#meta about fandom interpretation. i wanna hear your interpretation

[arrivingonthescene]

i got this dialogue chain from espirit de corps after jean had just participated in mocking harry over the radio along with the precinct, where harry has a legitimate panic attack over not wanting to be here anymore, pidieu tries to keep it private, but quickly they hang up on him and discuss. its still apparent, the narrative that helping people in these states is not first fifth or even the last mission for the RCM or these institutions, we see with the lazareth dialogue that no one behind that radio is truly interested in helping the ill, downtrodden, or disabled and it's carried out in such a nonchalant way, you encounter so many people who their world didn't extend enough compassion and they're left lost and wandering like pigs or coping with chemicals like birds nest roy

so jeans words he speaks to harry, contrasting with his behavior away from him is so interesting to me. he wanted, at least in this moment, to protect harry's issues from being broadcasted, suddenly it's *not funny* despite laughing in his face about how hilarious his memory loss and alcoholism is. it's not funny and he still condemns him as a lost cause. why did harry say he wants to get worse? it's not like the institution wants him to get better, yearning for something he felt is unattainable hurts and getting worse is a tangible thing, he is an Expert in self-punishment. it really isn't funny and jean goes on to do the courtesy of hiding harry's breakdown from the higher ups and report it as a prank call. i'm so interested in why. he clearly does not think harry can be helped and jean himself is seen as a medical anomaly for being severely depressed and somehow still alive, like the end stage of depression to them is suicide. does jean think he himself is a lost cause? idk. i'm not saying he projects onto harry and he certainly is a mouthpiece for the way disabled people are treated in the workforce but i cannot stop thinking how this dialogue chain made me pause

[mourninglamby]

i would pay insane money to hear about your thoughts on ctommy girlism because it’s actually such an important part of his character analysis to me

I’ve been wanting to make a patreon for stuff like this + art I don’t wanna post, so I’ve decided to go this route with the essay I will likely end up with based on this thesis. But I’ll use this post to summarize some thoughts im VERY confident about (and could be a sneak peek into what else the paper will entail)

C!tommy is fem-coded based off of fandom interpretation and reception, textual evidence, and meta analysis (will get more into meta in the big doc).

To start, a lot of this coding has to do with how he is victimized and why, which mainly concerns him craving approval from these older men (c!wilbur, c!dream, and even c!techno,) that he views as role models. Power imbalances are something that can also affect boys, yes, but this is where the coding comes in to set them apart. PLEASE REMEMBER Coding is used to identify traits that align with minority experiences, both good and bad. That does not mean c!tommy is LITERALLY a girl. It is a tool utilized in rhetorical analysis.

In this case, the constant subjugation of c!tommy by the men he yearns to trust, and subsequent self blame and denial when they hurt him fit into an experience closely associated with misogyny, and to go even further into the meta, a misogynistic view of feminine victimhood. The way c!tommy’s trauma interrupts his psychological and emotional development is received by thousands of fans who still deny his abuse even happened as “annoying”, “mean”, and “just as bad” as his perpetrator(s). This is observed from the existence of c!dream apologists and sympathizers, and to a more complicated extent, c!wilbur apologists. But I digress.

C!tommy is coded as feminine because in the majority of media centering victims of this kind of abuse, the character is a woman, and a woman can and will always be blamed for what happened to her. In the case of DSMP, this blame comes from the man who is protected by the spoils of his privilege as an oppressor, status in his community, and the many other people (predominantly young women) he has managed to manipulate to be in opposition to his victim. Fiction affecting real life and all…. Which is why I think this evidence of coding is so important.

To add another disclaimer for the bad faith warriors, being a victim does NOT make a character femme coded, however, the way he is treated in canon and the way the fanbase reacts to how he grapples with the lasting trauma is certainly rooted in misogynistic talking points.

Looking forward to writing more ^__^ thank u for being so interested anony. I’ve welcomed some friends who I trust very much to help me write it and I’m very excited.

addendum: there is no right or wrong way to interpret ctommy or dsmp or the response to how he was depicted... i only wish to start a conversation and get my thoughts out. if u disagree that is ur prerogative and i respect it <3

[das-a-kirby-blog]

alright, this goes out to you guys. just gonna build off of this post

(THIS IS ALL JUST MY OPINION, NOT FACT!)

soooo I think the reason there are so many contrasting headcanons is not only because of the open interpretations the games leave, but because of what kinds of kirby media people are introduced to at first. you got the main games, the anime, the mangas, the light novels, etc. which. wow that's a lot of material you can build on. AND CONSIDERING THE AMOUT OF LORE EACH OF THESE TOPICS ARE COOKING???? DAWG WH

and I GUESS I can understand why some hcs are so bizarre in other people's eyes. but the way this fandom handles those different headcanons is...a lil bad.

YES I KNOW THIS ISN'T SPECIFIC TO THE KIRBY FANDOM, but the whole reason why I'm making this is to at least understand why people take it so close to heart.

and. not calling anyone out. but I do see quite a lot of posts with people (critiquing? complaining?) about how popular headcanons "ruin" the fandom (and this goes with ships too, but I'll get into that later) and all I gotta ask is

does it really??? does it really ruin the fandom?

I'm just gonna say. no. it doesn't.

you are focusing on a small percentage out of...oh idk...AN ENTIRE FANBASE? at LEAST open up a little and find a new circle if it is bothering you that much. or better yet. BLOCK! filter out tags!

with the amout of differing kirby medias, please understand that there will be headcanons that will oppose yours and that's okay! just don't be a jerk about it!

--

NOW. with the ships. specifically metadede. gonna try to put my overwhelming bias aside for this one I promise.

though metadede is the most popular ship in the fandom, it still comes with it's critics. and some are. actually valid! such as their relationship doesn't immediately have to be romantic. it can be seen as platonic! and I can understand why people feel that way.

but things get sour when people immediately try to crap on it because in their eyes, and correct me if I'm wrong here, metadede overshadows every other ship in the fandom. you hardly get to hear about their rarepair because of how metadede is everywhere.

if you take a step back and really look. there is a reason it is so popular. because of the LARGE amounts of media they have together. in the games. in the mangas. in smash. in official art. I mean if you wanna count the anime go ahead.

what I'm trying to say here is that compared to any other character interactions, meta knight and dedede are definitely up there for the most interaction in the franchise. and I'm not trying to downplay any rarepairs or other ships with a smaller fanbase.

BUT DON'T BLAME THE SHIPPERS! they are only doing the same as anyone else, they are going off of what they are given by canon and simply building off of that.

though, because I am a metadede shipper myself, you can take this segment with a grain of salt.

---

in conclusion...people can have their different takes. and that's okay! having different opinions is what builds this fandom and draws the attention of so many. but please! do not take any of these takes personal!

If there is a point in here you would like to argue against or build on, feel free to do so. I'm open to any other views.

[demonstars]

Rain anon if you don't mind

I went and read the monologue you mentioned. Genuinely love the writing there. Honestly it's low-key so c!dream coded, with the stuff he was saying to Tommy in the prison

And do not worry, Dream is such a fun villain and it's gonna be fun seeing different interpretations of him. I'm gonna be honest I never really analyzed him much just cause I was way more focused on tommy and Wilbur. (I have some hot takes on him that will anger the masses kekw)

I wish so hard that dream has built his character up a little earlier cause like man is he interesting. Especially the way they used the very beginnings of the smp, at a time before cannon was even a thought in the wind to show more of an evolution than we really thought

And ok, I'm actually in love with so many of the monologues they said during the SMP. Wilbur by far and away having my favorites during the pogtopia era. But Dream's during the disc finale. It hit me in all the right ways. Like, he nailed the tone and the inflections and the way he was so cocky and like djdjsnwn.

And also that's one where I love to bring in the meta

Cause like, great verbiage aside. That monologue was low-key the first time it was obvious the cc's were listening to the fans

So many fan interpretations were canonized there. Tommy's power and how his attachments dictated the tides of the server, dreams obsession with control and so many other things. As a fan who had been more than knee deep into the lore at the time, hearing it was amazing because it felt like dream was acknowledging us and actively encouraging us

And not to bash them because I love all the cc's so much. But aside from a few of them, they weren't really storytellers. I could go into the meta of mcyt and how they as a generation influenced the next wave of mcyt but the current wave of mcyt does what they lacked and that is making epics out of nothing (and yes there's a new gen of mcyt don't open that can of worms unless you're feeling brave)

The dsmp people had a few captains and definitely a lot of creativity but in the best way possible it was a give and take relationship where the creators would do something random and the fans would then build on it and then the cc's would see that and smoothly incorporate that.

And I'm not saying we wrote the characters, cause we didn't. But they did these broad strokes and we helped them fill in the finer details. That's just how improv works, a team effort from everyone involved.

So much of the smp was accidental and I don't think they thought of the lore the same we we did and I have no doubt that that monologue is the manifestation of that

(also yes, when there was no more lore I went down the path of then choosing to analyze the fandom itself and oh man oh man. Sorry I am like, 8 levels of insane for block men and block game)

🌧️

cdreamie my most beloved crazypants guy the way you can see him spiral into his doom is so fucking awesome. To me. and the decision of ccDream not to stream to not steal views being translated into nobody knowing his intentions ughhhhh sorry i can talk ages about him o(-( my boy

i wish i knew where the monologues are transcribed bcs i know they are and sometimes i'd just like to reread them for the fun of it, like one would a book . i think they could be kinda charming at the beginning when they really didn't know well the improv thing and would just say shit and then reporpuse said stuff with a deeper meaning it was AWESOME

i wanna know your hot takes about cCrimeboys. in a different turn of events i didn't care for them much post doomsday, idk, i felt sad but that's about it. i would always see people waxing poetry about them and like i love that for them !! just not my thing

Cause like, great verbiage aside. That monologue was low-key the first time it was obvious the cc's were listening to the fans

YES this is something i clearly remember, that wink to the audience in a way that said — we see what you're doing, we like it, keep going, and that translated into so many iconic moments; i guess that's like the main consequence of being so closely interwined with their fandom (idk i think it was a bit of a interesting decision in general terms and i don't know if i liked how it ended up making some people feel like entilted to an ending they wanted, you know? it's a complex issue. it was cool and then it wasn't).

and yeah i get you, mcyt has been a fascination of mine for a while, kinda the reason i'm studing anthropology! digital anthropology offers many windows in this age where older academia/just normal older folks don't know how to navigate the internet and their subcategories, not the way content creators are forced to learn. it's p interesting!!

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

I was wondering if you could send out a clarion call for me? I don't have a big enough audience, but I would really like to speak hope into the ears of others.

Tolkien-lovers, we've been brutalised and gaslit, but there is light and high beauty forever beyond the darkness' reach. I wanna hear *your* takes, see your art, study your meta, listen to your music; tell me about your OC's and let's write stories about them! Historical costumers and script-writers, let's connect you one with the other and support endeavours to venture into Middle Earth with appropriate respect and reverence!

The best way to push back against this darkness is with light, and we generate light by catching the fire of Tolkien's subcreation and kindling flames in the hearths of souls of others. We need a tag, a movement. Reach out to me, reach out to one another. This is an invitation, an opportunity. For Tolkien!

Hi, thanks for the ask! I agree, I want to see interpretations of Tolkien's world by people who actually care about it. Who actually know and respect the world he created. We do not need Tolkien’s stories filtered through the lens of an evil corporation in order to enjoy them. In my view, what Amazon has done to Tolkien's works is not subcreation; instead, it is like Sauron inscribing tengwar on the One Ring, taking something beautiful that someone else made and corrupting it for his own ends.

But, I do want to add, if we're going to start a movement for subcreation within Tolkien's world that is free from Amazon's influence, I think we as a fandom should make explicitly clear that it is not diversity we're opposed to—it's Amazon's disrespect for the source material and unethical treatment of workers, the environment, etc.

[bigskydreaming]

Sorry to bother you, but RE: the Jason Todd in Arkham thing, like, what was Dick supposed to do? Take him home to the same house where two of the KIDS that Jason had threatened/attacked were supposed to be living in what one hoped would be relative safety?

Like, full offence, Jason had at that point proven himself a danger to all the people around him. If he wound up at Arkham, oh well, maybe don’t kill a whole bunch of ppl and harm numerous others. If Arkham doesn’t work as a hospital, maybe he should have been at another one, but at that point in his character arc, a secure mental health facility was probably the best he could expect.

It’s like ppl forget he’s a multiple murderer with a history of targeting the ppl Dick loves. I don’t even read the comics and I know this much.

Oh for sure, I mean, I've posted meta about this before because the fandom accepted narrative gets it sooooooo wrong. Like, I'll always be right at the front of the line yelling IT WAS JASON'S CHARACTERIZATION THAT WAS CRAP THROUGH ALL THAT, THAT'S NOT JASON, GIMME NUANCE OR GIMME DEATH. Y'know, something like that.

But like, given that Jason was written as repeatedly trying to kill Dick's other two brothers its like, yeah?! What was Dick supposed to do? He'd tried asking Jason nicely hey could you stop doing that and Jason was like LOL no.

And also....people are like - Dick callously threw Jason into Arkham right next to the Joker and then just left him there and forgot about him and....SOURCE?

1) Dick didn't DO this to Jason, JASON went after Dick and Damian and in the process of fighting him in a very public space, Dick beat Jason and police were already like....right there? Dick didn't actually have the option of being uh no, you can't take this known and notorious criminal into custody, I'll stop you on the basis of - well I can't tell you actually but plz just trust me okay, he totes didn't mean it! (except like also, at that point he totes did, so.....)

2) What pull Dick DID have as Batman with the GCPD, he used to get Jason put into Arkham INSTEAD of Blackgate for his SAFETY. We know this to be true. Jason himself confirmed that absolutely nothing bad happened to him in Arkham, he just didn't want to be there but WHO THE HELL EVER WANTS TO BE IN A PRISON OF ANY SORT? And the first thing Dick said when Bruce said Jason had demanded to be transferred to Blackgate is that Jason wouldn't be safe there with all the enemies he had gunning for him. It was abundantly clear that Jason's safety had been a primary concern for Dick the whole time (and Jason wasn't safe at Blackgate, its just fine, he only wanted to be transferred in order to enact an escape plan that got like 80 people indiscriminately killed but whatevs. Its Gotham, what's a few dozen more dead criminals am I right? *rolls eyes at how often that little detail gets left out of the narrative).

3) Dick consistently put time, focus and Wayne Enterprises money into Arkham Asylum while he was Batman, since Arkham was being rebuilt from the ground up after it was blown up in Battle for the Cowl. Also, Dick had been one of the last 'patients' in the old Arkham, given that he went undercover to infiltrate the Black Glove while they were in control of Arkham and spent a week in there drugged to the gills, locked up and in a straitjacket before being almost lobotomized. He has every grievance with Arkham that fan writers like to PRETEND Jason has from his stay there, but Jason's only complaint was that he again, was bored, and he had to take psych evals every other week because it was after all, still a mental health institution. Dick did everything in his power at the time to make sure that even if Jason did have to be locked up to keep him from going after more people, like, it was going to be as humane as possible and the stuff that Dick himself had JUST experienced in the old Arkham WOULDN'T happen to Jason.

4) The Joker was literally nowhere near Arkham THE ENTIRE TIME. This is not a small detail, given that 'the Joker was just five cells down' is the entire basis of most writers' Jason-in-Arkham angst and the anti-Dick sentiments they tend to create. All the major Rogues escaped from the old Arkham in Battle for the Cowl BEFORE it blew up. That's why they're not DEAD. Dick's run as Batman was primarily about fighting the escapees. And Joker, very significantly, was clearly among those Rogues not present in Arkham during Dick's Batman run, given he was literally toying with Dick and Damian through most of it. Seriously, how much do people have to hate Dick and think the worst of him to think that he - the dude who btw, BEAT THE JOKER TO DEATH WITH HIS BARE HANDS FOR MAKING JOKES ABOUT KILLING JASON - would just....obliviously lock Jason up right next to the Joker and throw away the key?

Like...and it goes on and on, lol. I remember the first time I brought all this up in an argument with some Jason stans, they literally started laughing back and forth to each other in the replies about how someone was a bit too carried away with their own fanon, and its like...LMAO! Yes! Someone is! Its YOU! You are the people you guys are talking about, looooool, I can literally back all this up with sourced panels.

Buuuuuuut, c'est la vie.

I mean, this is nothing new for us, its literally Teen Wolf fandom alllll over again. Probably why I just said nope, not doing this again awhile back and was like umm actually I will NOT just be ignoring the blatant false narratives thrown around here just so that people happy with the fanon narratives that prioritize the characters they like and sling shit at the characters they don't can have their fandom just the way they want it at the expense of everyone else in it. You wanna push bad faith interpretations of specific characters at every literal opportunity, its like, that's cool! I got the drive! I can push back with actual facts, its all good!

But the most hilarious thing to me will always be how fucking INDIGNANT people get about that, like "How dare you point out the precedent we established in not caring about any fandom experience other than our own and thus being loud and everpresent with our preferred interpretations in an attempt to drown out any other possible interpretation just so that the most people possible would be influenced by us instead of anything else, and we'd get more of the content we like at the expense of any possible nuance whatsoever."

Like, the most common complaint I get is people griping about how damn often I'm saying "mmmm, no, this isn't what happened actually" and "okay but have you considered flipping the script BACK from the way you flipped it initially in order to get this weird ass interpretation of a superhero noted for his emphasis on emotional caretaking of his loved ones actually being this callous oblivious selfish jerk who tramples all over the feelings of everyone around them and makes them just the woobiest woobies that ever did woobie all throughout Woobieland?"

And I'm just like, okay see, I hear you, its just the thing is, the THING IS......

If you didn't want that to be the topic of conversation so damn often, then hey, just a suggesh, but maybe you shouldn't have devoted literal years to coming up with the most bad faith interpretations of this character possible at literally every available opportunity. Maybe there'd be like.....less reason for the topic to come up so often, if like....you by your own actions hadn't made it a necessary topic to tackle so often?

I DON'T KNOW, I'M JUST SPIT-BALLING HERE, DON'T MIND ME AND MY CRAZY-ASS IDEAS OF FAIR PLAY.

[princesssarcastia]

Thoughts on Star Trek AOS? (And do you think Kirk was on Tarsus?)

i have SO MANY THOUGHTS about star trek aos, so buckle up.  brace yourself.

star trek aos is a terrible disaster and i love it SO MUCH.  for me, star trek 2009 is still in that class of unreasonably pleasing movies like the mummy or stardust or jumanji: welcome to the jungle.  what they are isn’t exactly top notch but you love them for being exactly what they are.

star trek aos is a star-studded fucking phenomenal cast of some of the best actors working today, which makes up for the very inconsistent writing and unfortunate low-level current of sexism.

literally where would i be today if chris pine could not make faces Like That. i honestly couldn’t tell you.

overall, I have quite a few bones to pick with JJ Abrams for setting up a star trek universe that is less Wacky Space Utopia adventures with liberal political commentary ranging from unsubtle to im-hitting-you-over-the-head-with-my-opinions-like-they’re-a-brick—

to this kind of overtly militarized action-hero adventure porn where one white man saves the universe from Scary People Who Don’t Look Like Us And Are Crazy.  I also don’t appreciate what they did to Jim Kirk, turning him into this womanizing self-centered bastard who has to be in charge.  I REALLY don’t appreciate the casual misogyny, what with the last of rank stripes for women and the gratuitous sex-ed up scenes and the way that Amanda Grayson gets fridged for man-pain and and and— you get the picture.

Or at least, that’s what they tried to do to jim kirk.  and god fucking bless chris pine for being able to make facial expressions, because i firmly believe if pretty much almost anyone else had played Jim Kirk as written by JJ Abrams, that’s exactly what he would have been.

But because of chris pine’s acting, instead, most of the AOS fandom and I realized/decided that this “womanizing” version of jim kirk actually really really hates himself so much, most likely for trauma reasons. 

we took that shit and ran with it and never really stopped.

zachary quinto is also like god tier casting.  unfortunately the writers for the first two movies mostly gave him Anger as a primary motivator, which like, is not exactly how I would interpret Spock at all, but quinto played this Angry Spock so so well.

ZOE SALDANA PLAYS THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE, NYOTA UHURA, PERFECTLY AND THAT’S ALL I’LL HEAR ON THE MATTER.

john cho should be cast in everything ever he’s amazing and I love seeing him.  this man has the range. hikaru sulu is the backbone of this fucking ship.  this man wins the big damn hero award every single movie. 

i still miss living in the same world as anton yelchin. i really, really do.

I also have found family feelings all over these movies, where these baby versions of iconic characters from the sixties are brought together too early to witness too much fucking trauma.  harry potter references aren’t exactly in vogue right now, but there’s this one piece from a—well, actually, its a harry potter reference in an mcu fic i read years ago, now that i think about it, but anyway:

it was something like, there are some things you can’t go through with a person—like that mountain troll in harry potter—without becoming friends for life.  there are some crucibles that will bind you together forever.  and awful as it is, I think Nero and the Vulcan genocide were the AOS crew’s mountain troll.  there’s no going back or separating, after that.

also I feel like there’s a ton of competence porn in this trilogy that i deeply, deeply enjoy.

star trek: 2009 and into darkness are both grimdark male power fantasy bullshit that only accidentally hits all the right buttons for me.  I love them dearly but i know EXACTLY what they are, thank you.

star trek: beyond is a delightful movie with no real plot where our favorite crew are finally Adults With A Modicum Of Common Sense And Stability, instead of Disaster Children Angsting All Over The Place, and they get to save the universe with the power of excellent rock music and friendship. how cool is that?!?  i wanna give simon pegg a high five for making this movie.

on a more meta note, what I find kind of satisfying about these movies is that—for all his many faults that i’m always happy to expound upon—JJ Abrams actually went for it.  He Did That.  He just made his own brand new timeline, killed jim kirk’s dad, then gave him an abusive uncle/step-dad, then literally destroyed one of the founding planets of the Federation, then he, in an iconic fashion, switched Jim and Spock’s places in the infamous “wrath of khan” death scene, so instead Spock gets to watch Jim die. 

and you know what? I can forgive a lot of bullshit for that kind of poetic angsty fanfic plot detail. 

every time uhura says, “an alternate reality,” in star trek 2009 just gives me chills.  every time she says it, you feel the weight of sixty years of history and legacy sitting on these people’s shoulders, the weight of arguably one of the most popular TV shows of all time.

imagine, living in a new world you’re aware isn’t the one that was supposed to be.  imagine that!

oh! and on the question of tarsus:

what I think is probably true irl: JJ Abrams has never thought that far ahead in his life.  correct me if i’m wrong, but hadn’t he.....not even watched star trek.........when he made these movies............like lol i’d bet you this man didn’t even really know Tarsus was a thing.  And even if he did, I don’t think he thought it was part of the new canon he was creating.  AOS is much more self-contained than the serialized universe the original star trek was, so I don’t think that AOS was intended to encompass all those things, like tarsus, that we as a fandom like to obsess over.

what I personally enjoy: i love me some AOS fic that explores the ridiculous amounts of trauma that comes from living through a genocide.  I think that, given we all decided AOS Jim Kirk hates himself, and engages in a shit ton of self-sabotaging and destructive behavior to cope, it’s a reasonable jump to think that at least some of that comes from some survivor’s guilt bullshit from Tarsus.  And honestly, hit me up if you want recs for this, because boy do I have them.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no one does angst quite like AOS!Jim Kirk.

what I believe wholeheartedly: this is like Schrödinger's Plot Point, okay, it both exists and doesn’t exist simultaneously.  it’s easy to read tarsus into some of jim’s behavior, and it’s easy to read none of it in, and both of those choices are valid.  go with your gut, go with what makes you happy, go with what you think makes sense.  This is where fandom lives, in these little details that fall through the cracks.

anyway WOW did I talk a lot.  those are at least some of my star trek thoughts.  i do have others, but i’ve expounded on them before on this blog, and y’all don’t need me to repeat myself

ask me my thoughts on ______

[crackinglamb]

Hi! I hope it isn’t too much trouble, but I’d like to ask how or why you decided to write Twist? And then also how and why you decided to write Wicked Games a little bit after. Did you wanna explore different relationships with characters when having a different personality in your ‘Modern Girl’ or different goals, because Carly talked Solas down and guided him into a different path, while Imogen seems to want him to go through with his plans with her help and a large dose of “what the heck is the canon timeline?” I love both of the stories, I might reread them again to help with the Modern Girl in Thedas withdrawals.

I ask because I’ve been reading “Modern Girl/Person in Thedas” stories and really wanna try my hand at them, I just feel like I am only writing it for little one shot type interactions between characters, and don’t really know why I’d actually have a “Modern Girl” be sent to Thedas, how and why, and what they would do, If your willing to give insight I’d love to hear it. I just hope I’m not a bother.

Oh no, you're not a bother at all! Thank you so much for this ask!! I love to talk about how I fell down this rabbit hole! I hope you're ready for a dissertation, because this got really long. 💕💕💕

I came to Dragon Age backwards. I didn't know anything about the series other than a lot of people liked it and had very strong opinions about it. Then a fellow writer began to write a Varric/Hawke story and I read it because I wanted to support her return to posting.

And I fell in love with a world I'd never seen.

I realized that, due to its age, I actually did know more about the games than I thought I did. I knew the ending already, and who this bald dude was that had the fandom so divided. A classic villain, right? Wrong. Some people think he's just terrible and some people defend him to the death. Some people think he's terrible but don't let that stop them from defending him to the death. So what was the real deal?

I did some research (because at that point I was writing my own Varric/Hawke fic and I'll still die on that ship hill. Anyways...moving on). I discovered that everything I thought I knew about Solas was skewed by fandom interpretation. Which is valid. I mean, all our opinions end up that way when it comes to fandom, right? All interpretation is subjective. But the fact remains that Solas interprets the world around him through the eyes of the Inquisitor and how they treat him. And that is player based. Low approval proves his opinion that this is a world not fit to live it. High approval shows him that his decision is going to destroy something beautiful, but he still feels he needs to do it.

I got to thinking about what it would take to stop him. Through the course of watching his romance, reading a lot of meta and lore posts and listening to his companion banter, I had a headcannon emerge: Solas could only be stopped by someone who knew what he was doing from the start.

But that's not gonna happen in canon. He already allegedly killed the only person who knew. (Seriously, #saveFelassan) So who else would make him rethink it?

The answer that came to me was a person he needed, so he couldn't risk eliminating them. The Inquisitor who bears his mark. I then went a step further, and decided that someone who knew all his secrets and plans, and who could possibly help him shift them, would have to be from our world. Enter the Modern Girl in Thedas, because I love a good romance, and I wanted a happy ending to this otherwise tragic love story.

And Carly was born. A modern gamer girl, sucked through to a fictional world because the universe is vast and unknowable (and certain wisps of certain Evanuris like to nudge). I'd read a bunch of fic by the time I started writing Twist, including some self-insert types. None of them told him flat out from the beginning. So I determined that she would. She'd tell him what she knew and try to persuade him that his plans were awful and that if he wanted to claim he wasn't a monster, then he'd have to find another way.

I knew from the start that I wanted her to save the orb, because losing that is what tips the scales for Solas. Losing that means he has to find power from somewhere else and sets him on his path of death. Saving the orb meant his plans, while derailed, weren't ruined. Yes, I know in Trespasser he'll tell the Inquisitor that the world would have burned in raw chaos while he rewrote it, but considering the nature of magic and reality on Thedas, I think that's more due to human reaction than any actual destruction simply based on the lifting of the Veil. Demons are real and represent emotion. Humans look down on elves and do everything they possibly can to oppress them. Like the colonizers they are. Of course they'd react to an elven demigod rewriting the world to give his people back their strength poorly.

And then covid hit. Twist rapidly became a beacon of fluffy stability to my readers. It was an escape from the literal dumpster fire that my country was, so I was highly motivated to keep writing it. To keep it light and happy and epic in a way that felt satisfying to everyone. So that's what I did.

But...

I still hadn't played Inquisition when I started (and I still need to play the other two). I was missing so much of the nuance of the world. In the end, Twist wasn't the story I really wanted to tell. I mean, I'm proud of it, and I love it. I am deeply humbled and gratified to know how many people look at Carly with love and admiration. I love hearing how many times a reader has opened it up and binged it. That kind of feedback is the lifeblood of a writer, as I always say.

Wicked Game is the story I wanted to write. A little grittier, a little more plausible in keeping with the lore. Having Imogen be human gave her the power to call out other humans on their bigotry. And to show Solas that he's not the only one who can see how damaged the world is and want to fix it. Having her be a scientist gives me a chance to explore how magic works, and what the Veil really is after a year of immersing myself in this world. Yeeting canon so thoroughly came from thinking about the major plot points and what could be changed about them from the POV of a character who knows how this is all 'supposed' to happen...and the resultant fallout from her decisions.

Imogen can see the forest for the trees. Her outsider perspective gives her all sorts of insights on her companions and the world at large. The fact that she falls ass over teakettle for the Dread Wolf against her own better judgment is just a good trope. Having him do the same is my clapback against his racially locked romance. (Here's where I'm gonna throw out my own extra kudos to writers who also portray Solas as bisexual, because dammit, he should be. Immortal beings would not bend to any heteronormative conventions.)

Carly and Imogen have rather similar motivations behind them: they want to save the world and not lose him. They often go about it in similar ways too. I guess the biggest difference between them is that now I know what I'm doing and I have more confidence in my storytelling ability. Neither of them is a self-insert. Plenty of people do that and that's totally valid. I'm just not really a fan of it myself. These two characters are no different to me than any other OC starting out at the beginning of the game. They just have slightly more backstory than the average Inquisitor.

Now, in regards to you writing your own and feeling like all you have are oneshot ideas. Go for it. Doesn't matter if they're oneshots. A story doesn't have to be hundreds of thousands of words to be awesome or complete. Write what YOU want to read. The best reason to make a character be a certain way, like being MCIT, is because you want them to be. No other justification is necessary. The only rules in storytelling are grammar ones, and even those are iffy at best. The only courtesy if you decide to go ahead and share it is don't plagiarize and tag it properly. That's it. The sky's the limit and up for grabs. Go forth and be bold.

[sorin-sunchild]

Honestly I’m kinda pigging backing off of @yesiwasateenagewerewolf ‘s post HERE and I hope they don’t mind but I realised my reply was becoming very long and personal and didn’t wanna be rude. @yesiwasateenagewerewolf I adore your meta, we always seem to be thinking about the same stuff at the same time.

IT is a long book. I understand it looks daunting to a reader who...well, doesn’t like to read such huge massive texts. That’s fine. I’ll happily talk to anyone who wants to engage with the source material but is put off by it’s size, or the uncomfortable elements throughout. Ask me questions and I’ll try to answer or I’ll share what I think is cool, interesting or important. I want the source material for anything to be accessible for all and acknowledge that that doesn’t necessarily mean reading the book yourself. 

But I hate the ‘morality’ reason for refusing to engage, despite the many good reasons to do so. Mostly because it’s full of irony and a certain I’m More Moral Than You, everything is problematic forever, critical thinking isn’t a thing, attitude. 

And look, I had the misfortune to read the sewer sex scene without even being warned of it. I hated it. It confused and disturbed me. I understand the dread and repulsion a person can feel reading the novel whilst knowing the scene is there. I completely agree with everyone’s hatred of it’s existence, but since it CAN be easily avoided, it’s no excuse for refusing to even hear/read ABOUT the source material. 

Also, this is LITERALLY a time where you CAN separate author and work. I’ve talked about this before too. By and large, King is not the awful, irredeemable sexist and pedo sympathiser people make him out to be. (But no, he’s not perfect either on the sexism front). I still sincerely think that if everyone engaged with the source material, then as a fandom we’d all collectively have a much better understanding and a far more pleasant experience, full of well developed characters and healthy debate and, in general, fun. 

But no, I don’t expect a person to go through That Scene unless they’re morbidly curious. Bev deserved better. In his attempt to write a story about the abuse children go through, created from him being made suddenly aware of the extent and viciousness of homophobia, he really missed the mark on that one.

Has King grown as a person since writing IT? It’s been over 20 years so one would hope so and yes, people do change and grow and learn to be better people and we ALL need to remember that and not hold things against people FOREVER. The difference between how he wrote Bev in IT (1986) versus Trisha in ‘The girl who loved Tom Gordon’ (1999) IS vastly different, without the sexualised element. Interpret that as you will. But he certainly has ‘man writer writing a woman character’ syndrome.  I sincerely love the novel, not all of it, but most. The characters as shown there are, for the most part, at their best and most multidimensional. You can learn so much and create your own fully rounded characters from it.

Also I don’t think I can ever really forgive AM for turning Mr Keene into a lecherous old man. My memory isn’t always the best but I’m sure he had absolutely none of those traits in the book. It’s actually him who informs Eddie that he’s being given fake medicine in his aspirator/inhaler. Also and I know this is somewhat explored in the novel too but so much of Bev’s character in the movie is her being slut shamed (including by Richie!!! ick!!!) whilst, as @yesiwasateenagewerewolf mentioned, AM shows her in a sexualised light more than once (including having her flirt with said Mr Keene as if this is just something she does often towards older men, which is gross) as if we, the audience, are also supposed to observe her as having sex appeal and once more reducing her to being a Girl with a Body. So there’s a huge irony in people acting like the movie is pure and treats her correctly. I certainly agree that the perfect Bev is a huge mix of all versions of her.  The point is, if you need help engaging with the media, I’m here but don’t act high and mighty whilst happily perpetrating the problematic elements of the movie(s), k? 

[sou-ver-2-0]

Dude!!! This is my first time sending someone an ask because I tend to feel very shy when it comes to stuff online (which is why I'm sending this anonymously) but I couldn't help myself after reading your pinned post,,, it's so good!!!! Forgive my ramblings and my disorganized ideas, but I'm basically having a mini fan moment because of you!! I was unsure of how to feel about that final choice in chapter two, as both left a bitter taste in my mouth in a completely different manner each. (1)

Anon, thank you so much for all your kind words! It made me really emotional to wake up this morning to such a long letter from you. That’s the nicest thing you could have done. Your message is long, so I’ll try to react to each individual part.

Your post made me reconsider everything. It strengthened some of the way I interpreted some characters, made me see some in a slightly different light, and made me love so many of them so much more!! I didn't even think that was possible!! It might be because I'm currently sleep deprived, but I swear to god your analysis made me emotional and made me feel like crying at some parts. (2/4)

It fills me with so much joy that something I wrote affected you that way! Thank you for letting me know. When I first posted it, I worried that it was too long and unoriginal, so it’s inspiring to hear your encouragement.

You really highlighted the way Sou and Kanna love and care about each other (clarifying that I mean this in a completely platonic manner) and ugh.!! So good. You're just making my resolve of defending Kanna every time someone calls her annoying or weak even grander, she's so young and so strong. You also made Sou's death and everything leading up to it so much more bittersweet to me. The way they actually take something from the other while arguing why they should be the one to die. (3/4)

Yesss! Excellent! More folks in the Kanna Protection Squad!

Haha I also get annoyed whenever I see someone call Kanna a boring character. I think she’s fantastic. Like, I’ve seen “little sibling” and “selfless girl” tropes before, but Kanna is one of the most fun versions I’ve seen. Because she gets to be a henchman! Who doesn’t love a good henchman? Sou and Kanna have got to be the most adorable “villain and henchman” pair I’ve seen in a long time hahaha. You just summed up why I love them so much! The way that Kanna inspires Sou to be a better person, and Sou inspires Kanna to be a stronger person, and they grow to love each other so much that they would each die for the other one... It’s so well done.

(And knowing how Kanna still would have chosen Sara had she been the sacrifice and Sou being painfully aware of that fact and still trying to get her chosen, my heart) The way you presented your arguments and framed the moral implications of how one values a life left me reeling, it felt as if you had dropped a mic or something haha. The separation of the Player and Sara, how the characters in the game perceive their situations differently than us, (this might actually get longer woops)

Aaahhh I think about that every day! How Kanna says straight-up that Sara is the person she most wants to live, but Sou still tries to direct the vote to Kanna, thinking she’s the Sacrifice... And then to see how his plan to save Kanna backfires in the worst way! It’s so thrilling and emotional.

Imagining myself dropping a mic is very amusing lol

how their actions and the reasoning behind them worked (I'd never entertained the thought of that Keiji segment,,). You helped me realize how much more amazing the writing of the game was and I thank you so much for that!!!! I was planning on reading something quick before going to sleep, but now I can't stop thinking about everything and really want to replay the game with this new perspective in mind. (i prewrote all of this in a notepad and still miscalculated lol) 

I was speculating a lot with Keiji, so it makes me happy that my section about him resonated with you as well. Keiji is definitely one of the most fascinating characters and he’s a great contrast with Sou. I remember feeling breathless in the scene where Keiji called out Sou for his lies in the beginning of Chapter 3. 

All the writing in the game is so good!! If you have more thoughts about it, please share them with me! 

I wish I could be more articulate to try and express the way I really love everything you've written. Please keep posting stuff like that (no pressure if you don't want to tho of course)!! In conclusion: omg,,,, your brain 😳😳😳😳 woah it's so sexy,,,, 🥵 I wanna marry it.,,..,.,.. please keep being so sexy and amazing and sexy,,.,. so sorry for the spam btw, feel free to ignore this!! just wanted to let you know I'm your (secret?? haha idk how to describe it) fan, you're great!!!!!!!!  

kajgnlakjbgaerg wow hahahahhaa *hides my head under a bucket*

Well it’s nice to be appreciated for my mind!

I happen to be working on another meta! This one is about Kanna’s older sister Kugie, my favorite character whom we never get to meet. I hope it will meet your standards!

Otherwise, please feel free to talk to me! Or? You could ask me questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them here. I’ve only been in this fandom for a few weeks so I’m still looking for people to talk to about this game. 

Thanks for making my day, Anon! I hope you have a good day too!

[foxymuses]

on the topic of rk900 && his ‘deviancy’

the way that i write rk900 to be is very specific, and it includes a lot, which i will? try to explain? as best i can? please feel free to ask clarifying questions though like i have so much to say about this and im sure i’ll miss something. anyway imma shove this under a cut because i KNOW im about to just fucking go.

so i wanna make it very clear from the get go that 900 is not deviant in the typical fashion. he does not believe that he is a free being with actual emotions and rights to live. there is never a moment where he stops and goes ‘oh shit’ and breaks through that red tape. he never has an ‘i may be deviant’ breakdown. he is not deviant.

however, he is not not-deviant. 

what i mean by this is kind of complicated. let me start with some background into my personal interpretation of the rk900 series in general. they are a series designed for warfare -- the majority of them have been shipped overseas with soldiers to act as a variety of things: weapons, infiltration, an inhuman line of defense to protect the human soldiers --- like. they were specifically designed to be killers, to be dangerous, to be pretty damn hard to stop. they are essentially top of the line terminators -- are they entirely legal? ehhhhhh. but they let the government get away with things that might either kill their human soldiers or are of questionable ethic that they can just.... decommission the android afterwards. that’s their main function, the main reason they exist. 

this is crucial, and i will explain more on it in a moment, but for the rest of this meta i’m going to be using rk900 to talk of the general model series, and 900 to speak specifically to mine (and, in a lesser way, the fandom one in general, though this should go without saying i don’t intend to infringe upon other personal headcanons of rk900 writers)

connor was the rk ‘law enforcement’ prototype, but he also functioned mainly as a playing piece in an android revolution that, let’s face it, cyberlife saw coming a mile away. cyberlife wanted a say. they wanted to have a semblance of control over how to twist the uprising in a way that benefit them. given 900 comes about in a world where the revolution was quelled, cyberlife basically achieved their goal (i’ll touch upon my meta of my machine connor and this in another post). 

the reason this is important is because 900 was implanted with the majority of observations and experiences that connor had. things he learned about humanity, how to mimic it, how to manipulate it, how to use it. things like the events of the revolution in the order they happened, what it was like to be a detective with the dpd, literally like. all the things that connor went through or observed or scanned or downloaded or learned -- these were uploaded into 900.

now, his memories weren’t necessarily input into 900 -- that is, 900 doesn’t have any first hand accounts of most things (from petting sumo all the way to connor ending the revolution). so even if he has an understanding of what being on a case is like, he doesn’t have connor’s exact memories of doing it. it’s more like all of these things have been converted into data for him to retrieve -- it’s been shifted into facts, statements, articles, serving more as.... general history knowledge? like that stuff everyone just knows for some reason? 

but it’s more in depth than that because, yknow, they intended for 900 to be top of the line (yes, 900, not rk900). so all this information from connor was used to boost the insanely vast amounts of knowledge that they input into 900 to begin with -- it was used as contextual information, filler information, you get me? because the main thing that differed between connor and 900 is that 900 was given all the knowledge he needed before he was released, where as connor was expected to observe and adapt. cyberlife took connor’s methods of observing and interacting and adapting to humanity and refined it so that 900 already had that information.

so when 900 was officially done, he had basically anything he might need to know in his software already. he didn’t need to learn anything. 

so let me backtrack a little bit into why i say 900 gets these things and not all the rk900s. 

like i said before, the rk900s were built for warfare. 900 was not. i mean, yes, his model and abilities are all the same, he is still an rk900 model. but he was not built to go to war. the 900 that connor meets in the zen garden is the same 900 i write. that particular rk900 model, 900, was specifically designed to replace connor. the others were mass produced for their purpose as war based androids. but 900 was made to work for the DPD, to sort of take connor’s place, in part because it gives them access to local law, but also because they want to monitor the place where connor was assigned. 

so because of this 900 does not have a purpose. 

he was not developed with any specific goal or mission or duty aside from ‘work with the dpd’, so he doesn’t have the same goal set that the rk900 models are programmed with. cyberlife essentially input all this data into 900, and then didn’t tell him what to do with it aside from ‘just go to this location’ which means that 900 had to figure it out for himself.

this is where cyberlife fucked up big time.

the other rk900 models are designed to be perfect soldiers -- deviancy was basically coded out of them based on connor’s experience (whether or not he went deviant, it was in his code). thats not to say that they can never go deviant, its just to say it would be really fucking hard to make them do that. 

since 900 has none of that, he is inherently different from the rk900 model. when you make an android without a purpose, you have basically created a deviant android from the get go. 900 is more or less his own model, in which there is only one 900, and by default, he works for the Detroit Police Department.

now, generally, this means he’s paired with gavin (gotta live up to that delicious ship, honestly) so a lot of my following nonsense is stemmed from that but the point is that, he gets to decide what his goal is whenever he wants, so it can change, and it does change, and the choice is entirely his own. by all intents and purposes, cyberlife inadvertently created an android with honest to god free will.

so where does this leave us with deviancy? because i can hear ya’ll but fox, you said he wasn’t deviant and now you’re saying he is which is it?

here’s what makes 900, well, 900. as part of the fact that he is so incredibly self-aware, he knows he’s a machine. he accepts he’s a machine. there isn’t any like -- ‘i’m a machine’ with a touch of sadness or regret. he doesn’t wish to be human -- he has no desire to feel or experience human things, or do whatever deviant androids wanted. he doesn’t care about that. it doesn’t interest him in the slightest. and this isn’t because he doesn’t know about feelings or that “how could he know if he doesn’t want them if he hasn’t experienced them” because it’s not like that. 900 has an incredible sense of what things are, what they’d be like -- he got all of this from connor, remember. so 900 isn’t inherently interested in being anything other than a machine, and he holds no misunderstandings about what being a machine entails either.

does that make sense? hold on let me try it this way. because cyberlife tried so hard to make sure that 900′s software had everything, they created an incredibly self-aware android that doesn’t seek humanity because of how well they understand life. 900 doesn’t like or dislike being an android -- he just is. he recognizes that. wanting to be something else doesn’t... compute because it just doesn’t make sense. like why would he want to be human when he’s not? when he can be better and do more? like i can’t even say he’s happy about it because he doesn’t (at first) associate chemical reactions in his system with being emotions because they aren’t. it’s all synthetic.

he is perhaps the most alive an android can get without being alive, honestly.

900 decides that, upon being assigned to work with gavin, that gavin is technically his mission now. as a partner to a detective, but as a partner that is stronger, faster, and can withstand immense damage, he essentially positions himself as a bodyguard for the human. the problem here is that, due to his awareness, his approach to this is.... unorthodox.

900 will let gavin throw a punch at someone who can and will definitely hit back, but he’ll stop gavin from walking into an ambush. he might get gavin a coffee one day without being asked, but then throw the coffee at him the next day when gavin demands one. he has a habit of making sly comments and is known to push buttons and see what he can get away with, testing limits and constantly pressing against the boundaries of what he can do before someone snaps, and then sees if he can go just a little farther. 

900 is very much his own person. he belongs to neither cyberlife nor DPD. he does what he wants when he wants it and how he wants it, and he can, at times, appear very human (albeit one that is obnoxious and at times infuriating). however 900 never lets it be forgotten that he is a machine. he can crush every bone in your body one by one while you’re helpless to it. he can have expressions that are near-humanlike : amused, angry, exasperated. but he will go from lightly smiling to fucking cold eyes and danger just radiating off of him to the point people will actually feel the room lower a few degrees

900 knows he’s a machine. if you even for a moment forget, he will remind you. he has unethically tortured suspects for information, they purposely don’t give 900 a gun at the start because he would get bored and simply shoot whoever they’re investigating and apologize later. he has no qualms about killing, about breaking laws or faces, about doing things the way that he feels like doing them, with or without anyone approving. and if anyone thinks they can stop him, they’re just. good fucking luck.

but the reason he doesn’t do any of this is because he is self-aware enough to know there’s no fucking point to it. his mission is, as he decides, “protect gavin reed” and he will do what it takes for that, which may include punching a suspect or stealing evidence or something, he doesn’t care, but if it serves no true purpose in what 900 is doing, then he consciously decides he’s not going to just.. do it. but the thing is that at any moment he could decide to change his mind. and that’s what makes him so terrifying. he is literally unpredictable.

i ... okay i think that’s what i wanted to say? just as like some added notes, but with gavin, 900 does become.... hmm... softer? he doesn’t soften but he basically claims gavin as his own, like he is assigned to be gavin’s partner but it becomes literally almost a possessive thing. 900 makes gavin his mission, and if anyone gets in the way, they’re fucked. but by attaching himself to a human, he opens himself up to the softer side of being human, so 900 never truly ‘becomes deviant’ because there is never, as i said, a moment where he’s got a red wall that says this isn’t protocol becaaaause he doesn’t have protocol. so there’s never a chance for him to break through it. but he takes care of his partner, makes sure gavin is eating well and sleeping well, makes sure he’s more or less safe, is always in tuned to where gavin is and what gavin is doing, will step in at a moment’s notice if he feels the need. 

it becomes way more.... well, more, if this is a ship with a gavin, but regardless, 900 will have a gentler approach to his interactions with the human he has claimed that will be noticeable. softer tones, less cold eyes, more considerate touches. he’ll listen to gavin (may not always follow directions, but he listens), he’ll defend gavin’s actions, he’ll get angry if something happens to gavin. 900 never explicitly goes deviant, and he never fully accepts that what he feels is.... a real feeling? because he does not fully believe that androids can experience true emotion, so even if he does get angry, or he does feel amused or happy or whatever, it’s based on an extensively coded software that has made him so perfectly able to mimic humanity that it’s basically indecipherable. yes, he cares about gavin in most cases. yes he can feel panic or worry if something happens. but in general, no. he will not feel fear, he is not concerned with death, he can’t experience pain... so.

a last note is that like. this is the reason that he goes by 900. gavin typically calls him ‘nines’ which is only allowed for gavin. but a name is a human thing, and 900 is not and has no desire to be, so he just uses 900. most other people in the DPD also just use 900, sometimes they’ll call him rk which he’s okay with but it’s not his preference. he would’ve allowed gavin to name him if he wanted to but gavin didn’t, so that’s why when gavin begins using nines, that’s what 900 assumes as a name. 900 is comfortable to him, it’s who he is, and he doesn’t desire more than that. 

alright i’m. i’m probably gonna start getting repetitive soon, and a lot of the rest of the emotional aspect is based on 900 being involved with gavin, and thats case by case so it’s can be subject to change, and this post is meant to serve as a general basis for my portrayal of 900. 

[sometimesrosy]

please abbreviate name and ship

Anonymous said:I’m not trying to be rude as I know you ship Bellarke, but can you explain why you think L/xa was manipulative towards Clarke and why you disliked their relationship? I just don’t see it that way and I would like to hear a different perspective.

Am I ready to go into this? Ok. First, I’m not taking offense. I don’t have a problem discussing different interpretations, however, fandom has a problem with me doing so, which is why I ask everyone to abbreviate Lxa and CL, so that I don’t show up in their ship or stan tags, not because I am disrespecting the character or ship, but because I honestly don’t want the harassment to start up all over again. The history of me and the cl shippers is ugly, with me mostly trying to stay out of it and them coming after me like I was trying to poison their puppy. All the puppies. The CL fandom had a name for me. It was “The Devil.” So you should know that.

Let me begin by telling you that I am the survivor of domestic abuse, and stared watching this show after finally kicking my emotionally, psychologically and economically abusive ex husband out of the house, and what I saw in CL was a reflection of my own relationship, aka, not healthy. I resonated with it as a woman with PTSD recovering from abuse. I tried to explain this in fandom but was ignored and erased and called a lesbophobe instead. I am not. I am an abuse survivor who cares about understanding and unpacking abusive relationships and empowering victims. Abuse is not limited to m/f relationships.

I need to make it clear that my interpretation of CL does not invalidate the interpretation of CL as an epic romance, fantasy story, or wlw empowerment tale. Those are all valid and I recognize the need for the wlw community to have the same kind of stories that straight people have always had, and CL within The 100 was SO CLOSE to being the epic fantasy that was needed. But the canon proved that it never was a romance genre story that allows... DEMANDS the happy ever after ending. So The 100 was a great disappointment to the fans. It failed to give them what they were looking for. CL was a LOT like a very traditional M/F romantic trope that does end up with a HEA lovestory ending, the captive princess and heroic warrior king story. So it’s no wonder they read it as an epic romance just like the ones they’ve been seeing for m/f romances for centuries... MILLENNIA. 

That said, I’m going to put my analysis under the jump, because I don’t want anyone who doesn’t want to hear it have it appear on their dash. This is an entirely opt-in meta, and if reading something critical of a ship you love or like is not what you want to do, then please be a responsible consumer of media and do not opt in.

okay, so op, I GET why you see nothing wrong with this romantic dynamic. I was like you once, and I thought the warrior/princess dynamic was sexy and romantic and the fantasy of being taken away from all your problems so you didn’t have to deal is A+. But ever since I was IN a relationship like that, and realized it wasn’t about love or romance, but rather about power and control, I cannot, AT ALL, find it attractive. It’s painful and harmful to be in. And it’s not great for the dominant lover, either, tbh.

Please note: I do not have a problem with them being wlw. NOT the problem. I’ve been involved with the lgbt community since 1988. I am bisexual, demiace and androgynous myself and my sister was in a long term relationship with a woman and I like other wlw ships just not this one--because for me, it reproduces a harmful m/f romantic trope. When I find m/f ships like this I don’t love them EITHER. (reylo is just as filtered out of my dash as cl is.) So that’s a lot of explaining why I disliked their relationship and it has to do with my experience in an abusive relationship that was about power and domination and how I learned that that is NOT love. So now I’m just gonna make some points about where there was manipulation in the the relationship, some of which came before romance, some of which was the ‘courtship.’

when they first met, L posed on the throne and blamed her for killing the army she’d sent to destroy the delinquents. Clarke WON the battle that L started, and she acted like that was murder. no.

When L told Clarke that Finn would die for HER. although her actions had nothing to do with his massacre.

When L told her that Finn’s mercy killing would haunt Clarke forever.

When L told Clarke that love was a weakness. That is the WORST advice ever and anyone who still stanned L after that nonsense... i just don’t understand why y’all have no sense. I knew from the start that was a sign that L was “in the wrong.” it is CLEARLY a bad life philosophy. (made much worse that she began a courtship with Clarke after using her philosophy to cut Clarke off from her people, thus leaving only HER love as worthy? IDK. But that’s after this timeline.)

When Clarke came running to save TonDC and Lxa from the bombs, and Lxa COERCED Clarke into letting them bomb the village. This was the first REAL sign to me that this relationship was manipulative and abusive and it wasn’t a relationship yet. They weren’t even friends yet. And Lxa used Clarke’s guilt over Finn and LOVE for Bellamy to rush her into a decision that benefitted LXA’s political agenda, to get rid of the troublesome rivals on the coalition. She used methods with Clarke that were the same exact thing that my ex used to do to me. She told her that she had no time to argue, although there was time for L’s argument, and there were no other solutions although Clarke offered like three separate ones (setting a fire as the probable most effective.) That was NEVER Clarke’s decision. Lxa COERCED her. And MANIPULATED her.

WORSE after it was done, LXA BLAMED HER FOR IT. Said it was her action. Forced her to keep it a secret (which only benefitted LXA.) Then tried to kill Octavia. 

Look I totally understand why Lxa was besotted with Clarke. She’s amazing. But she started pursuing her when Clarke was dependent upon Lxa’s army and goodwill. 

She started pushing her about her FEELINGS for Bellamy when they were military allies, AFTER telling her about how her political enemies used her love for Costia to control her, and KILLED her for it. So here she is, a political...associate, questioning her about someone she thinks she loves, after telling her that love is a weakness. Pushing her feelings for Bellamy as a what? Vulnerability? Way to control her? RIVAL FOR HER ROMANTIC ATTENTIONS? 

Then Lxa KISSES HER. IN the MIDDLE OF A CAMPAIGN? Can you freaking imagine? The woman with all the power, who Clarke depends upon for the life of her loved ones, essentially her “boss,” in a way. She makes a move on her. Think about this. “I like you, oh by the way, i hold your people’s life in my hand, so you should come live with me.” Dude. That’s not a sweet romance, it’s sexual harassment. 

Just to bring it to a point. Clarke rejects her advances and then THE NEXT WORDS are “he did it,” because Bellamy has sent up the signal, victorious warrior (rival) and get’s all Clarke’s attention. What happens then? Oh yeah. 

ON the verge of WINNING the freaking mountain completely, Lxa SELLS HER ROMANTIC RIVAL (bellamy) and Clarke’s people, who proved far more formidable and successful than she expected and so are a politcal threat to her, to her GENERATIONAL ENEMIES.  and then. get this.

AND THEN SHE INVITES HER TO COME LIVE WITH HER AGAIN. Oh hey babe, since your people are destroyed and your boyfriend is dead, wanna come to my place? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

And no, despite all the people who tried to argue that was a WISE political move, no the hell it wasn’t. It was the path to her demise. She broke faith with her allies, not just sky crew but also the coalition and they took her down for it. 

In addition, Lxa herself admitted that was her biggest regret. That was her biggest mistake. WRONG DECISION. Weak leader. And a betrayal.

THEN 3 months later, she kidnaps her and imprisons her. This is not romance. This is not protection. If it WERE protection, she would have sent her back to her people. She was a prisoner. This is not a romantic situation. 

Oh when she told her how PATIENT she’d been for ALLOWING her to not talk to her for two weeks. Bitch. You have her in prison. You aren’t patient. You aren’t kind. You kidnapped her. After your betrayal. YOU’RE the one who should be begging for her forgiveness. Instead you’re acting like she’s an immature child. What? 

She then gaslighted her and told her she didn’t do anything wrong when she betrayed her and she did the same thing anyone would do, in fact, LXA wasn’t the betrayer, CLARKE was the betrayer. She turned her OWN sins around and blamed them on Clarke. She did it. We saw her did it. We saw how she forced Clarke’s hand and made her choose between TERRIBLE choices. 

Then she FORCES her to bend the knee so she doesn’t murder all of sky crew. That was not romantic. That was force. 

And she offers her own private bent knee ceremony with no witnesses and promises we all know she won’t keep because she has no honor and no one there to make sure she does what she promises.

WHICH IS WHY Clarke can’t leave. Because no one else will make sure she keeps her promises.

AND THEN we get to the carrot part of the carrot and stick part of manipulation. You can leave and I’ll kill all your people, or you can STAY and get nice clothes and a safe room and good food and music and be treated like a pampered bird in a golden cage. Do what I say? Get nice things. Just because you are being given nice things and treated nicely doesn’t mean it’s not manipulation and you aren’t being dominated.

I might also add that during this time, L often mentioned her own death. As if it would happen. Now Clarke had to stay not only to save her people from death, but also to save LXA from death. Just so you know, this is a classic psychological abuse technique. The abuser threatens/implies suicide if the abusee ever leaves them. “Oh when you go I will die, that’s the way it is.”  

Reminder, when Clarke wanted to go to Arkadia and fix the massacre, Lxa REFUSED. When Clarke said, “so I’m a prisoner now?” Lxa said straight out in canon. “Yes you are a prisoner.” She had ALWAYS been a prisoner. She was not a guest. She had no freedom to leave. Making her feel like she had to or wanted to stay does not mean she actually had a choice. She did not. (compare this to when Bellamy told Octavia, i understand if you need to go, but you’ll always have a place with me.” O had the FREEDOM to stay or go, and B NEVER gave or withheld permission. She was free. Clarke was not.)

Oh and Clarke is not innocent in the manipulation, either. After the hakeldama massacre, Clarke used her evaluation of Lxa as being proud and concerned with her “legacy” to manipulate her into betraying her OWN people and their beliefs and saying “blood must NOT have blood.” And yes that led to L’s downfall, but to be fair, she already did it by sparing MW. L is vain, and Clarke worked that. To sky crew’s advantage, but she did. 

After they get back from Hakeldama Clarke has given up on Bellamy and their relationship starts being less manipulative. Oh wait. the whole “so wait, you want me to not take vengeance for your people’s crimes by wiping out the village, but you’re going to punish this actual murderer who just tried to kill you, huh? wow hypocrite much?” 

And then when Lxa decides to *surprise surprise* go back on her promise to treat sky crew like her own people and WIPE OUT THE ENTIRE POPULATION, she’s like, okay, I give you permission to leave now and be with your people. Aren’t I kind and merciful to let you go? NO YOU ARE NOT. It isn’t kind and it isn’t merciful and it isn’t loving to ALLOW your beloved to be with her people. before you wipe them out. Or even if you’re not. It shouldn’t be up to you whether she goes or stays. It should be up to HER. But it never was. 

Tbh it wasn’t until Lxa “let her go” after she’d already committed to murdering all Clarke’s people and Clarke couldn’t do anything to stop it anymore that the relationship stopped being manipulative. Their ENTIRE relationship was finding way to work each other. I do not like that kind of relationship. The only wholesome part of their relationship was their time with Pauna (no manipulaton it was a fine story) and the sex, (also a perfectly lovely story. )

Okay. go ahead and hate me now. A couple years after, I rewatched the show to see if I could see that stirring, epic love story in CL that the fans love, and even when I’d worked through my personal abuse issues and was no longer literally triggered by it, I found it to be a thin romance, far too political in nature. Just didn’t do it for me. Was it passionate? Yes. Did they like each other? D: No. I don’t think they were ever intimate enough with each other (except for with Pauna) to actually get to know each other. It was very pretty and glamourous. I am not a fan of glamour. It tends to be all show, little depth. 

all in all, I do NOT think CL is the love story that wlw deserve. I dont’ think it was intended to be. And I think people hungry for a canon fantasy love story believed they were getting their HEA that romances promise. But it wasn’t a romance. (I cannot make excuses for The 100′s social media presence at that time. they fucked up.) I think it was CLARKE’S story of darkness and trauma and recovery, and L was her shadow. She needed to fall n love with her to embrace her own dark side. And she needed to die to push forward both Clarke’s trauma and the plot. Lxa was a tragic hero like Macbeth. Doomed. I don’t like Macbeth as a character, either.

[scoobydoofenshmirtz]

Honestly people need to learn more about media studies. Having to write long ass papers about movies i didn't give a shit about really positively impacted the way i view fandom. I'm not even kidding going to film school and having to learn all these different schools of thought makes participating in fandom so much less stressful because i never feel attacked by other people's interpretations of things even if they're drastically different than mine (barring any homophobia, sexism, etc). Like people online get so mad about people writing meta or headcanons or ships or whatever, but a lot of that stuff is actually really close to what you do in film school and if people learned to see it as every person's unique take on a show rather than what's "right" or what "should happen" things would be so much more chill i stg.

And a huge part of this is when people get mad at people for "projecting." Like if i had a nickle for every time i saw someone say "this character's not this way you're just projecting" maybe i could pay off my student loans lol. But like, that's literally what consuming media is. That's just how we exist as humans. Every single person views every single thing they ever consume through the lens of their own experiences and identities. Projecting onto a show or character isn't bad everyone does it to some extent. And so much of film studies is looking at media through different lenses and interpreting it that way. so other people having different readings is good, actually. And usually when people are mad about this so called "projection" it's over queer readings (hm i wonder why...) but you can project your experiences onto any aspect big or small of a piece of media. Like easy probably non-controversial example: i, as an italian american will always view mafia movies in a different way than non-italians. And that's good! Hearing other people's thoughts on media can open you up to so much more interesting viewings. Like so many people have amazing insights to things that make you want to watch over and over. And thats what a lot of fandom is. When people write meta or headcanons or even like direct criticism, it's just a way to interact with the text.

I think people think film school takes all the fun out of watching movies and shit, but for me it's made it way more interesting and it's led to a much more chill fandom experience. If you wanna learn more about the basics of film theory, i recommend this series by lindsay ellis applying different theories to the transformers movies.

Write whatever shit you want, be nice to people, and just have fun goddamnit

[artigas]

(1) Hi! Its the anon that asked about lizzie and tatiana, I’m currently halfway through s5 and i really like jessie! I thought she was gonna be the one to finally resist tommys advances. I liked the scene where he goes to her apartment and they have a good back and forth. But alas she cant resist and sleeps w him, and he’s essentially just using her. I love her as a character and how she manifests her ideals into actions but, so far i thought she’d call out tommys shit by now!

And specially i cant help but resent how they set up the women to compete against one another, i rolled my eyes at the scene where they are exiting the polls and jesse and lizzie size each other up. Girls, please move on. I did like in season 5 where tommy is drunk meeting w jessie and she just gets up and leaves. I think the show has good female characters it just that they prioritize the male ones more. Unlike the women, the male characters dont revolve around a relationship. and finally, And idk if im just overthinking things but i think the show has upped its sexist comments? specially w tommy and arthur. W tommy telling lizzie shes his property and arthur telling linda to just be a good wife. Meanwhile polly and ada are really well written characters for the most part! Sorry this is so long i just have a lot of thoughts regarding the women of this show. And i love your analisis!

Nope! Don’t apologize, friend, I’ve absolutely adored reading all your feedback and your experience watching the show! I think Peaky Blinders, for all its good, has a lot of space to grow when it comes to women characters who are potentially romantically/sexually available to the protagonists- it does sometimes feel like the quality of writing and the depth of character for women characters waxes and wanes, but I also think that a lot of these characters- Lizzie, Grace, Polly, Esme, etc- have these great foundations, these building blocks of characterization that make them really compelling and really promising so long as they have free reign to be written as complexly and as thoughtfully as their male counterparts. I think Grace is a really stellar example, you know? Love her or hate her, she has a history, a back-story, individual motivations, and a social/political ideology that can actually really be broken down in some pretty interesting ways! Polly, too, is another character who is probably most obviously allowed to be pointedly ambitious, sexual, manipulative and outright cruel and still someone the show clearly roots for and sides with. I love what we get with Polly, especially considering how most shows would probably limit her to being maternal, chaste, and uninvolved in the family business (likely because of her age, too). Overall, I think the show does a good job of giving women characters flaws- none of them are meant to be perfect. But I really do think Peaky Blinders could benefit from occasionally resisting the urge to have all its women have romantic subplots, primarily with Tommy almost unexceptionally. 

As far as Jessie goes, I really do love that she’s someone who has this strong ethical and political foundation. I mean, Jessie and Freddie in a room together would’ve been a sight, right? I especially adored her scenes with Ada. I think they had such interesting chemistry and so much could’ve been done if the show had the real estate to really contrast Jessie’s idealism and dedication to the communist cause and Ada’s disenchanted relationship with that same movement she once honestly dedicated herself to. The fact that Jessie and Tommy both draw together because they represent to one (or, at least, invoke the memory of) their respective lost loves was also a refreshing change in terms of the sort of “romantic” relationships Tommy has had thus far. (How authentic we want to think that ‘relationship’ was from either Jessie or Tommy’s end is a different story and definitely worthy of suspect and investigation in the funnest possible way, I think, but I don’t wanna rant).

As far as season five goes, I think the hike in misogynist language and ideology wasn’t coincidental or without thought. I think Arthur and Tommy both are progressively getting worse as the show goes on and went through separate, but equally erosive psychological processes that took out a really ugly side to them both, especially in their relationship with the women in their lives. It felt to me like both characters were scrambling for control and finding a way to express authority over women who depend on them became one of the ways that need made itself manifest. I think it’s no coincidence that Lizzie and Linda look for solidarity in each other. I think their joint decision to write those letters, advocate their needs, and then respectively find some sort of approach to the state of their lives so that they could carry on with some semblance of safety, security, or (dare I say it!) happiness was interesting and heartbreaking- Linda tried to find it by leaving the family, finding another person to speak to and find solace with, and then eventually breaking down to the decision to attack Arthur and it hurt to see it! Lizzie’s own process was so complex, I think. I could go on and on about her belief that life wasn’t about what one deserves, but what one agrees to, settles for, etc. Her sex scene with Tommy, too, really just invites so much analysis and criticism, right? Which makes it, I think, a very effective sex scene as far as writing goes, because it isn’t a pause from characterization or plot, but rather a moment of intimacy between Lizzie and Tommy that reveals a different facet of their respective character developments. Was it kinda messy for Tommy to call her his property? Absolutely! But I also don’t want to dismiss how much I liked hearing Lizzie advocate some boundaries in that sex scene, too. It’s complicated, man! It’s a scene a lot of people have interpreted different and I’ve loved hearing all the different takes, there’s so much validity to be found in the different readings I’ve already seen out there. 

I think the show made no excuses for how awful Tommy and Arthur were being through season five. I think we as the audience are meant to recognize that their conduct and their comments weren’t something to emulate or exonerate, but instead symptomatic of their downwards progression throughout the season. It’s just a shame that these condemnations probably aren’t overt enough for the real Meat-Head faction of the fandom to catch onto- reddit is a nasty place to venture off into if you’re invested in any of Peaky’s female characters, that’s for sure. But man, if you’re here on tumblr, boy does this fandom have a lot of people churning out meta worth reading! If you want some blog recommendations, let me know!!! Thank you for keeping my in the loop with your watching journey ♡

[janiedean]

It really sucks how judgmental you and some people in this fandom are of anyone who doesn't interpret the text the same way as you or who you deem as intellectually inferior to you. I agree with so many of your ideas about the characters, but I hate how high and mighty you are about those ideas. Someone isn't an idiot if they interpret Jon or Cersei differently than you.

......

lmao

okay anon, thing is: one thing is being high and mighty, one thing is telling you that you’re not reading the text.

like. I read yesterday someone being like ‘omg I read someone dared saying C. abused people and murdered someone before puberty HOW STUPID CAN PEOPLE BE’. it’s textual evidence that a) she molested tyrion sexually and that’s even without taking account my opinion re lann*ncest, b) that SHE KILLED MELARA WHEN THEY WERE TWELVE THROWING THE POOR GIRL DOWN A WELL, which means that whoever said it cannot fucking read the text because it’s black on white that she did both those things and refusing to accept it is Not Reading The Text. that’s not even text interpretation, that’s basic textual reading.

now: never mind cersei who gets a pass for about every fucking shit she pulls because she’s a woman, and don’t tell me she doesn’t because if she got as much shit about robert’s fifteen bastards that she ordered dead without even blinking as theon got for two kids that he’s felt guilty about since it happened then we could discuss it but she doesn’t and that’s not even the beginning of it. now: do you see me tagging my opinions? like, honestly, if I think something shitty about cersei, do you see me tagging it? I didn’t even tag the one time I ranted about the valonqar prophecy with her, I only tagged it with the prophecy/meta/the two characters I thought were the v. and the younger and more beautiful queen, because in the middle I said that imo cersei only cares for herself and I know ppl on her tag aren’t into reading that opinion. so: I didn’t tag it. now: how many people came in my inbox informing me my opinion of c. sucked, was biased and so on never mind lann*ncest never mind actually harassing me for it? well, enough that I had to shut down anon to avoid feeling like shit for two days about it. so like, I’m so high and mighty that I keep my opinions about people I don’t like untagged even if I think that the other side can’t read. but okay.

now, about jonc: listen, fact is, there’s exactly ten people in this fandom that I know of who give a shit about jonc period and three of them are fanartists who show up once in a while. like. exactly TEN. I made peace with the fact that no one gives a fuck about jonc, I 100% embraced that if I want content I have to do it myself, fine, whatever. but what I’m really getting sick of is that every goddamned fucking time I see the jonc tag updating (as in, five times each month if it’s a good month), it’s someone informing us of how selfish, pathetic, useless and dumb he is FOR THINGS THAT ALL OF THEIR FAVORITE CHARACTERS ACTUALLY DO ALL THE TIME and for which fandom at large praises them. or something about how him being in love with R is the most horribly pathetic thing that’s happened to adwd, or how he’s an idiot because he apparently hasn’t understood that aegon is fake because his eyes aren’t the same color as R’s when not even dany’s or viserys’s are, but no one says they aren’t targs for THAT now, do they? and sorry but reading that this dude would treat either rhaenys or jon snow like shit when this is canon:

Last night he'd dreamt of Stoney Sept again. Alone, with sword in hand, he ran from house to house, smashing down doors, racing up stairs, leaping from roof to roof, as his ears rang to the sound of distant bells. Deep bronze booms and silver chiming pounded through his skull, a maddening cacophony of noise that grew ever louder until it seemed as if his head would explode. Seventeen years had come and gone since the Battle of the Bells, yet the sound of bells ringing still tied a knot in his guts. 

Others might claim that the realm was lost when Prince Rhaegar fell to Robert's warhammer on the Trident, but the Battle of the Trident would never have been fought if the griffin had only slain the stag there in Stoney Sept. The bells tolled for all of us that day. For Aerys and his queen, for Elia of Dorne and her little daughter, for every true man and honest woman in the Seven Kingdoms. And for my silver prince.

now: it’s there black on white that he feels guilty for BOTH elia’s and rhaenys’s death, it’s not interpretation, it’s what is fucking written in there same as you can’t interpret that ned’s head got cut or cat’s last thought before she died was about ned loving her hair. so excuse me but I’m tired of going into a character who’s in my goddamned top ten and have to always, always run into people assuming he’s a pathetic selfish asshole (and the one time I tried to argue that there’s no way he’s *selfish*, maybe all the contrary to a pathological degree, the answer was basically ‘lol cannot hear you’ and not even a reblog but nvm that) rather than actual content because any of those people who have a obvious hateboner for jonc can’t just fucking tag it with *anti* jon connington. no, they have to use the character name and it’s never *content*, it’s just this drivel over and over again. and since I don’t do it with characters I don’t like, I’d appreciate if I could have the same courtesy spared for this asshole.

that said, the situation is that *one* single person (that I blocked but that’s apparently not enough for tumblr to spare me from seeing them on the tag) has asked that question to multiple blogs which all agree on jonc being shitty which means that it has popped up on the tag a whole lot in the last month and like....... if you don’t like that character why do you care so much, IDEK, but wow, I wrote one post, that I tagged with the character only, saying that ppl don’t bother to read his chapters (btw, one of the people who replied that he’d have been shitty to both jon and rhaenys was someone I ended up blocking because they were on the tag like ‘lololol grayscale I’m sure elia is laughing from the afterlife’ and when I told them it wasn’t funny and if they could avoid tagging that stuff I got told to fuck off but fine I guess, that was me being holier than thou I suppose...) which is true because they don’t, they only base their reading of jonc on that ONE line about elia which is a) obv. proof he’s jealous, b) way less bad than anything cersei and barristan think about her just to say two but lmao I don’t see them getting dragged for it, but everything else? what? two full chapters? do they exist? tyrion’s chapers? never knew them.

like.

anon, tbqh at this point if you wanna think I’m holier than thou just think that because while I like to think I’m not, if there is one thing I know I’m good at is text analysis (okay, last time I said I got two degrees based on text analysis I got told ‘ah okay so if she studies she’s obv. bragging so she knows nothing’ by someone whose main theory was robb stark is the unsung villain of these books but lol I mean having studied this counts for nothing, right???) and it irks me that in a fandom based on books/text analysis I have to read **meta** which is obviously made by people who haven’t read the text and then when given a counterargument ignore it. but even with that, do you see me engaging with it? nah. I can 100% assure you none of the people I would like to see out of the jonc tag actually go on the jonc tag nor follow me, so they will never know that I think their opinion is shit unless they go looking for it. and this because I might have engaged with at least two of them on the topic once - and nicely, not *judgmentally* - and no one gave a shit or reconsidered their stance, so like, excuse me if once per month I write a post on my own blog venting about how imo a character I like gets a shit treatment.

and for the love of god, anon, sorry, glad you like my opinions, but the fact that you’re coming at me assuming I am judgmental when I come from a fucking month and a half of people literally harassing me on anon over my fucking triple-tagged opinions on c/ersei and lann/incest and ignoring anything I said about how uncomfortable it was making me just because I happened to, in the most generous explanation, WRITE A META WHERE I C/P-ED CANON QUOTES WHERE C. WAS AWFUL TO J. WHEN IT CAME TO HIS DISABILITY which GRRM wrote, certainly not *me*, and it happened to get reblogged by asoiafuni, is really, really rich.

like, I tagged that shit to hell and back so people who aren’t interested in jb wouldn’t find it, I made sure to warn every time, I even tag anti-c/antijc posts so they don’t show up on mobile search in case ppl don’t have the anti tag blacklisted because I’m THAT invested into making sure other people can blacklist if they feel like it, but I can’t fucking say on my blog that I think some people in this fandom pull their meta out of their asses and haven’t even read the chapters of the character they’re supposed to discuss? like... really?

also, I’ll tell you a secret: I don’t remember 90% of what happened in dany’s adwd chapters and I don’t remember about 60% of what happened in her got-asos chapters. zero. now: do you see me meta-ing about dany and/or discuss her arc if not in extremely broad terms unless asked? no, because while I don’t particularly like her, I also don’t think it’d be fair for me to meta about her BECAUSE IF I DON’T REMEMBER HER CHAPTERS THEN I’D BE PULLING OPINIONS OUT OF MY ASS, and I don’t go judging anyone’s opinion re dany beyond the basics because mine is that her chapters are so boring I can’t even remember them. at most I’ll discuss the show version and I can swear to you that even if I’m not a fan or anything I’m still more lenient with her than about 90% of people who aren’t fans, and since I don’t pull meta out of my ass for people whose chapters I haven’t read, I would be extremely grateful of the rest of this fandom paid jon connington the same damn bloody effort, especially when he has TWO of them and hating on him that way is like... why would you, just ignore his fucking existence and let us ten ppl into him have a decent tag.

btw, the ONE time I dared say on a post that wasn’t tagged to hell and back to avoid people finding it ‘it’s kind of hypocritical that people fight themselves over bi!CHARACTER headcanons *because asoiaf doesn’t have lgbt POV CHARACTERS* when they ignore jonc exist and he actually is an lgbt pov character so maybe it’d be nice if they cared about the rep’, I got someone like WELL HE ISN’T LGBT REP ENOUGH, and on the other side I’ve had people actually giving me shit for liking him/writing him content because I’m straight so how do I dare writing a gay dude, and like, idk, since I can’t like him in peace in that sense, can the universe allow me to at least not see bullshit on the tag or is that too much to ask?

and to end this rant: anon, not to be that person, but fyi I’m hardly the person who dictates how the wind flies in this fandom unless we count maybe theon/robb fandom as a ship, my opinions aren’t nearly as popular as opinions belonging to ppl who imvho don’t read these books and that’s fine, I don’t particularly care beyond cultivating my garden as voltaire used to say and see if anyone else wants to come and see the flowers and in case they’re more than free to take some, but like...... the idea that me expressing an opinion about the fact that people in this fandom don’t use the same standards when judging characters and some haven’t read the book or forgot it and assume they know anyway is somehow being high and mighty when I also don’t tag that shit 99% of the time (with jonc I do it just because I know no one but me and ten other ppl goes on that tag) when there’s people in this fandom who outright deny what’s written black on white and actually literally harass you on anon for it when I can 100% swear to you that the only times I’ve gone on anon in my entire life were for a) memes that required being on anon, b) sending people headcanon requests, c) sending people I ALREADY KNEW and who KNEW IT WAS ME personal things that I didn’t want ppl to attach to me because I don’t owe 100% of my life history to tumblr dot com and I always put my face to my opinions.

like, glad you like my opinions, but honestly, if you think this is me being judgmental, fair enough but maybe I’m also tired of having to read stuff that’s based on not having fucking read the book.

thank you.

[yaboylevi]

Hello, first of all, welcome back! I'm glad you managed to avoid spoilers and such!

I am also really glad to hear that you like to read my ramblings (I don't know if they can be called proper meta, but thanks for thinking so!).

I'm replying with a screenshot of your message because the ship name wasn't censored and sometimes tumblr makes this stuff show up in the tags and I really don't want to end up in that tag lol. 

The answer to your question is under the cut!

Short answer: No, it's not canon.

Long answer: I don't want to get into details on my views on the ship because... I'd prefer to avoid the more aggressive shippers' rage. My opinion on er-uri is quite different from what is "accepted" (much like my read on ere-mika) but the difference is that the ere-mika fandom seems chill enough, so you can actually talk mostly freely about EM (in a respectful way ofc), but in general I feel like people can't say anything about er-uri that isn't "they're canon" or they'll be called...idiots, at best. So maybe that's also why you've only seen people say that the ship is canon and nobody disagreeing with it. People just don't wanna get into that mess or be hated on. But this is just my personal experience with the fandom, ofc.

Anyway...basically in the manga there is nothing that can confirm that the ship is actually canon, as of now. From what I've seen, the shippers who think er-uri is canon base their claims on side material, such as interviews, side stories, etc, but even these don't have romantic implications, although you can interpret them as such. Having to rely so much on side info means that in the manga there is just the normal amount of stuff for the fanon ship, just like for every other ship. Of course, there are shippers who enjoy the side content they get in a healthy way (meaning: they respect other ships, they don't push the "it's canon" agenda), but I guess you've mainly seen people saying matter-of-factly that it is indeed confirmed that Erwin and Levi were in a romantic relationship. It is not, so your reading of the manga is not wrong.

I've had anons in the past ask me your same question, because every few months there is a part of the fandom that insists that every news about Erwin is a confirmation of er-uri, and since Levi's come back to the manga, now every single thing Levi does, says or wears (yes, wears) is about Erwin. But in fact, this is not the case. 

I just want to point out that Erwin was important to Levi, there's no denying this. I'm sure Levi will mention Erwin soon, directly and openly. 

I feel like the shippers are antsy and agitated, they may be thinking Isayama and/or Levi have forgotten about Erwin, so they're trying to find something, anything, to counter their worries. I think the fandom should learn to wait and see, because I'm sure they'll get some satisfaction soon. There's no need to attack other people or panic about it or make stuff up (coming up with headcanons is totally fine, trying to pass these headcanons as canon is...not fine). And when the time comes, they can surely interpret it as confirmation of romantic feelings again, but they should be aware that it is their interpretation, and other people can have different ones, just as valid. 

You didn't see anything that confirmed er-uri as canon in the manga and it is a valid interpretation (and the closest to what the actual facts in the manga were, I feel). They saw the greatest romance between them, and their interpretation is fine, too. But it is just that, for now, a personal interpretation/headcanon.

Sorry, this is just a quick explanation of why you see people say it is canon and not an analysis of Erwin and Levi's interactions. I don't feel comfortable with talking about it on a public platform such as tumblr for the aforementioned problematics. I hope it cleared your doubts at least a bit, though!