#that plot was MADE for a gay confession and yet. we got. the nonsense.

[ssaalexblake]

i've not watched the new season of cm but from my casual gif research (aided by video clips) i'm now newly bitter over the travesty of the s14 finale, and that is Impressive bc my bitterness was strong and visceral even before this.

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL

April 2021 Part 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs.

Ongoing Series - Thai

Second Chance Ep 1 - living up to its name since it looks to be a series of redemption arcs. Launched with a college confession and a broken friendship, then a flash back to them as seniors in high school. Pairings include friends to lovers, nerd/jock, and maybe cafe boss/employee. There’s a lot going on, but it’s still... quiet and sweet. The script is pretty pat but it’s still WAY more watchable than Cupid Coach or Brothers and most of the acting is solid. Ep 1 tropes included: he’s in engineering, wound tending, fast & bicurious. This could turn into what I wanted My Gear & Your Gown to be. Fingers crossed. 

Love Poison 2 Ep 1 & 2 turns out I did watch and report on season 1 (8 eps), season 2 seems equally unmemorable. Thai countryside setting, strong dialect, incomprehensible plot, camp side characters, and ghastly singing. 

Y-Destiny Ep 1 (eng subs?) - opened with the sports romance enemies to lovers (they aren’t going in the teaser order). When the couple got over fighting, the flirting was v cute, but the flipping SPONGE BATH trope had to rear its ugly head. Still, this series is shaping up to be less coy and more frank than most BL, better than expected. It feels, I don’t know, gay-er or something?  *** Sources were correct that each couple is getting (at least) 2 eps, and MDL has been updated to say this is a 15 episode series (not 7). 

Cupid Coach 12 fin - The new Nite was great and should have been a main all along. It felt like we got a tiny nugget of what could have been in about 10 minutes worth of this last ep. It was way too slow with terrible editing and a criminally bad script, but at least it ended happy. Mostly, like Friend Forever, I’m just disappointed that these two actors were done dirty by the series. Bad Cupid Coach, no screen caps for you. 

Lovely Writer Ep 6 - breaking news, there’s a het couple I like: toppy bi femme + soft boi = such a good pairing! I know, but this NEVER happens. Meanwhile, Sib’s secret is out, Gene is a bit of a drama queen, and the plot thickens. We half way through.  

Brothers Ep 9 - Kaow had a serious moment of advice giving that was truly lovely. Lots of family dama made this a superior episode to... well... any of the others in this series. Which isn’t saying much. 

1000 Stars Ep 10 fin - at the start this series didn’t grab me the way GMMTV’s last BL, Tonhon Chonlatee, did. But boy did it end 1000x better. Might have given us 2021′s best forehead kiss. I enjoyed the ultra romantic cliff-top reunion kiss, and I LOVED the stinger flirting scene. That was an absolute gift we had no right to expect. This drama is a poster child for finishing on a high note (always focus on that dessert course). Final thoughts? This was FAR more a classic romance than it was BL. There were some BL tropes used but not many and most of them originated in the romance genre not yaoi. A picture perfect ending bumped 1000 Stars much higher up my best-of list than expected. Not sure how often I’ll rewatch it as a whole, but this last episode? I’m probably rewatching it right now. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Dear Uranus (Taiwan GL) Ep 3 fin - I guess that’s it? Okaaaaay  

HIStory 4: Close To You (Taiwan) Ep 3 (AKA Ep 5-6) - we got actual legit gay culture not just BL (always appreciated) from XingSi. I’m starting to find LiCheng’s “show them we fucking” hijinks hilarious rather than annoying (not sure why, maybe I just love a rubber chicken, or maybe it was the STUFFED CORN WITH THE TASSEL that did it). 

-- H4 Moment of RANT --

Tropes included beach trip, there’s only one bed, cook for him, baby is a floppy drunk, carry baby to bed, and.... drunk non-con. Whoopdedoo. Here we go again. Did TharnType teach us NOTHING? (Apparently it taught us if the chemistry is good enough, I have no morals at all.) At least H4 seems to be taking us out of cheese into serious when it comes to assault. Or is it? 

I take back what I said last week about XingSi & YongJie being codependency + salvation trope, that only works if YongJie is the uke. He’s NOT. So we got us an obsessive predatory villain with a possible redemption arc. That’s more common in crime dramas, mafia romance, and epic fantasy than BL. It’s real hard to redeem a sexual predator in a reality-grounded universe like contemporary romance (See Kla in LBC1&2). 

Next week is gonna be a test of the whole damn franchise. Imma remind both me a you that this was ep 3 of 10 so we got a ways to go yet... but ooof, what have we wrought, BL? (I ended up doing a whole post about the stepbrother trope because of this sub plot.) Taiwan is killing me.

-- RANT ended --

Word of Honor (China) Ep 19-21 - over half way point so we got ALL the back story (in a classic 4 act story structure midway reveal). Now we know who WKX really is and his lineage. We also got some cute hugs and hand holds. Moving along at a nice clip despite being 36 eps total. Still gayest thing to come out of we-not-gay China since Advance Bravely. 

Most Peaceful Place (Vietnam) Ep 2 - takes them a while to get eng subs together and ep 2 didn’t drop until late. So I’m putting this in a Thurs time slot going forward. Miscommunication already cleared up and a 2nd couple has been introduced. The pacing on these Vietnamese BLs is always a bit... off. But it’s still better than most of its ilk, enjoyable. I’m thinking it’s a 6 ep arc. 

We Best Love 2 (Taiwan) Ep 5 - after the initial drama DRAMA of ep 2, the current external crisis at work is much quieter, giving this whole season a top heavy feel. Taken along side the first season, I think it’s fitting nicely into a 4 act structure, but that might be my bias. I hope I’m not wrong, we’ll find out next week. Shi De puttering about being domestic with Shu Yi on his back was the best execution of the piggyback trope EVER. Meanwhile, our little D/s side couple of codependency, salvation trope + mental illness is becoming weirdly appealing. I don’t know. H4 done mess with my head. 

Stand Alones 

Absolute BL AKA Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai vs Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko  (Japan) Ep 1-4 mini series. Found subs under A Man Who Defies The World of BL. IT’S HILARIOUS. It’s Japan making fun of us, but also itself for having started this whole BL nonsense - from yaoi roots to present day. It’s parody goddamn gold. Utterly cheeky unto the very last line. We are not worthy. 

Apparently the most powerful tropes of all time are: baby is a floppy drunk and the piggyback fo nobility. Oh and chocolate. {Full review here.} 

Honestly, this show may have been made with only @heretherebedork and I in mind. I don’t know if you’d even understand half of it if you don’t have a history with the manga source genre and an obsessive interest in underlying narrative devices. I haven’t seen much chatter in the blog’o’sphere on this one because, in the end, it’s not a romance at all, it’s social commentary. 

The ending line was a masterclass in lampooning a genre. I’m going to rewatch the whole thing just to catch all the digs I missed first time around. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. 

Thank you Japan. I forgive you all your hair-styling sins of the last decade. 

Breaking News 

Spring Line Up:

Scholar Ryu’s Wedding Ceremony AKA Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding (Korean historical BL) April 15th 

Close Friend the series (Thai trailer) April 22. 

2gether the movie (Thai trailer) April 22 to Thai theaters.

Nitiman (Thai) May 7 on One31.

I Told Sunset About You 2 (Thai) May 27 on LineTV

Ossan’s Love (Hong Kong) June to Viu 

Gossip 

Bad Buddies released its first promo op via Arm Share, which means GMMTV is at least *thinking* about filming it. 

Fun behind the scenes gossip sesh with eng subs for Tell the World I Love You (that Perth Bas movie we are maybe getting someday but will likely be sad). 

New Thai BL Bite Me (adapted from novel Grab a Bite) dropped a teaser. It stars Mark Siwat (Kla in LBC) as uke character Ake, a delivery boy with special foodie powers, and chef Eua (seme played by Zung Kidakorn) who discovers him. It’s from the same author as Manner of Death so we might even get some actual plot. Since it’s an established BL actor who I happen LOVE, a known author, and a plot about FOOD, I could not me more excited for this one. 

Next Week Looks Like This:

Some shows may be listed a day later than actual air date for accessibility reasons. Some are dropping multiples at a time but just started so I’m not sure on numbering. 

Upcoming 2021 BL master post here.

Links to watch are provided when possible, ask in a comment if I missed something.

[duhragonball]

shadowjack12345 replied to your photo “Got a commission this week by the awesome FrauleinPflaume, and it...”

Nice to finally see Zatte, I always liked her - she's dangerous in a way we don't often get in DB.

Hey, thanks, that means a lot to me.    Also, this is all the prompting I need to try to explain how I came up with the character.   Spoilers under the cut.

The thing that held me up early on was that I couldn’t decide if Luffa’s “career” in the past should be long or short.   I used the Bardock: Father of Goku TV special as a model of a “short” Luffa arc.    You have this character who’s only mentioned in passing (by Raditz), and the TV special fleshes him out and kills him off in the space of an hour.   Then he wakes up in the past in the 2011 “Episode of Bardock” Special, if you want to count that.    On some level, I imagined it could be possible to give Luffa a really quick run in her native era, and then send her to the future to join the TIme Patrol, like the Bardock specials.   

I worked on Chapter 126 and 127 today, so I think it’s clear that I did not go down that route.   I knew the alternative would be to really flesh out the character, having her go through multiple adventures like Goku in Dragon Ball.   That meant I had to come up with extra stuff for her to do.   The simple fact is that I really enjoyed writing the character, and I wanted to take the long road, so that later on, when she refers to her past exploits, there would be some weight to them.   

So I worked on coming up with stuff for her to do in between major plot points.   I thought about giving her some love interests, since we’d never seen a Saiyan character jump from one relationship to another, like Spider-Man in the 70′s.   At some point, I thought it might be interesting to have her run into an old flame, someone who knew her before she went Super.   

The problem with that was that when we first meet Luffa, she’s only 19 years old, and she’s been married to Kandai for about a year.    And she’s been living on the Dorlun colony for about five years.    I say this like someone else foisted this problem on me, but I’m the one who came up with all that stuff, to better amplifly the tragedy she experiences before turning Super Saiyan.   This isn’t some seasoned veteran who’s been all over the universe, loving and leaving ‘em from one planet to the next.     She’s young and inexperienced and isolated in a very small community.    

But I still liked the idea, and I hadn’t published Chapters 1-10 yet, so I still had a lot of room to set things up for later.   I realized the only way this would work would be if the “old flame” was a Dorlun who had admired Luffa from afar.    And that led me to Captain Mesas, the leader of the Dorlun militia.  

Mesas originally served only one purpose, which was to be a sort of proxy who could represent the entire Dorlun colony that Luffa had been hired to defend.   I assigned her gender at random, I think.    I just know that I didn’t put a ton of thought into it, since I was planning to kill all of the Dorluns off later anyway.   Luffa would take this personally, because she came to appreciate these people without really admitting it, and this would be demonstrated by her respect for Mesas, who was their lead warrior, and thus the most Saiyan-like of the bunch.   Eventually, I renamed her Captain Zatte, because I had settled on naming all the Dorlun characters after anagrams of metric prefixes, i.e. “zetta”.  

So I quickly came to the conclusion that the only way this “reunited with an old flame” idea would work would be if it was a Dorlun, and the only one that would make any sense would have to be Zatte, and the only way that could work would be if there was some sort of romantic tension between them.    They couldn’t be lovers in those early chapters because Luffa was married at the time, but later, there would need to be a moment where Zatte would confess her feelings and Luffa would have to feel the same way.   

And this is how I ended up making Luffa bisexual.    I didn’t want Zatte to be a man, and I couldn’t make Luffa gay, because I needed her to start out in a marriage to a Saiyan man.   Too much of the plot depended upon that.   I struggled with this decision for a couple of reasons.   

First, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, and I didn’t know if I wanted this story to be my first try, because I was already trying to do a lot of other new tricks.   I didn’t want real-world wlw’s to see this story and be disappointed by my amateurish attempt to get it right.    

Second, I felt disingenuous about making such a major change to the character for my own convenience.    I felt like I’d seen that a lot in comic books over the years, where writers would seemingly assign bisexuality to characters arbitrarily, or for “shock” value, or just to be salacious.  I didn’t want readers to think I was only doing this for shallow reasons, or to get my jollies writing two girls making out.  

But at the same time, I really wanted to do it this way, and I finally decided to just go with it and see where it took me.   In hindsight, I realize that I was just being a fraidy cat about the whole thing.   Writing wlw romance isn’t so functionally different from mlw romance, and once I got used to the idea, I realized the only thing I needed to do was to treat it with the proper respect.    And really, this wasn’t so far off from the original premise.    I wanted to make the “Legendary Super Saiyan” a woman to defy convention and to piss off dudebros.    Making her queer just continues that same line of reasoning, right?   I used to see jackasses on the internet say that women couldn’t turn Super Saiyan because they couldn’t “get angry enough,” which is pretty similar to a lot of biphobic crap I’ve heard on the internet.    I mean, I used to listen to Loveline on the radio around 2001, and Dr. Drew was acting like bisexuality was some made-up thing.    Apparently Dr. Drew went nuts somewhere along the way, or maybe he always was, but he seemed pretty progressive in 2001, and he accepted gay and lesbian callers just fine, but he told bi callers to “figure out what they want”, and that never sat right with me.   People used to say there were no such things as black swans, too.    That’s Luffa all over.     You can deny her all you want, but she’ll still kick your ass.  

I’m this close to going off on a rant about J.K. Rowling, so let me try to force myself to talk about Zatte here.    The problem I ran into almost immediately was that I wrote what I had originally planned for her, and I was very pleased with how it turned out.  And then I had to move on to the next arc, and yet, she was still there, and I knew I’d have to do something with her.    I feel like I’ve been winging it ever since, but my main priority was to set her apart from Keda, the other Dorlun character I kept around.  So I ran with the idea that Zatte is more “Saiyan-like” than the rest of her species, and maybe that makes her a little radical at times, maybe not in a way we humans might notice, but a way that other Dorluns would find unsettling.   Dorluns are survivalists, and for them “risk” is a four-letter word, but Zatte’s a thrillseeker at heart.   She wants to survive in spite of the dangers rather than back away from them.    Keda would find somewhere to hide for several months until it’s safe to come out, but Zatte would try to go all Die Hard on a situation.   Keda sticks close to Luffa because Luffa is the strongest person in the universe, so by Luffa’s side is arguably the safest place to be.    Zatte sticks close to Luffa because she’s a furry being by Luffa’s side is arguably the most dangerous place to be.    If she can survive there, she can survive anywhere.  

There’s also the whole fanaticism angle.   At some point, I came up with the idea that Zatte sees Luffa’s Super Saiyan emergence as a watershed moment in history.     I sort of threw that together, mostly to make Luffa uncomfortable and to add some tension to their relationship, but it also distinguishes Zatte from characters like Chi-Chi or Bulma, who see Super Saiyan as a lot of flashy nonsense, signifying nothing.    “Punk rocker?   Don’t you understand?   Your son is a miracle!”

That angle is kind of hard for me to work with, because I also tried to make Zatte very grounded at the same time.    I guess it’s like if you had Jerusalem Syndrome but you were very self-aware the entire time.   You make a toga out of your hotel linens and just constantly saying “Man, I’m just being really nutty right now, but oh well.”

A lot of her tactics are sort of rooted in stuff I thought made sense with the weaker characters in Dragon Ball.   I don’t really know how strong Zatte would be.    I envisioned her as being like a “mere mortal”, like Lois Lane, but in Dragon World even guys like Mr. Satan are insanely tough.   I’m pretty sure Bulma could kick Brock Lesnar’s ass if she visited our own world.   He’d F5 her and she’d just get up and slap him in the face and he’d collapse.    I feel like if Zatte entered the 23rd Budokai, she could sweep the entire thing.   That’s not what I set out to do, and it sounds really arrogant because I’d be putting her over Goku and Piccolo, but come on, that’s low-tier by DBZ standards.   If she couldn’t dominate the 23rd Budokai, then definitely the 22nd, which also sounds unthinkable, but that’s how this crazy show works.   Yajirobe could have won the 22nd Budokai if he’d only thought to enter it.   

My point is that “weaker” characters can do a lot from the sidelines if they know their limits and pick their spots, like Tien using the Kikoho on Cell and Super Buu, or Yajirobe cutting off Vegeta’s tail, and so forth.    Most of those guys hate resorting to that sort of thing, because they prefer to stand and fight in the open, but Zatte specializes in sneaky hit-and-run attacks.   She should be able to shoot ki blasts, but she sticks to firearms instead, because they’re more precise and ki senses can’t pick them up.  She likes being underestimated, to the point where her ideal battle is one where the enemy doesn’t even know she’s on the field.  

I dunno, I’ve always wondered if I was getting her “right” all this time, but now that I summarize it all in one place, it doesn’t seem as disjointed as I feared.   I had all these different things I needed her to be and do, and most of them involved finding ways to justify her continued presence in the story, but maybe it’s all worked out after all.   Sometimes I feel like Zatte is the Yoko Ono of this fic, but the Beatles suck, so I shouldn’t indulge in their crude analogies.    I Zatted my way into this mess, and I’m happy to Zatte my way out.    

[azoreaneve]

The fucking Epilogues, tales of dubious coherence

I’ve ranted about The Epilogues in general but I figured it would be ideal to make a rant just for the characters because ooo boy this is the biggest reason most of us end up disliking these fanfictions.

   🍬&🍖 John: honestly actually came out okay. Him becoming depressed made sense and serves as a reason why he’s not reaching out to everyone nowhere near as much as he did. Was okay and I liked him.

  🍬Jade: oh god, why did she suddenly become such a bitch?? (no pun intended) They blame it on the doggie hormones but, ugh, that still does not excuse how she suddenly becomes blind to Dave and KK’s discomfort! I find it easier to imagine she was pretending to be blind, no one is that stupid, not to the point of marriage and discussing kids. Even grimbark Jade was nicer! Also she doesn’t have a tail in the canon and yet here she does??

   🍖Jade: well she's gone for the most part, if that's how you avoid the 🍬 bs then so be it...

   Rose: while she’s sick she still seems like our Rose. Afterwards, in 🍬 she just becomes this distant figure and we don’t hear that much about her? It’s the ghost of Rose: someone who now only cares about her marriage I guess. And in 🍖 it's just, such a fucking pain to read her sections, and it's not even mostly because of her but, ugh!

 Dave: he literally went back into the closet??? I’m pretty sure by the end of the canon he had accepted he was gay/bi now but I guess that was thrown out the window. He also has a huge obsession with Obama that I don’t recall being a thing before? On 🍬 he can’t stand up for himself when it comes to the Jade situation and just has a pseudo-shit life, haunted by the “what could have been”s. Then at the end, on a sequence that completely came out of left field, he legit meets Obama, confesses to being gay to him, and is made to ascent to his Ultimate Self when there were no prior signs of that ever becoming a thing (no sickness, no mention of being aware of his other versions, very wtf). In 🍖 they do show these signs and DaveKat becomes this kinda weird thing that exists. Idk but this Dave didn't concern me that much. I was probably getting a bit too jaded at that point, after dealing with all the 🍬 nonsense.

   Jane: I don't really see her wanting to become this bitchy bossy corporate bitch as she grows up but I wouldn't mark it as impossible. I can even shrug at her wanting to regulate troll reproduction but raping Jake and then dragging him into an abusive household in 🍬?? Enstating some dystopian corporate fascism, pretty much following the steps of the Condesce?? HAVING SEX WITH GAMZEE??? And even keeping him at home like he’s part of the family now and giving him (her?) milk?? That whole plotline was more intense than most darkfics I’ve read, holy shit. Jane had already gotten the shaft in canon with a bunch of her plot points going nowhere, like her planet quest, or her whole detective thing getting ditched, and she spent a lot of time being possessed by a computer so in the end was not surprised to see her get the shaft again. We see much less of her in 🍖 but she's like the same character there.

   🍬&🍖Jake: he started becoming a punching bag at the end of canon and grew up to become Jane and/or Dirk’s punching bag, wow. I’m greatly distraught at how much his almighty ass is talked about, and yet we see NONE of it! NADA! Would have also liked to see Brain Ghost Dirk make an appearance. No way Jake was dealing with all his shit without occasionally meeting him.

   🍬Roxy: whatever happened here, that was not fucking Roxy wtf, that was an empty ghost of a person who, at the very end when she reconciles with John, started sounding like Roxy again. What an absolute shame.

   🍖Roxy: they are kinda okay at first, when with Callie, but then they become a he and he reminds me a lot of Tumblr transtrender groups because he's just kinda mimicking Dave, like Roxy's got no personality of his own. I want to believe he just didn't find himself properly yet. This is far from the canon Roxy, especially when he says all that shit about societal gender expectations? Like, bitch, the chesspeople weren't judging the way you dressed and acted wtf.

   🍬&🍖Dirk: more Dirk splinters should practice their 3rd favourite hobby of decapitation. It was fun to have him take over the narrative at first in Meat but he just spiralled down into a huge douche, sometimes straight up sounding like Caliborn. Don’t you miss when Dirk was just a lost kid wanting to become a better person? Don't you miss it when he wasn't such a massively insufferable pretentious cunt?

   🍬Kanaya: Kanaya definitively exists. She feels like she was washed off of some of her charm. Otherwise not much to say, we also don’t go into much detail on her.

   🍖Kanaya: she was turned into an annoying worried wife. Wow. And then gets tricked just like that. Hey remember when Kanaya's personality didn't revolve around her wife? I miss that.

   🍬&🍖Beep-beep-meow: he's annoyingly more PC (not the only one but since it was Karkat, known for shouting rude shit at everyone, he was the more grating case). Overall they don't do much with him and he just loses a but of his shine in both cases.

   🍬&🍖Terezi: she got the bad ending, what else is there to say? I did like her tho. She's still not taking much shit, not even from the prince.

   🍬Gamzee: oh you mean the clown that haunted the fuck out of 🍬 and made some of it both hilarious and extremelly disgusting? Yeah that was someone wearing the skin of Gamzee for sure.

   🍬Vriska: I'm just so fucking tired of Vriska. I get that people love her but I couldn't care less about her. At least she's making comedy now in HS^2 instead of being just a bitch.

   🍬Aradia: eh she's fine and having fun.

   🍬Sollux: ffs why did they have to bring the worse and more useless pre-retcon Sollux. I fucking love Sollux and want to see the version of him that isn't always brooding and can't do shit. I want the post-retcon Sollux who's a cool guy half the time. And then at the end he gets abandoned because honestly? Maybe that's what pre-retcon Sollux fucking deserves.

   🍬&🍖 Calliope: I hope you enjoyed seeing like 0.5s of alpha Callie before they hide away forever because of scary Callie, who becomes hella annoying in 🍖.

[imtheperfectvoid]

oh worm??? somebody else has danganronpa salt to share???? gimme ALL OF THEM! unleashthat shit!!

Holy Shit Anon - Okay fuck it Let’s get Salty about Danganronpa

Posting the Answers under a Read More! (Spoilers are Ahead for Those who Haven’t finished V3)

Salty Ask List

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

I mean, I can Get Most of The Popular Ones, even if I Don’t personally Ship Them, but like. There’s a Few Smaller Ships that Some People Love that I can’t Quite Understand - like, Apparently Souda/Mahiru is Kinda Popular in the Japanese Fandom?? I don’t Understand that One At All.

2, Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

S*UDAM. Fucking S*UDAM. I just. I Cannot see them Romantically at All - and I Adore the Thought of Them as Brothers (either Friends or Literal Adoptive Brothers - shoutout to @ultimatesoulfriend​ and Our Soul Brothers AU). Some other OTPs that I Prefer as BrOTPs: Akane/Nekomaru, Sonia/Gundham, Sonia/Souda, Shuichi/Kaede, Naegi/Kirigiri, Komaeda/Hajime, Fuyuhiko/Peko, Kiyo/Angie, and Probably some Others that I’m just Not Thinking of At the Moment

3. Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?

Not yet, Thankfully! I Manage to Follow only Good People who don’t Condone Pedophilia or Incest or Abusive Ships!

4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

Once again, S*udam. BrOTP Only for This Guy. I Also Absolutely Hate T*gafuka, Any Junko Ship (esp Her with Komaeda or Mukuro), Any Haiji Ship (like Seriously Guys - Dude’s a Literal Pedophile), Mikan/Hiyoko, Kiyo and His Sister, Kiyo/Angie, All Those are Bad to Me.

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

K*mahina and Sai*uma are the Only Two coming to Mind - they were Fine at First, but The Fandom is just So Overly Saturated in Content for Those Ships and It’s. Exhausting. I was Never a Big Shipper of Either of Them to Begin With, but The Oversaturation just Kinda Killed any Potential for Me.

6. Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

I’ve never Gone from Hating a Ship to loving It - usually it’s more of Ships that I Never really Considered or Thought Much of until I Saw Content for Them and Fell in Love With Afterwards. Irumatsu’s a Good Example of That, as is Goshi, Amaguuji, Nekodam, and Several Others.

7. Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?

See Answer to #5

8. Have you received anon hate? What about?

Thankfully, again, No - but I Also don’t really Get Involved with Discourse Much so I Tend to Dodge getting Anon Hate bc of That

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

Hiyoko’s Mean without being Funny Most of the Time, Haiji is a Literal Pedophile and a Major Dick, Tsumugi is Too Dull (even if That is Her whole Schtick), and I Cannot Bring Myself to Care for Most of the DR3 Characters aside from Juzo and Seiko - Chisa’s Okay too, but Kinda Meh for the most Part for Me.

10. Most disliked arc game? Why?

Ultra Despair Girls. All the New Characters were Either the Actual Worst or Simply Meh aside from Komaru and Hiroko, we got Zero Fucking Show of Any of the Remnants of Despair aside from Komaeda and Some Izuru at the End, and it Just felt Lacking Overall. The Best Things that came Out of DR:AE were Komaru and a Much Better Toko.

11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I feel like Ryoma is Vastly Underappreciated in the Fandom - Love that Dude to Hell and Back. Idk how Popular/Unpopular Hagakure is In the Fandom, really, but I really Enjoy him A Lot and Not many People Seem to Talk about Him (aside from Really Tired and Overdone Weed Jokes).

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I’ll take Arc to mean Trial this Time, so I’ll Say that I Honestly Enjoyed playing through Chapter 6 of V3 - regardless of My Opinions on The Trial and the Twist of V3 Itself, the Actual Playing of Chapter 6 was Pretty Fun and I Enjoyed Piecing everything Together during That Chapter and Exploring the School Fully and Whatnot.

13. Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

Idk if it’s Necessarily Unpopular, but I Don’t really See the Appeal in Rantaro? Like, He’s Cool and A Good Dude, but People Seem to Love Him and I don’t? Really get Why? He’s just kind of. A Dude. he’s Nice and Chill and Definitely Pretty but like. That’s about It.

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom?

Again, not Necessarily Unpopular, but I Think there’s More Good to the Fandom than People Realize - Granted, the Shit that’s Bad is Baaaaad, but There’s a Lot of Good in this Fandom Beneath all the Bullshit and the Drama and the Weird, Weird Shit.

15. Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?

I still Stand By my Opinion that the V3 Ending wasn’t As Bad as People are Making it Out to Be. Yeah, it Wasn’t Stellar by Any Means and it Could’ve been a Lot Cooler and there were Some Notable Plot Holes and Whatnot but! Despite All That! I still Feel like, now that I’ve Sat on It and Really Let myself Absorb the Ending and Process it, I Still Enjoyed it, for What it was Worth.

16. If you could change anything in the show games, what would you change?

DR1: Only Big Thing I’d wanna Change is Hagakure should’ve Died in Taka’s Place - i Love Hiro, but I love Taka, Too, and He was Really Deserving of DevelopmentDR2: Sonia Should’ve been the One to Murder Mechamaru. like, Again, I Love Sonia, but Having Her as the Murderer would’ve left So Much Room for Her, Souda, and Even Gundham to Have some Amazing Development form the Experience, Especially Souda - He could’ve Gotten the Fuck Over himself and Not been So One-Note in his Characterization and He could’ve Learned to be Fucking Respectful of Women and Possibly even Befriended Gundham in the Process!! Plus Having Sonia as a Murderer to Save Everyone?? Amazing.DR:AE: just. Delete this Game. That’s the ChangeDRV3: Give Korekiyo Shinguuji the Goddamn Writing he Should’ve been Given. God that Dude had So Much Potential for an Interesting Motive or a Cool Twist or Even a Sad Breakdown where His Amoral Views are Suddenly Turned on their Head and he Shows that He’s Incredibly Afraid of Death - but What did We Get? Weird Creepy Incest Time. Actually, better Yet, just. Get Rid of All the Weird Incest Stuff in V3 in General. it’s All Bad and Weird.

17. Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…

Okay so Now that I’m Thinking about Kiyo’s Godawful Writing, I wanna Talk about How I would’ve Loved to See his Twist involve Him Dealing with his Amorality and his Indifference to Life and Death. like, Imagine if He Broke Down during the Trial and said He’d Killed Angie because it Turned Out he was Actually Afraid of Dealing with the Spirit World, because He’s Very Spiritual and Doesn’t Want to Anger them or Upset them  - especially since His Sister (whom He Wasn’t Incestuous With - Not on My Watch) is Now a Spirit and he Feels that Trying to Resurrect the Dead is Desecrating the Balance of Life and Death. Hell, maybe He even Felt Envious that They could Supposedly Bring back a Dead Classmate here but he Could Never bring his Sister Back, so he Lashed Out at Angie in a Rage. and Maybe Tenko Witnessed him do it and He had to Kill Her to Keep her Quiet or Something (get Rid of the Weird Seesaw Nonsense).

idk I just. Really Really Liked Kiyo’s Character a Lot up until That Point and it was a Major Letdown that I’m Still not Over.

18. Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased?

I mean, When it Comes to Shipping, if you Don’t Ship Something, it’s Not because you’re “in Denial” of Anything or Necessarily Biased (and Shit, even if You are, then What’s the Problem? I’m Biased against S*udam because I Have an AU where they’re Brothers and I Like that Way More than Putting them Together Romantically). Not Shipping something that’s Popular is Whatever - Ship what you Want, so Long as it Isn’t Abusive or Incestuous or Pedophilic or Anything like that.

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

the Fucking. People who are Just Mass-Producing Discourse All the Time. like, Everybody who Attacks People and Sets up Literal Entire Sideblogs Dedicated to Hating Certain Characters. How do you Have the Energy and the Care to Be at People’s Throats all the Time, Y’all? That’s Insane to Me. and Especially Shoutout to that One DR Confessions Blog that’s Always in the Tags and is Practically Nothing but Discourse - That’s the Worst Offender that I can Think Of at the Moment.

20. What is the purest ship in the fandom?

Ohhh man, That’s Gotta be Goshi. I Cannot think of A Purer Ship than Those Two and it Warms my Gay Lil Heart to Pieces.

21. What are your thoughts on crack ships?

I Think they’re Fun! Like, Daiyakure? Good Shit! Fuyusouda? Excellent!! Soniakane? Stellar!!! A Lot of my Ships Personally are Kinda Crack-y, so I Thrive on That Shit

22. Popular character you hate?

I don’t Hate Him, but I’m Pretty darn Tired of Seeing Ouma Everywhere.

23. Unpopular character you love?

Again, Ryoma Hoshi is A Good Boy and Deserves So much more Love

24. Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?

I Would - and Have - Absolutely Rec DR to a Friend! It’s a Fun Series with Engaging Story, Fun Characters, Good Mysteries, and A Lot to Love!

25. How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?

I’d Definitely Change the End of V3, but I Really haven’t Thought Extensively on How I’d wanna Change it. All I know is, If they Really Wanna Keep the Ending they Have, then Kiibo Really should’ve been The Protag and Not Kaede or Shuichi.

26. Most shippable character?

my OC Jato lmao I ship Hajime with. So Many People. like, He’s so Easy to Pair with People and they’re All so Good!! Another Close Contender would be Gundham or Souda bc I Like Them with Several People, Too (but Never Each Other)

27. Least shippable character?

Hifumi, Teruteru, or Ouma - I don’t Ship Any of Them with Anyone for Various Reasons