#otp: ying yang

[hourcat]

my onedrive "on this day" reminder......

[danmeigirl]

[gizkasparadise]

final leg of a journey to love thoughts!! (eps 35-40). this got so gd long so under a cut it goes. spoilers, of course:

PLOT STUFF/PACING

pacing for the plot definitely got shredded in the last chunk, which is a damn shame because otherwise i've been finding the pacing pretty much perfect. eps 35-37 in particular felt like they could have been like a 10 episode arc. ep 38, which mostly dealt with wu palace politics, should have been cut or streamlined imo and more time given to the characters we've actually been riding along with the whole story. by the time we get back to the pregnant empress, prince danyang, the first prince whose name i dont even remember, and the prime minister, i do not care about any of them and i think this subplot was simply just trying to fit too much shit into one bag

that said, this show still let the emotional moments hit and breathe and linger. i love the grief for the fallen liudao comrades as we go, as well as the less heavy but still emotionally important moments like yang ying and tongguan bonding over their upbringing. and we got a wedding /;3;/!!! for this show, the relationships and characters matter more than the storyline so im not mad about anything at all

side note: it's so gd millennial to have a story about a bunch of 30 something year olds who want to fake their deaths and retire into obscurity but instead they go and die for a boss they hate

CHARACTER STUFF

this show consistently brought a lot of depth to its side characters (and side side characters!!). i said it in an earlier post, but it bears repeating that even someone like deng hui i didnt expect anything from, but he got such good development and writing that he became a stealth fave. his dying words essentially being "dude, quit fucking around" ? iconic.

i didnt like tongguan as much as everyone else, so im pretty meh about everything regarding him. the attempt to force-wed ruyi was tonally really weird and didnt make sense (i assume there was some cuts made surrounding it). but LOL at him reusing all the outfits and decor immediately for his wedding to yang ying. baby duke, you tacky motherfucker. i ultimately think yang ying deserves better than him, but the good thing is that she knows this, so she'll be able to hold her own and then some entering into this partnership

shisan really was the heart in a lot of ways--the mom to yuanzhou's dad for the liudao. i was not expecting him to break my heart the way he did, but the fact that he held both qian zhao and sun lang as they died and then tried his best to remove yuan lu from harm and saved chu yue and was just very much a nurturer all the way through got me. his character couldve been cheap comic relief but the writing + performance really elevated him into one of the (imo) most memorable wuxia characters. his line wondering who would get to behead his beautiful skull!!! and how his mantra was always that he was going to drink the best wine, see the most beautiful women, and make the best of friends and he dies having lost the ability to see and having just had wine in memory of qian zhao, yuan lu, and sun lang. like. shut up!!

ruyi and yuanzhou were both so great and they're gonna be the drama OTP to beat forever. i loved the gender reversals, that they both were so respectful of each other, and that they also felt very mature in how they handled things and communicated. they were really interesting characters both together and apart and that's always a win-win. they had a schroedinger's ending where it's not super clear if they're alive or dead (i interpreted it as the latter), but what's kind of beautiful is that either option is satisfying to me. if they both died, they're reunited and with their comrades and the story is truly about the journey and the meaningful short connections we have. if they both survived, it's a bookend with the beginning where they each faked their deaths to escape. A+

COSTUMING

i gotta just separately mention the costuming for this show because it was 15/10. the textures, shisan's accessories, the way red became integrated with yuanzhou's wardrobe and blue with ruyi's. the details on the liudao name amulets!! SO GOOD. i love when characters' clothes tell a story on their own

overall i just really loved this drama it is probably my favorite wuxia ive seen so far! it's gonna be in my brain for awhile lol feel free to send fic prompts if you've made it this far :'D

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

https://www.tumblr.com/cleverheroine/623936048254320640/what-zutarans-say-its-just-that-katara-never

thoughts?

"Katara never showed real romantic feelings for Aang and only blushed when she was FLATTERED" cope harder, honey. And in what world do you "fix" that by making her date the guy she hated for 90% of the show and very clearly only saw as a friend in the end? Ridiculous.

"She treated him like a brother" Nope, that's Zuko. You know, the guy she teased in the exact same way she teased Sokka, her actual brother? She never did that with Aang.

"Or even like a son" Once again, Zutarians completely ignore how Katara was visibly upset at the thought of her friends thinking of her as a mom BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T SEE ANY OF THEM AS HER KIDS, BECAUSE SHE'S JUST 14, YOU DUMBASSES!

"There's zutara 'imagery'" The show about the four elements is not hiting at Zutara just because there's red and blue everywhere. It's about balance, not your OTP. "Cave of Two Lovers" and "Ying and Yang" (aka, TUI AND LA, PUSH AND PULL) were KATAANG imagery. Not to mention, if you have to rely on "secret hints in the colors or backgrounds" instead of the actual writting of the characters and their dynamics, you end up with shit like the ending of How I Met Your Mother - and trust me, you don't want that.

(Yes, I will bitch about that awful finale forever and nobody can stop me).

"We totally don't want Aang to die for our ship" Really? Then I guess I hallucinated all those fics and headcanons that either full on kill him or just commit character assassination that you guys keep shoving in everyone's face. Fuck off!

[hourcat]

sorry but if you dont vote eli/odell youre going to hell

[kimium]

Tell me about your Link Click boys and why you ship them!💜🥰

Aw, thanks for this ask, friend! I'm so excited to discuss my Link Click OTP, Shiguang (Cheng Xiaoshi x Lu Guang).

If you're unfamiliar with this show, it's an animated Chinese show. Cheng Xiaoshi (black haired one) and Lu Guang (white haired one) are time travellers. Their abilities are centred around the use of photographs. I won't say anything more because I don't want to spoil the series. What I will say is the show is AMAZING and I highly recommend it. So far, there are two seasons + cute little shorts. A third season is on the way soon.

Anyways, in my ask I'm going to keep things vague because I don't want to spoil anything major. There will be minor spoilers though, so be wary!

Things I like about Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang/ Why I ship them

Their friendship is instantly believable

Even if I didn't ship them, the two have amazing chemistry throughout the series. Their teasing, joking, fighting, worry, etc. all come off natural. It's immediately clear at the beginning they're close/trust one another. They naturally reveal more about their friendship throughout the series, but I love that I didn't need a ton of episodes to go "Yeah, they're obviously close".

I love their character dynamic

A slight side to my prior point, I am always a fan of the "happy, go lucky, slightly impulsive one" paired with the "calm, slightly more stoic one". It's always a great pairing of character and helps create fun tension or comedy.

Their time travel powers are unique (Mild Spoilers)

Time travel is one of my favourite tropes in media, so I've seen it done many times over. However, I think Link Click has one of the most unique. I'm in love with how their powers compliment one another. Alone their powers are strong but together their powers are a force to be reckoned with. The idea that both need the other to function properly makes me very happy. I always appreciate when people with supernatural powers have complimentary powers.

They're Ying and Yang Coded

Look, you got me Link Click. You put together a white haired boy with a black haired boy, added some amazing character chemistry, and made them super close friends. You made it so their powers are complimentary and work the best when they're a team. You added layers of "I don't know what you're doing but I have to trust you" to their time travel element. Honestly, it would be a miracle if I didn't fall for Shiguang as a ship.

Cheng Xiaoshi canonically calls Lu Guang handsome

My man is just openly admitting TO LU GUANG'S FACE he thinks Lu Guang is handsome in episode two?? Uh, excuse you, sir??

Their first meeting has "Meet Cute Vibes"

The lighting! The music! The entire way it's animated! That's a scene out of a shoujo anime.

The ending of Season Two

I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone. There is so much I could say about how the season two ending solidified Shiguang as my ship. However, I want people to enjoy the show without spoilers. This post I reblogged accurately sums up my thoughts though.

And there you have it, friend! I hope you enjoyed my thoughts! I cannot wait to watch this anime with you! On top of all the other anime I want to watch with you ahaha...

[pi-ying-xi]

I love Ren Ruyi and Ning Yuanzhou, they're my otp.

And I adore everyone I'm supposed to: Yang Ying, Yu Shisan, Yuan Lu, Qian Zhao.

But I have such a soft spot for this prickly, vicious boy.

He can be so sweet one moment

And so petty the next

A childish temper, as Yuanzhou says.

And yet, ambitious enough, with conscience enough to know when to work with Liudao Hall so that together they can avoid endless war and suffering.

[maddyshome]

gojo is the moon but geto is not the sun. geto is the star. it is yuuji who is the sun.

sukuna is also the moon and yuuji is still the sun here too.

why? because yuuji's belief is a direct contrast to gojo and sukuna's. the sun and the moon need to be two opposing beings. like ying and yang.

to satosugu fans, stop living in a delusion. your otp is not the sun-moon pair. its more like the moon-star pair. so just go with that.

[the-marron]

Shipper Tag Game

Tagged by @forerussake , thank you 🥰

1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care about anymore?

Hmmm, a hard question right off the bat, because even if I am no longer actively seeking the ship content out anymore, usually I retain a lot of fondness for it, so there are precious few ships I used to be into and that I am simply meh about now, but I think it would be ShikaIno, from Naruto. Canon came at me hard, so while I have some fondness for it, it is what it is, and I am not that much into Naruto anymore either way, so it doesn't hurt much.

2. Which ship would you consider your first one?

Simba/Nala? Lol 😂 but in all seriousness, I think it would be BatCat. Or Aragon/Arwen, I am very hazy on the details when exactly I imprinted on those, the timeline is not clear

3. Your first fanfic was about which couple?

Read or written? Read: no idea, I think it might have been some self-insert into Inuyasha universe? Written: Sirius/Remus

4. Do you remember the first couple you saw fanart of?

Nope. When I discovered the internet I discovered all of it at an alarming pace, but my bet would be on either Sirius/Remus or some couple from W.I.T.C.H

5. Have you ever gotten into ship discourse?

I try not to. I have opinions, yes, and I like discussing them with friends, but I try not to make it anyone's problem - everyone will ship what they want to ship and find different dynamics compelling, so I don't think it necessary to crusade one way or another because one ship is superior to another. It's all very subjective.

6. Did you use to have any NOTP or have one currently?

I have quite a bit! Funnily enough I have some canon ships I absolutely dislike and can go off about whenever I catch a poor, innocent victim to listen to my rant.

But my general rule is that I don't like OT3s. In any fandom, in any form, it's just not for me at all. To make matters worse, I am a monoshipper at heart, which usually means that I have a dynamic/ship that I like with characters A and B, and it makes me lose interest in all the other configurations with them. So maybe not an active NoTP but very unlikely for me to read A/C if I committed myself to A/B.

Special shout out to Weilanzun, because this is my most recently acquired NOTP.

And to Batman/Talia Al Ghul which is my longest reigning one.

7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read?

Zhou Ying/Bai Ling from Tai Sui 🥺 my poor white half-demon, hopelessly devoted to his prince... And so few fics with them ;_;

8. Currently, do you have any OTPs?

Plenty. I don't abandon old ones, I just collect them together in my jar of ships and rattle it from time to time, to see how they sparkle together.

But from my most recent and long-term commitments: Weilan, Luolin, Heixie, Luo Qingeng/Jiang Yang (do they have a name???) and BatCat, forever and ever

9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together?

Well, the story is a story, so as long as it makes sense that these characters do not end up together, then I am okay with it, that's what we have fanfiction for, right?

BUT

I am still not over that wedding stunt DC Comics pulled with BatCat. Months of teasing, of promising the wedding, the freaking wedding albums being released and then the WEDDING DIDN'T HAPPEN. They broke up instead because Batman has to be the dark, sad, lonely something something and you can't be a hero if you have a wife. 50 years and DC Comics is going backwards in this regard :/

10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting?

Not sure? Nothing comes to mind. But I am very open to being pulled into/converted into ships as long as they are not on my black list, and even then I try to keep an open mind, in case something clicks.

11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, would've been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over?

Hah, a lot, because I got into shipping as a teenager. So reading romances about other teenagers felt normal and all but now I don't feel the need to revisit them.

12. What is your favorite crack ship?

Ha. Not today, Satan. One moment I am joking about a crack ship and the next I have 10k words written about it and like 3 sad headcanons and a shipping chart ready.

13. What is the couple you read the most fanfics about?

Oh wow, good question. If I like a ship, then I tend to read through the entire Ao3 tag of theirs, sometimes more than once because what if I missed some gem in the first go? So it would come down to the sheer numbers of fics, I think. So that would be either Sterek, Stucky or Eames/Arthur (fun fact: this is also the first fandom that introduced to me the concept of derivs)

14. What do most of your ships usually have in common?

Devotion. Very often the conflict between their feelings and their duties/ loyalty towards something they cared about before they met the other.

I like both sides of the ship to be competent at their respective fields and torn apart by their own choices and priorities. The 'I love you but do I love you enough to abandon everything I am'?. I like both answers more or less equally: both the 'yes, it's us against the world now' and 'I hope we won't meet on the battlefield' are set ups I enjoy immensely. But I also like smart-asses annoying each other into marriage one witty comeback at a time.

15. What you absolutely hate in a ship?

Imbalance of attachment. If the ship seems terribly one-sided, like one character is putting in all of the work and tries and tries, and tries while the other mercifully sometimes acknowledges them, then it's a no for me.

Same with the 'if you patiently wait for this person to like you, even though they told you 10 times they won't, then they eventually will' trope, like someone's love is what you earn through steadiness and hard-work.

I like both parts to be equally unwell about their partner, one way or another. They can be sickeningly domestic and gushing, or they can be crazy in that 'no one defeats him, but me!' kind of way, but they have to be in balance on the insanity scale. I like when characters grow into their relationship and both affect one another, falling more and more in love with each other as they go, but not when one person is a prize the other has to win/outwait/earn.

Thanks again for the tag, that was a nice bit of soul-searching there, very fun 👌😌

Tagging: @baiyubai , @babischlong-six , @mjsakurea, @mejomonster, @elenothar

[oprescuewagon]

Year of the OTP September ‘hurt/comfort’

The boys are getting all the comfort

They comfort each other

Like Ying and Yang

[hourcat]

https://www.tiktok.com/@dj4mvp/photo/7304382888001260831

😭😭😭

babe are you trying to get me to kill myself. because i will do it

[officialdaydreamer00]

my doomed ying yang otp ✨

mooties can i borrow one of your ocs 👀

i have silly oc ship thoughts (can be either /rom or /pla 👌✨)

[niconebula]

homura akemi ?

I got the same character twice so I am going 2 reply directly to my friend but yes I saw you too anon!

favourite thing about them: her girlboss swagger. noo but seriously shes just such a one of a kind character. she's incredibly intense which I like and she's the star when she shows up, has an incredible amount of depth behind her actions and is taken really seriously as this fully fleshed out person.

least favourite thing about them: even her negative traits are part of the appeal so. hmmm. i'm not as much of a fan of glasses "moemura" that they keep pushing in the game to make her cute and marketable. i dont really care for magireco as a whole though.

favourite line: most famously: "more passionate than hope, and far deeper than despair, love".

brOTP: kyoko and homura. everyone talks about it but it's still so underrated. i think a lot of people forget how much she cares about kyoko. they fundamentally understand each other, the way they're both trying to protect the people they love. both traumatized by their religious upbringings, both experienced death prior to the events of the series, they're both misunderstood and labelled as the enemy but push forward anyways. homura obviously has a lot of respect for kyoko considering she personally reaches out for her help in every timeline including rebellion. love them.

OTP: i wonder what this is! its so classic its so iconic its the blueprint its a shakespearean tragedy they are ying and yang they are literally god and satan it is great. not influenced at all by me watching madoka at the ripe age of 13 and it changing my braincells for the worse.

nOTP: the incredibly cursed spin-off where she marries ... tatsuya... to get closer to madoka. this is real and i do not know who the audience was.

random headcanon: this is interesting because even though madoka is my longest running fixation, I never really "fandomized" it and my interest is mostly kept within the realm of source material - i don't make or think of my own scenarios. that being said, I have dabbled in lots of doujins and the idea of her existing solely on calorie-mates (japanese meal replacement bars) is canon to me

unpopular opinion: trying to think of a truly unpopular opinion is hard but. as a homura / madohomu enjoyer it's like well, just maybe, their relationship is kind of toxic and that it's part of the enjoyment that she or they both are a little krayzee and incredibly dramatic

song i associate with them: "hunger" by florence and the machine :)

favourite picture of them:

certified classic, drew this during art class in grade 9 except also with the top of her head cut off and I think that scared some of my classmates

[achromaticstars-archived]

why were you drawn to each one of your characters?

Multimuse Asks |still accepting|

Ahh such a good question. There are a lot of different reasons why I was as my muses obviously are all over the place.

Wei Ying was because of his chaotic nature and I just love his character plus I wanted a chaotic muse.

Kunihiro is my absolute favorite from Touken Ranbu. I find him adorable as well.

With Xie Lian and Sizhui, I just liked their characters from the moment when I saw them or read about them. Plus a friend of mine who shares a ship with me is another reason, we made our own verse for the ship which I hopefully will be able to RP again sometime soon once they come back if they do.

Ye Xiu is because of my love of video games and Yang Yang is one of my favorite actors. Wu Xie is that nerdy history buff plus his series is about tomb raiding and the ship that's been built with @changeandmovingon. I don't really recall why I added Shi Lei besides just being a fan of the series and the OTP, I might remove him though since he hasn't gotten much activity.

Bai Yutong and Shen Yi are fun since they are my police force muses, I just like their characters. They are fun to mess around with. The last four being Lee Cheong-San, Chen Yuzhi, Yoon Hwa Pyung, and Kim Ga On were mostly because of OTP reasons or there was something that I just liked about them. For Cheong-San was because of the series since I am a zombie apocalypse nerd and the series was different from the others that I have seen, the post-canon verse I have for him is legit my fav because of what happens to some people when they are infected. Yoon Hwa Pyung is became of my love for the paranormal and him being a psychic plus the ship that I have for him.

[gloomyplum]

How to fight loneliness

Smile all the time

Shine your teeth to meaningless

And sharpen them with lies