#they don't ever live together in SV tho!

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

He’d been so sure of everything back then—he would drive Lonan from Oregon back to Boston, or Brooklyn, or wherever he wanted to go. They could've rented a brownstone in Sunset Park, spent half of move-in day dancing in a scarred bathroom. Screened a stack of library films on a projector in the kitchen. Adopted a cat. Bought each other the same socks on Christmas. But Lonan’s not here. It takes Harrison a moment to realize that if that’s true, then neither is he.

I really need to STOP IT with these hypotheticals I'M GOING TO CRY

[ectoodle]

Hello! I wanted to ask what made you fall in love with bingqiu?

Hey there!

Ah hmm that's an interesting question, I've never thought about it actually. I like bingqiu a lot, but I never considered it as falling in love with the ship? They're a fun ship to play with and they have a wide range that's pretty flexible so I'm always in my comfort zone drawing them.

I suppose most of the art I draw for bingqiu are a love letter to them, though. And I think that's pretty telling of my brain rot for them 😂

I think the food the fandom cooked up really helped a lot. SV fic writers are on a whole other plane of existence when it comes to analyzing binghe's character and filling in on his journey of healing with sqq by his side. I'm the annoying type of audience that gets bored when the main couple gets together at the end...so when scum villain ended the way it did, mxtx may as well have german suplexed me on the concrete. scum villain is a story that subverts its tropes left and right and the ending was no exception! I love that bingqiu getting together at the end was not an automatic happily ever after, but rather, they still are putting in the work and effort to understand and stay in each other's lives. The glimpse of that path we get in the extras really did solidify my desire to see how bingqiu will continue to stay together--bingmei vs bingge extra was probably the finishing blow for me tho lmao. I couldn't stop thinking about what the heck happened to bingge after he left the sv world that I read a bunch of fics about him and needed to soothe the angst with sv bingqiu

on a side tangent, bingqiu parallels another of my all time ship, nozomizo from liz and the blue bird. mild spoilers if you haven't seen liz, but nozomizo had a similar codependent relationship that needed them both to grow apart as individuals in order to stay together. bingqiu separated unwillingly and binghe's growth as an individual was fueled by betrayal, despair, and that dying glimmer of hope that maybe, maybe shizun could accept him now that they're equals. but they don't. because binghe still hasn't emotionally grown to get past his temper tantrums (thanks xin mo) and sqq is still failing binghe by constantly misunderstanding him. but bingqiu still choose each other, choose to love and support each other, and they refuse to be separated again. whereas nozomizo was a healthy separation with a promise of reunion, bingqiu was fighting through the muddy trenches with a vague hope that the other is reaching out their hands too. i thought it was neat how differently both ships handled their codependency that still guarantees a happy ending, no matter how dirty and bruised they got along the way.

I also think sqq's compassionate narration in regards to binghe's suffering got to me lmao. He truly does care for binghe, and even if naysayers argue it's not romantic, it's undeniable that binghe is special to sqq. although not the best choices, most if not all of his choices were for binghe's best interest (thanks system). sqq had so much heart for binghe that it affected me through the screen too. binghe's abandonment issues and fake wet tears have captivated me. his gap moe as a chuuni emo demonic overlord and wife with a maidenly glass heart has bewitched me body and soul. i want luo binghe to be happy so badly!!

i think that's why bingqiu fascinates me. most of the bingqiu arts i draw are like slice of life vignettes, so without the meat and bones of fanfic diving into bingqiu's messiness, i would not have ascended to this level of brain rot for them...

[pksp-yellow]

Ok so here's a rating of all the legendaries from my most favourite to least favourite.

Notes

~

- I am excluding legendaries from SWSH, USUM, and SV because I haven't fully played those games. I played Sword but got bored with it and gifted my copy of it to my brother and I never touched SV and USUM and don't have the money for them :/ (well.... except for USUM I just don't wanna play that one. I do REALLY wanna play SV tho, I just can't afford it).

- Some XY and SM ones may not be on this list as well but that's because I don't even fully remember them/didn't know they existed until I looked. And I have all of XY blocked out from my memory except for the 3 main legendaries. Same for SM, I really only remember the story in SM. Anywayss, let's go!

1. Suicune! 4Ever was one of my favourite Pokemon movies as a kid and I just really love it's design. I also first played Crystal when I was 13 and using a GB emulator on my phone. I LOVED it! So I got some childhood nostalgia tied to this reasoning.

2. Reshiram. The BW/BW2 games are my favourite games in the entire series. I have tons of nostalgia for the games and are both the second/third Pokemon games I ever beat when I was 10. I hold all of Gen 5 dear to me.

3. Entei. The first Pokemon movie I ever watched was 3 and it was the first movie that ever made me cry. I remember when I was 6 I lived right next to a Family Video (R.I.P.) and they had a free kids movie section. Me and an old friend picked out Pokemon 3 and watched together and it made me SOB. I dealt with severe abuse starting when I was only a few months old that worsened at the age of 4. I was still going through the worse of it. I saw a lot of myself in the main little girl and I desperately wished I had a Entei that protected me. So there's a lot of sentimental reasonings for it.

4. Celebi. Again, 4Ever was one of my favourite movies as a kid so that's why. I also cried while watching that one when I was 7/8.

5. Ho-Oh. So Heartgold was the second Pokemon game I ever owned (it was the 3rd or 4th game I ever played) and it was the first Pokemon game I ever fully beaten. I got the game for my 9th birthday. One of my aunt's bought it for me while my mom paid for SoulSilver which I ended up gifting to my friend after she asked for one (I didn't care and still don't, I have no preference for either I adore both HG and SS).

6. Dialga. Diamond was the first Pokemon game I ever owned and the 2nd or 3rd game I ever played. I sadly never beat it, I got stuck at one of the cities with that pokemon pageant thing and then my copy of the game got lost. Idk how it got lost because I took care of my belongings but at the time my cousin was living with my family and he had a habit of stealing stuff and giving them away so it's most likely that happened but I can't say for sure. I wasn't able to touch another Sinnoh game until I was 16 where I got Platinum for my birthday.

7. Darkrai. So fun fact, as much as I adore the PMD games my favourite Pokemon spin offs are the Ranger games with Shadows Of Almia being my favourite. I got it for Christmas when I was 7 and was ADDICTED to it (so was my mom, she loved "stealing" my DS when I wasn't around and played it lol). And it's design is just cool as fuck it gives me Shadow The Hedgehog vibes.

8. Victini. I LOVED the BW movie when it came out. I remember watching it live on CN. And I was obsessed with Victini as a legendary when I was 11.

9. Latias + Latios. I first watched heroes when I was 10/11 and I ADORED it.

Ok so for the rest of these I don't have any sentimental reasoning as to why I like/dislike them the rest is just based off of the design.

10. Mew.

11. Shaymin.

12. Cobalion

13. Virizion (my dumbass keeps reading it as Verizon, like the phone company lmao)

14. Arceus

15. Lugia

16. Giratina

17. Rayquaza

18. Groudon

19. Kyogre

20. Xerneas

21. Manaphy (gonna be honest I didn't even know this was a legendary until now)

22. Phione

23. Jirachi

24. Cresselia

25. Azelf

26. Mesprit

27. Uxie

28. Articuno

29. Type: Null

30. Silvally

31. Raikou

32. Meloetta

33. Cosmog, Cosmoem, and Solgaleo/Lunala (Idk where to put each so they're all going in this spot)

34. Deoxys

35. Keldeo

36. Terrakion

37. Zapdos

38. Moltres

39. Palkia

40. Zekrom

41. Kyurem.

42. Heatran

43. Yveltal

44. Zygarde

45. Necrozma

46. Regirock, Regice, and Regigigas. I don't like the designs they creep me out.

47. Mewtwo. The design is unappealing to me. It's iconic but I don't like it :/.

48. Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus. I HATE these designs they piss me off and idek why they just do.

Ok that's my entire list and again if I don't have any on here that's not from SWSH and SV it's most likely because I don't remember them/didn't know they existed. I have played both XY and SM (I beat XY but I never beat SM cuz I couldn't beat Kukui). But the thing with those games is that I was dealing with a lot of mental stuff and trauma while playing both. I blocked out XY mainly because I didn't like it and also I was suffering from severe depression and SM was blocked out due to the fact that I was going through trauma while playing it (I only remember the starters, characters, and story). So a lot of the Pokemon and legendaries from those games were wiped from my memory.

I probably shouldn't have made this list due to these facts but I mostly wanted to share my favourite legendaries (1-28 are my faves, 29-35 I'm neutral on, and everything below I just don't like, design wise anyways).

[jonroxton]

can you talk about chlark beyond chloe? personally i think it's weird that the writers kept adding kisses and weird romantic moments without any pay off. i don't know much about the fandom back then but i think the writers were baiting fans since clark/chloe seems to be the second most popular ship after clex. second i personally think chloe would never be happy with clark or anyone tbh and she doesn't seem like the type of person who would have kids so the finale was weird to me.

this got looooong :)

0. it WAS weird, and the choice to never not once go for it with them was to the story's detriment. I'll get into it a little later on in this post.

Re: shipping in sv fandom. there was definitely drama (clana was HUGE when the show was airing and every ship was basically derailed by it lol) but I stayed in my clois lane with a small circle of fandom friends much like I do now. a good measure of clois fans were fans of lois and clark from other mediums, come to sv just for lois and clark, myself included. we were pretty insulated as a fandom even back then. I do remember seeing more Chlark after the S5 finale (when Chloe kisses him goodbye), but those dropped off after Jimmy was introduced right away in S6. The most drama I encountered was with Chloisers: Chloe fans who believed wholeheartedly that Chloe was Lois. They hated SV!Lois and were convinced she would die so Chloe could take her name and job and place by Clark's side, thus a Chlark endgame. this was a popular theory amongst that fandom even into s9, when the clois ball started to roll for true.

bait and switch

a lot of Chlark is rooted in this notion that chloe WOULD be the best thing for Clark, the ideal Lois, the true best friend, the human hand guiding him through Earth's troubles. she would be could be the BEST possible lois archetype for Clark. it's not a wrong interpretation. she was specifically written as a lois-and-lana-proxy (teenage lana is a reporter in some AUs and even some as an adult as a tv correspondent) and she's given many lois-ish traits (tenacious, secretly crushing on clark and in denial), but this interpretation is deeply flawed. first, because lois does eventually enter into the picture and she has her own defining traits that, when compared to chloe, make chloe seem much shallower than realized. secondly, within the complete context of the story, her position in the greater narrative is not as ~the one who got away, the way it did very early on in S1-S4, but one who clark tolerates.

they're friends because clark is forgiving and chloe has staying power. their friendship is riddled with insecurities and unknowns the characters create for themselves. their dynamic is defined by conflict, not resolutions. this is not made easy by the fact that chloe is such a strangely written character, but ultimately she is positioned as a counter to clark achieving his happiness. not a thematic narrative foil but an obstacle clark eventually relents to.

2. and it has been so from the get-go

S1 is the best season for them and the single season which actually considers Clark's side in this dynamic. everything about them later on can be explained with how they are in this season. and that's the problem. when they're 14 it's nice teen angst drama and works perfectly to establish the dynamic. when they're 24 it's at best a pattern, at worst regression. we expect certain behaviors, dismiss them too, when it's children, at least I do. clark and chloe never move beyond the dynamic they establish in s1 and early s2. in essence, clark and chloe remain children around each other. they have many discussions in the later seasons that make at least one appear petulant.

so S1 clark has just been told the greatest secret of his existence and he imprints on lana hard that same night (right AFTER jonathan tells him, he meets lana at the graveyard and talks to her for the first time EVER, a lot of childhood imprinting going on in SV). all of s1 follows clark's heartache over lana, watching her from afar and figuring out a way to be near her. this pain is exacerbated by the fact that he believes he caused her her greatest grief: the death of her parents via the meteor shower which he arrived in.

here the first beat of the chlark dynamic is established: chloe's job and passion – the wall of weird and her pursuing the meteor infected oddities of SV - directly affects clark in a negative way (he's suicidal for much of s1-s3). so her crush on him is countered with her unknowingly causing him great grief. om top of that: clark becomes part of this passion of hers and she eventually begins to pursue him as a story to be uncovered, very superman yes. here tho, it causes nothing but strife for them and paints chloe in an awful light (and clark too, highlighting his refusal to open up). I personally enjoy this aspect of them in s1. bc they're so young I give em a free pass and it's a good conflict playing around with old superman tropes, but it makes for a fraught friendship.

3. the second beat

is that neither chloe's crush on clark, nor his asking her to stop pursuing his truth, do anything to stay her. her tenaciousness becomes intrusiveness and inconsideration (many of her accomplishments irt the daily planet are directly bc she betrays clark). she simply will not listen to her friend and does not believe his livelihood and autonomy is worth losing a story over. this is literally the opposite of comics/live action lois lane, who in various versions drops the clark reveal story to protect him. this passion turns vindictive pretty early for chloe, who eventually pursues stories about clark out of jealousy and entitlement (against lana also).

4. the third beat

is that clark doesn't ever see chloe as romantic prospect except this time in s1. the tornado trapping lana pulls him away from any solidifying of the clark/chloe dynamic, and that's that. but we know clark was willing to go for it in early s2 when he apologizes to chloe about running off on her. it's chloe who decides not to go on with the relationship. clark is visibly confused, but also 15 so he can't see that chloe is putting on a brave front to protect herself from clark running off again. I liked this too as it's another play on superman tropes, but my sympathy for them stops here.

5. and stays here

these beats are the entirety of this dynamic. everything about chlark can be distilled down to their childhood. it's why I don't hate them completely, bc I have a lot of love for kids who hurt in such a way and that time is never easy. in s8 (I think its s8) when we get a flashback to when they meet as kids (more imprinting!). little tenacious cute chloe kisses insecure clark bc of the funny awkward tension, acknowledging it, and then immediately takes it back because they're better as friends. (also they’re like 11 lol)

every single romantic moment with them is undercut either by chloe herself, or by the presence of other storylines/romances the writers wanted to pursue. the lack of integrity in chloe and the lack of interest in clark, regardless of how sincere their connection or how messed up, is a central part of their dynamic that needs to be reconciled with their friendship. and its exhausting bc there is never a point they are ever truly comfortable around each other.

6. to a fault

knowing the secret doesn't change chloe's methods. it doesn't make chloe clark's great confidante. if anything, it complicates matters for both because their relationship then becomes about the greater good and clark's great destiny. everything chloe does becomes about that, which in theory sounds awesome, but is executed much the same way as s1!chlark: by reiterating behaviors that highlight the negative aspects of that loyalty and the negative aspects of their characters.

the single time they do actively examine what this loyalty means and how chloe's hero complex complicates things for chlark is with s8 and davis. she protects davis with the skills of subterfuge and secrecy she developed as clark's friend. and it costs her jimmy and a lot of her personal integrity as a character. tho ironically it makes chloe the strongest she's been as a character. this is the first time clark is forced to view chloe as an enemy and he never quite recovers from discovering the dark depths she’s willing to go to. 

it's an arc dealing with the established beats: how far chloe is willing to go for a kryptonian (very far), how much she's willing to do for him (A LOT and all of it illegal), and what it costs her (jimmy). it deals with her jealousy (always second choice) and her motivations (uncovering the truth). this great want that she struggled with for years is turned on its head and examined, revealing just how weird and dark her hero complex is because obviously davis is not clark. davis/chloe served to highlight more than any other arc how it's really too bad that clark never saw her that way, because she has so much love to give and when channeled, it's a great force. only it's a great force for evil. clark has to confront that it’s not just lex but his other closest friend who is willing to go so far. they backtrack hard in s9 and s10 but they keep this underlying wariness in clark towards Chloe throughout. it’s not anything new, but it’s no longer subtext that clark doesn’t fully trust chloe.

7. And that's the rub

in the end. chloe and clark have many storylines they're in together and chloe's important.... to develop clark and as a counter to clark. clark never instigates anything, not once, for 9 years! when the show did give us Moments TM, clark is reacting, not actively making choices to connect to her. if anything, clark is incredibly awkward about chloe when they become intimate. he doesn't seem to know what to do with her crushing on him (the elevator scene is a great one to show just how awkward chloe makes him feel). more than that. clark never tells her his secret. and later on, chloe doesn't tell him half the crazy wild shit she does to protect him bc she knows he would disapprove. I still hold that the only reason they work is bc clark is a forgiving character and would give her chance after chance after chance. that's the watsonian explanation, but the doylist explanation is that the writers just never cared to explore them beyond this point.

8. and what was beyond that point?

they would've been a great counter to lexana in S6 and early clana (clark finally having a gf who knows). it’s playing the clark/Chloe as a straight lois/clark proxy before actually pursuing lois and clark. it could’ve been the precursor to davis and caused an even more personal conflict! the kiss at the end of s5 was their chance. they could've written chlark devolving much the same way lexana did in s6 (or not). but again. the writers never went that far and clearly never wanted to. it kept chlark forever in this stage of childhood friendship always on the brink of collapsing, tittering either way. it's also tough to speculate bc clark's just not into her. in fact he becomes more and more wary of her, to the point where he believes she can do horrible things, and he's right. the stories continually make their methods complete opposite.

they go out of their way to show chloe realizing how happy clark is with lois. and even play a joke on the fandom by literally turning her into lois and seeing the sparks between her friends. it's almost... cruel but it does serve to show how clark is when he's smitten and he's never looked at chloe that way except during the dance when they were kids. other unrequited dynamics have at least some spark from the desired, but nil from clark. clark is into chloe in late s1, but she shuts him down, and when he seems to be into her again (damn that s5 kiss was a good one lol), she shuts him down again. it's just a weird writing choice all around, and that they kept nuggets of it throughout the show is the thing I cringe at most whenever I rewatch.

9. bait and switch 2

with hindsight it is definitely ship baiting and that sucks for that dynamic bc without it their friendship would’ve been the stronger, or at least not full of so much negativity. all it did was remind everyone that chloe’s been duped since she was a kid and that clark is both stupid and strange for never noticing and letting her get away with shit just bc she’s the most loyal. I don’t ship them and even I get frustrated lol