinks, but i’m very intrigued when, for example, a literary fiction book will feature a forbidden romance. what will the author do with it? will they condemn it and remind everyone once again how harmful it is? will they have the nerve to make the ship endgame? how will they justify it? as the book leo has once put it, sometimes unhealthy relationships make for a more compelling story.

on a similar but very different note, when human characters have relationships with those who aren’t human. i guess paranormal romance is a subcategory of this trope but it’s not at all what i’m talking about. i like this inter-species dynamic bcs of how it makes different cultural norms clash and what it says about conditio humana and stuff. what if one character is a regular person and the other one is an unholy demon and they “fall in love” but for the human it means whatever it means but for the demon it means to devour their soul? in paranormal romance monsters learn to “love” like humans do but i think that’s cultural assimilation and also boring.

when a character is a prodigy at something and/or just very competent - like andrew at exy or toph beifong at earth- and metal-bending. many people like to see characters try and fail but i think it’s nice to have someone about whom you can’t be sure they won’t embarrass you. i have lots of first- and second-hand embarrassement in my life already, thank you very much. but admittedly there’s a fine line between such capable characters and mary sues.

when a character is obsessed with something or someone, often in an unhealthy Problematic way. i think it’s fascinating and i always root for such characters although they rarely come out on top (bcs turns out they’re “evil” or something) bcs they display the amount of enegry, drive and resourcefulness i can only aspire to. a subcategory of this type would be maniacs. yeah sometimes i root even for them bcs *looks at smudged writing on hand* i’m a bourgeois degenerate. plus, if you have a choice between the fbi and hannibal lecter and choose to root for the fbi it just means you’re boring and have no personality.

idk if the following ones are more character archetypes than tropes but i still decided to include them.

the first one i call “the douchebag ravenclaw” - it’s a character who’s very smart but also very mean which may or may not have something to do with how they’re Objectively Smarter than everybody else and their patience for other people’s stupidity and sensitivities is limited. yes, i’m a big fan of sherlock and dr house. tyrion and snape would also fit on this scale, although tyrion is not as mean as he is smart and snape is not as smart as he is mean. you know those tumblr posts that are like “it doesn’t matter how smart you are if you aren’t kind”? like yeah in real life certainly, but in fiction? big fat no. i have a lot of bottled up anger but avoid conflict at all costs so i need smart characters be mean at people to take the edge off it.

another character archetype i love is the lovable rascal - the morally grey and very sassy swashbuckler with a heart of gold. jack sparrow, locke lamora, seregil i korit are near and dear to my heart. it all comes from how when i was 12yo my favorite book was the three musketeers. much like douchebag ravenclaws give me a way of having (and winning) heated arguments i’d never start in real life, lovable rascals give me adventure which i’d never set off on bcs it sounds like too much trouble.

that’s all i could think of at the moment *says she as if this post isn’t too long already*

#book tag #i’ve been thinking a lot why i loved captive prince so much #and i guess the answer is that it both has the biggest douchebag ravenclaw i’ve encountered in fiction #and plays with the trope of enemies becoming reluctant allies in a very entertaining way #even though it doesn’t resolve the conflict in a way i find satisfying #anyway if you read this for some reason #recommend me books with these tropes :)

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ghoste-catte · 4 years ago

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A H I E for fandom asks!

A - Your current OTP(s)/OT3(s)/OTX(s)

So, obviously my #1 all time OTP is GaaLee, and has been off and on for ... close to fifteen years. I think this is self-evident. Probably my second and third favorite ships for Naruto are KakaGai and SakuIno, though I don’t write either of them that often (and honestly don’t read a ton of SakuIno, but if anyone has recs I’m all ears!) For a lot of other fandoms I enjoy, I don’t really actively ship anything? I just sort of enjoy the material and then like looking at pretty fanart, but I don’t have, like, a burning need for More Content of These Characters Specifically. There’s some where I’m like “Oh, this has cute potential”, but I’m not, like, passionate about it like I am with GaaLee. My 2nd biggest fandom right now is ~probably~ BNHA, in that I keep up with the manga, and I think there’s plenty of relationships that are, like, cute--and I do have drafts of fic that I probably will never get around to finishing for that fandom--but I don’t actively seek out content for them at the moment. Likewise with MP100 or One Punch Man--I like SeriRei and SaiGenos conceptually, but I don’t go out of my way to find or make content for them. Umm, I like Daisira from The Magnus Archives. I was reallllly into Cecilos from Welcome to Nightvale for a while. Pynch from The Raven Cycle. Rosemary and any combo of Davekat+/-John from Homestuck, though I haven’t really read Homestuck stuff actively in a long-ass time (because of the, y’know, post-canon shitshow). I watched The Dragon Prince recently and I really liked Janaya as a ship but there’s not tons of content for them? I’ve been slowly making my way through SPOP and the canon ships are good, but my main ship there is Huntara/me (joking, but seriously I loved her). Most other fandoms I straight up just don’t have any particular ships for.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what?

I’ve written a couple ... not quite crack but crack-adjacent fics? I wouldn’t call them “hilarious”, but they are meant to give you a chuckle. Like the one where Lee and Gaara get stuck in a donut case together, or the one where Gaara tries to ask Lee on a date while Team Gai is trapped in a three-man, six-armed Maito Suit, or the one where Kankuro causes a small housefire by fucking around with a robot on Zoom.

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., tv shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

When I look at my “big” fandoms they seem to mostly be shonen anime/manga. Normally I will watch an anime, and the way I know if it’s something I really like is if I run out of anime episodes and go looking for the manga. But other than that my fandoms are a pretty mixed bag. The one thing I would say I don’t particularly like is live-action dramas? I don’t mind live-action comedy (I looooved What We Do in the Shadows, for example), but anything that’s got real human people + Very Serious Subject Matter just doesn’t really do it for me. I get really distracted and just find it boring. I think that’s partially because I’m not particularly good at reading irl human facial expressions--animation has a very standard set of expressions that everyone shares, so it’s much easier for me to understand what the character’s face is saying--and partially because the types of narratives that consume TV For Adults (tm) don’t especially interest me. I do not, for example, care very much at all about marital drama or will-they-won’t-they romances or grittily realistic fight scenes. I have a hard time following plot threads in televised/movie drama ... and I also feel like the actors often look so similar that I struggle to visually distinguish them, lol. If there’s more than one blonde woman, my mind just slots them into place as the same person. I had the hardest time following The Great Destiel Kerfuffle of 2020 because I literally could not tell the 3 actors apart.

I - Has tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

Hahaha, this question is great. Honestly, not really. I very actively curate the people I engage with and I follow and unfollow liberally (I have hit the 5k blog follow limit several times), so my dashboard is both very active and it’s very easy for me to just peace out if someone posts content I’m not interested in. I kind of low-key enjoy watching fandom drama from the sidelines (because it is so frequently absolutely absurdist), but I don’t ever put my fingers in it if I can help it. I also spent literal decades as a very, very passive consumer of fandom/a “lurker”, so it doesn’t feel like it costs me anything to just ... shut up and not engage with firebrands. If something really pisses me off I usually shriek about it to my wife and then I’m done. I will say, though, that I did start watching Voltron and was pretty annoyed that I could hardly find any content for the characters I actually liked (Hunk and Pidge), because everyone was so obsessed with shipping wars, but really what soured me on the show was that the color palette and animation was grating and the plot quickly got very boring for me. Steven Universe was kind of like that too, minus the color scheme issue. It was a pretty show but I just got bored of it, and it became increasingly hard to find the content I wanted (pretty fanart) because of all the discourse. Plus the episode schedule was ... frankly stupid, and made it really hard to keep up with the show.

Fandom Asks! Send me some letters!

#answered #anonymous #ask meme #Anonymous

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safitheartist · 5 years ago

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Imagine falling back into sexist early 2000's shipping discourse because your ass doesn't want to understand that you were being queer baited and read too much into it.

Please people lets not do this shit again.

Once and for all:

No, Kairi is not some evil witch getting in the way of your ship. She was alway intended to be Sora's love interest.

No Kairi is not getting in the way of your ship in the first place. If she didn't exist the writers wouldn't suddenly decide to make Riku Sora's love interest. Like how the hell do you think that works? "Oh, the hetero love interest is gone, now it's time to take out my gay pride flag and become a ally to the LGBT community because my views on that matter were totally tied to the existence of this one female character."

Kairi is not a person with agency. She is a fictional character. She is not maliciously trying to ruin your fun or what the fuck ever. Everything established about her character (like the fact that she is literally pure of heart, she is literally a princes of light, that is literally the plot!) contridicts that Kairi is such a desisive and manipulative character.

You guys were being queer baited. The new remind DLC simply put emphasis on Sora and Kairi as a romance and you all want to be in denial about it and are searching for ways to still make your ship happen and it's just sad at this point.

Like fuck, if you still want to believe Soriku will be a thing then that's fine, but please stop falling into the same sexist trap people used to fall into in the early fandom days. Stop blaming female characters for things beyond their control. Stop acting like they are actual living beings with malicious intents instead of holding corporations accountable for their exploititive actions!

Just fucking stop and realize that, maybe, just fucking maybe, Nomura never intended for Sora and Riku to have romantic chemistry but he at some point realized he could exploit this very popular fandomship by feeding into it? That maybe square enix and disney are corporations with agendas that would speak against them making a gay couple canon in this game, yet alone the main characters?

That maybe Nomura has a history of lowkey homophobia within his older games (FF7 gym anybody) and how square's only game series with actual lgbt rep is Life is Strange, which is made by their american team and aimed at a western audience, while all their jrpgs tend to treat gay subtext as jokes or fanservice at the very fucking best?

That maybe we have a patern of behaviour here that is well documented?

That Kairi's lack of engagement in the majority of the story falls right in with how square games treat most of their female support cast?

That there is no secret reason why she is written that way?

That it might be, just a tad bit, more realistic that Square and Disney had/have no intentions for Sora and Riku to be in a relationship and are motivated more by profit then making something nice for the lgbt community, especially with their bigger titels?

Then for Kairi, one of their mascot characters, one of the characters they put a major amount of marketing into, the character they literally model after one of their biggest business partners famous and beloved japanese star Utada Hikaru, in every main line game to honor her, is secretly suppose to be revealed as a evil *itch who's sole purpose is to keep Sora and Riku apart for some stupid reason?

Like fucking come on yall. Falling back into this shit is embarassing. This fandom is embarassing for trying to give this game more credit then it deserves and then trying to bend backwards and find loop holes when they are let down again.

You are just setting yourself up for futher disapointment and are going to antagonize Kairi's fans, who have waited years for her to even get any story relevance at all, while at it!

Just fucking stop it already and look around you. You have to start to accept that Kingdom Hearts probably will never give you the representation you want from it.

That sucks, it really fucking does, it's hurtfull and stupid and idealy we would live in a world where there would be no big deal with gay representation in a colaboration between two media giants like Square and Disney.

But reality is: it would be a big deal.

It would be a big deal regarding cultural differences, it would be a big deal regarding the political climate in Japan right now (I know this site loves to pretend other countries then the US don't have those, but I assure you, we do) it would be a big deal marketing whise, it would be a big deal profit whise for them.

Of course there are companies willing to take that chance. Of course there have been many plesant surprises in the past couple of years.

But please be honest to yourself. Do you truly believe Square Enix and Disney are those kind of companies?

Do you truly believe it?

Because I don't.

Yes both of these comapnies have taken babysteps in having more lgbt representation, but at the end of it all, that's really it.

Babysteps.

This post got extremly long, and I'm sorry if at any point while reading this you got upset.

If you still want to hold on to hope for Sora and Riku to end up together instead that's fine, really, but you guys need to stop projecting your disapointment on Kairi. You need to realize that she is not a 'threat' and that her existence is not actually what prevents your ship from being canon.

All you are doing with that is feeding into a sexist trope a lot of fandoms, including this one, have rinsed and repeated over and over again.

#kingdom hearts #anti soriku #I FUCKING GUESS #I HATE YOU ALL FOR HAVING TO MAKE ME USE THIS FUCKING TAG #Kairi #sora #riku #queerbaiting

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perpetualmood · 5 years ago

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not an anti your anti-anti post got popular so i wanted to know why u ship bkdk? i'm genuinely curious bc i;ve only seen ppl say it's abusive and i'm new to mha

first of all anon thank you for approaching me respectfully about this. there are a lot of people i know who aren’t as lucky but really, thank you for possessing the basic human decency that so many others on this fucking hellsite can’t muster.

now, first of all let me say that i’m not a “““hardcore shipper””” or anything of the sort. i just think that bakudeku/katsudeku has a pretty good dynamic with lots of potential, along with a lot of other plausible ships in the series. i don’t get into a series for its ships, and even when i ship something i won’t let it take over my experience of fandom, which is why i’m def posting less bnha and ship discourse. this’ll probably be my last post about it, ever.

now, about bakudeku.

on bkdk being abusive:

it is not.

i first want to clarify that while bakugou bullied midoriya in the past, that doesn’t fucking make it abuse. i know abusers, and i know bullies. bakugou was shitty, and i’m not excusing his actions or saying they were okay because they were fucking not. most antis get all their fuel with the line “take a swan dive from the roof” that bakugou says to midoriya in the first chapter.

did he actually mean it? did bakugou, a boy who was told all his life he would be a hero, who wanted to be a hero, say it with the intent of midoriya actually killing himself? no, he didn’t. it would go against everything a hero stood for, and being a hero was bakugou’s only aspiration in his life. unless anyone is iterating that he’s stupid (which canon proves otherwise almost constantly) he knew that when he said it, midoriya wouldn’t do it.

(and while it is important to note that horikoshi has explicitly said that he went too far with that line, as it is not how bakugou should be seen and/or characterised, i’m still treating it as canon because it is, antis don’t @ me.)

and, as midoriya makes very clear later, he has absolutely no intention of taking bakugou’s words seriously. instead, he brushes it off as ‘kacchan being a proud idiot who doesn’t think before he speaks’. however, while he did not take those words seriously, that doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt even a little. his expression when bakugou says it is hurt, but more than that, shocked. obviously, anyone with a brain can infer that it is not something midoriya is accustomed to hearing things like that from bakugou. if it had been a regular occurrence, his reaction would have been a lot more subdued as he would have heard it before and therefore expected it.

even if you look at the scene later on, bakugou does not go out of his way to target or even interact with midoriya up until their teacher brings up the fact that midoriya wants to go to ua. bakugou does not see midoriya as “his old friend” or “the kid who he grew up with”. what he sees is “a quirkless kid who can’t do anything is trying to get in his alley, the one that everyone told him was handcrafted for him”. is he right? absolutely fucking not. does he realise this? again, no. this all leads to bakugou having a major gifted kid + inferiority complex, but i digress.

(i feel like it’s necessary to say once again that i am not condoning bakugou’s behaviour just because he didn’t really intend for midoriya to commit suicide or midoriya didn’t take it seriously, or saying that it’s okay if nothing happened.)

anyway, back on topic. later during the final exams arc, midoriya also states explicitly that he and bakugou have not talked properly to one another since they were kids. this makes it clear that bakugou did not, in fact, ceaselessly torment midoriya throughout their elementary school/junior high years. they just didn’t interact, plain and simple. the experience shown on the playground when they were four and the one after school on this day were likely two of very few, perhaps ten at most, incidents in which bakugou and midoriya’s difference in power and therefore status was made clear to show what it means to be quirkless in this society.

(i’d like to talk about how fucking messed up this society is, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)

bakugou has been a bully to midoriya. has he been abusive? absolutely fucking not. do i think their relationship is repairable? yes. i’ve been bullied before. i know what it’s like when you can reconcile with your bully and when you can’t. this is very clearly something that can be salvaged.

on their canon relationship:

do i think of bakudeku as a “he pulled your pigtails because he likes you” situation? am i infatuated with the ever-popular childhood friend trope? not a chance, and dismissing any shipper’s evaluation of their relationship to that is fucking low.

let’s start with their relationship at the beginning. bakugou harbours obvious animosity towards midoriya, and the only reason appears to be that it was because he was quirkless. (again, fuck quirk society) bakugou had always been told he was superior, and midoriya had always been told that he was nothing without a quirk. when you’re a young and impressionable child, having these things said to you a lot will make you believe it. in a sense, it’s akin to brainwashing. bakugou was made to believe that midoriya was worthless in comparison to him, a natural-born hero, and midoriya was made to believe that bakugou was amazing and undefeatable.

there were a lot of ways it could have turned out, honestly. midoriya could have become someone bakugou saw as someone needing protecting, and as cliched as their relationship would have been were that the case, it would have been the only ““functional”” one they could have had. hence the dysfunction, because midoriya is not someone who can sit back and take hits. he wants to be a hero, which is half the reason he admired bakugou in the first place.

so in the beginning of canon when midoriya’s desire to go to ua to be a hero is made known, bakugou, as i said before, feels as though his space has been invaded. he’s marked his territory, and all of a sudden this quirkless nobody i used to know wants to take it from me. of course, his way of thinking is wrong, but he’s never been corrected properly (sorry mitsuki, i love you but you’re not good at parenting, and masaru, please do something about your emotionally constipated son).

bakugou’s reaction to midoriya saying he “just wants to try” makes it look like it was just a trivial matter for midoriya, as opposed to bakugou, who has been working towards wanting to become a hero since he was small (as opposed to midoriya who wanted to as well, yes, but never did anything being analysing the heroes for fun). he feels as though midoriya is going through it with a ‘meh’ attitude, which deeply offended by the sentiment and takes it personally.

so bakugou obviously hates it. he hates feeling like someone that was, in his words, “a pebble in [his] path” could possibly even fathom overtaking him, when they were compared all the time.

additionally, midoriya has been a part of bakugou’s ego fodder. he followed him around, praised him like the rest, yes, but it’s very important to note that even though midoriya showered bakugou with praise he still talked to him as though he would someday be on that same level, even as a kid.

they were kids. they were dumb. but you know what? they grew.

bakugou especially has gone through so much development, even comparing him to the piece of shit he was in chapter 1 is a huge insult to bakugou, to horikoshi, and to midoriya, who has played an enormous part in it, especially after the sludge villain when it is very explicitly stated that bakugou didn’t even interact with midoriya until

in the beginning of their first year at ua, bakugou learned for the first time what it meant to have people who were equal to him, that he wasn’t as exceptional as he thought. midoriya, too learned what it meant to stand as equals, but instead of falling from a platform above, he was thrown up from the ground. and during the battle trial, bakugou tasted bitter defeat for the first time, and it shook him to the point where he had a panic attack in class (which i’m disappointed all might didn’t notice, but i digress) upon seeing midoriya get k.o.-ed but still win while he was left unscathed physically, and lost to deku of all people.

do i think their dynamic from the beginning of the year would have worked as a ship? no, abso-fucking-lutely not. bakugou feels nothing but betrayal (as in, he would obviously believe midoriya was hiding his quirk from him and lying to him their whole lives) and hatred for midoriya up until the battle trial, after which he doesn’t respect or even accept midoriya, but he acknowledges him because he beat him and then admitted half the secret to his quirk.

their relationship is an absolute shitshow for a long time and it shows, but the battle trial was a huge part in the beginning of their relationship developing. and of course, it has to – midoriya is the protagonist and bakugou is the deuteragonist, after all.

but the real turning point where bakugou comes to grudgingly accept midoriya is during their final exams before the training camp, where they went up against all might. being forced to work together and for bakugou to have to listen to midoriya really showed us depth in him we hadn’t seen before. sadly, all might was absolutely no help in their teamwork (despite that being the entire reason aizawa had paired bakugou and midoriya together) and instead made them try to focus on defeating him rather than working together, but somehow, that got the two of them to cooperate in battle.

(personally, i believe that they would have been better matched against a more strategic teacher like aizawa or nedzu as they would be forced to come up with a strategy together, and all might provided an unrealistic situation for them overall and the entire fight makes absolutely little to no use of their intelligence, something that is canonically a prevalent strength for both of them.)

but honestly, after kacchan vs deku 2, where they finally become ““proper rivals”” according to all might, where they both finally, finally talk out their issues and try to patch their shit up. @dekatsu explains it really well here and i’ve rambled for long enough about it.

now, after that fight, they’re both at a point where instead of being at each other’s throats, they’re pushing each other forward, and that’s why i like them together so much, whether platonic or romantic. which brings me to...

what i like about bkdk

aka, the thing you asked me in the first place.

do i approve of their relationship before kacchan vs deku 2? no. but after the fight, it blossoms into something absolutely brilliant. while they’re on their house arrest in the days after their fight, midoriya asks bakugou about his shoot style, and bakugou tells him exactly what he thinks and how it can be improved. and he admits, however backwardly, that he approved of it.

from literally that moment on, their communication and relationship develops so so much (not getting into the later arcs because manga spoilers) and bakugou becomes a huge part of the “one for all” secret, and every. single. time he sees midoriya use it, he encourages him in his competitive way and he does want to make sure he sees deku become a great hero, dammit.

relationships where both parties push each other to do better always seem to be the ones that work best. bakugou is constantly striving now not just to better himself, but he’s making sure that midoriya is getting better too. the more the story progresses, the closer they grow.

we’re at a point where bakugou sits in on midoriya’s meetings with all might about one for all and its technicalities and history, and is willing to train separately with midoriya because of it. they don’t have any problems with each other now -- even all might has properly acknowledged bakugou and midoriya as great friends.

it’s indisputable.

and whether you ship it or not, now if you deny that they have a bond that’s strong as fuck, you’re only making yourself look silly.

platonic or romantic, these two have chemistry and they complement each other so well that it almost hurts. i can’t wait to see them grow into a hero duo.

. . .

anyway, that’s the end of my 2k+ word long meta (which i honestly wouldn’t have been able to complete without the help of a tumblr friend who would like to stay anonymous) and i hope it answers your question and hopefully, it showed you a side of things that not only the antis are seeing. thanx, this is been my last ship discourse post.

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