#this isn't even a shipping post this is just Ah The Dynamic!!!

[ladyseidr]

my favorite part of the william and henry dynamic aside from The Horrors is just them infodumping abt tech @ each other for hours

[phoenixyfriend]

Hi please consider: Vivi and Sanji are, ostensibly, of the same social class.

Vivi and Sanji are arranged into a marriage.

Vivi's assistant/secretary/handmaid is Nami. Sanji's bodyguard (which he doesn't need but it's a whole situation about being royal) is Zoro.

Technically, for Reasons, Zoro and Nami also get married. On paper.

Every night one of each duo hops the fence, high fives, and goes off to do ZoSan and NaVi shipping instead. (You know, like this post about Mercutio and Romeo.)

Arranged royal marriages but make it shenanigans instead of Sad.

Admittedly I'm not super into NaVi but I am a fan of Zoro and Nami as a duo and I think them bearding for each other would be hilarious.

It's not about military support like the Big Mom thing; Germa want to exchange their tech (desalination plants) to Alabasta for raw materials (beach-beaten sand, used for concrete).

God, this would work out so well for all of them.

Nami is so weird about girls that the flirty friendship just gets treated as Normal, especially since Vivi is fairly shy about romance.

Sanji is ludicrously over the top about girls and will dote on his wife, publicly, at volume, even if they're not in romo.

Vivi gets a marriage that her royal court will allow, to a friend who gets to leave a bad situation, and they can both live with it.

Sanji and Zoro will fight like the bitches they are.

Nami and Zoro will oscillate between saltmates and a dynamic that really has people making "Ah, the old ball and chain, huh?" jokes because of the whole debt thing.

BECAUSE SOMETIMES TOXIC HET MEMES MAKE IT SO YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO TRY TO BE IN LOVE

Sanji and Vivi are doing their best to sell it (it's easy, they aren't expected to be in love, they're already friends), while Nami and Zoro, despite actually being friends who would die for each other, are leaning into toxic heterosexuality for the gag.

They want people to suggest couples counseling.

They want to be so toxic that people get concerned.

Someone tries to hand Zoro a pamphlet about financial abuse and he just takes one look, stares them in the eye as he puts it in the trash or shredder, and then says "I can't read."

And leaves.

(Which is not a funny subject, but is a funny reaction.)

Nami: I have a great sense of direction and he has no sense of direction at all. Nami: I'm fun and he's no fun at all. Nami: I've got tons of money and he's got none at all. Nami: We can both drink the rest of the world under the table. Nami: We complete each other.

"That's not a basis for a relationship." "It isn't? Shame."

[rustedleopard]

My summary/breakdown of Staroba's dynamic (in reference to this post).

Note that I'm going to be working off memory for most of this so if someone has some additional input they wanna chime in with, feel free to. This is also going to be a train of thought/rambley sorta post so it's gonna be a bit disorderly (though, when have I ever been orderly with my posts :p)...

I like Staroba. A lot. And it's such a shame that there are people out there who look at this ship and just see "they're both bisexual, she's girlboss, he's malewife, and she pegs him" because there's SO MUCH more to their dynamic/that isn't even what their dynamic is.

They're childhood friends. We don't know how far back their friendship extends but I'm willing to venture that it's been since elementary school/early middle school at the absolute latest. And at the point in canon when Clover meets them, they're both likely in their late-twenties to mid-thirties in age. That's a long time to know someone, enough to be there through all the cringey, messy phases in life. These two know each other better than anyone else through sheer proximity and time spent together (more on this later).

Starlo has also been nursing a massive crush on Ceroba since they were kids. You can see this in the picture that's in Starlo's house: she's holding him and doing a peace sign at the camera, meanwhile Starlo is clearly flustered and hover-handing her (this was likely back when the Dunes were still the Meadows, judging by what appears to be a pine tree in the background).

That might have you think: "Ah, Rusty, you're so lame. This is a 'the guy gets the girl' scenario. I'm gonna chuck tomatoes at you!" And to that I say: hold your tomatoes! Ceroba did have some interest in Starlo as well! Exclusively in the Pacifist Run, if Clover TALKs to Ceroba two times in the reception area in the Steamworks (immediately after entering the door where the path through the Steamworks branches off from the Neutral/No Mercy Route), Ceroba will initially start off talking about how she met Chujin and how she'll never find someone as wonderful as him in her life, which prompts Clover to mention Starlo. Ceroba gets a bit flustered but states that she did consider getting into a romantic relationship with him once upon a time but he wasn't ready to grow up like she was (8:18 in this video). So there was mutual potential for them to get together when they were younger, but the things they wanted out of life at that point weren't compatible with each other. Like two ships in the night, they passed each other by.

Ceroba fell in love with Chujin, who was ready to have a family and settle down and be mature, which is what Ceroba wanted from a romantic relationship. And when Ceroba got engaged to Chujin, what did Starlo do? Did he get jealous and throw a fit? Shovel-talk Chujin? Try to convince Ceroba to take him instead? Nope. According to Crestina, he got so depressed that he locked himself in his room for days. As hurt as he was by the person he loved not picking him, he didn't make his feelings Ceroba's problem. Starlo was the one who lacked the initiative to ask her out and I get the sense that he knew that deep down; he couldn't just expect Ceroba to magically know his feelings for her and then they get married and ride off into the sunset together. Instead, he respects Ceroba's relationship. They remain good friends. He lets Ceroba and Kanako, the child that the love of his life had with Chujin, come over to his town and goof off. He may not like Chujin as a person because of his own petty feelings but he also respects for the man (seen in his dialogue about Chujin after defeating Ceroba in True Pacifist) and he's aware that his gripes with Chujin are personal.

Then Chujin passes away and Kanako falls down and gets sent to the Lab. While Chujin's death is well-known, nobody else in town seems to know what happened to Kanako besides Starlo (though, without the specifics) and the Feisty Four (who Starlo likely broke the news to). Starlo is Ceroba's sole confidant. With Chujin permanently out of the picture, this could be Starlo's chance to try to charm Ceroba. But he's respectful enough to know that she's in this deeply vulnerable state and so he does the right thing and helps her. Approaches the situation as her best friend. Let her crash in the Feisty Five's shack rent-free because staying at home is too painful for her. Invents his whole "North Star" persona to try to entertain her and distract her from her pain because that's what strikes him as the best thing to do. Pulls Ceroba into his shenanigans to take her mind off her problems. It doesn't exactly work because her problems run deeper than that but an attempt is made to make things easier for her.

On Ceroba's side of things, she may not understand Starlo's whole cowboy LARPing deal but she knows that it makes him happy. She doesn't look down on it or belittle him for having a passion that is so nerdy that it practically pastes a "Kick me" sign on his back. She may not want to be involved in the Feisty Five, but she's entertained by them and lets herself get dragged into their roleplays from time to time (see Ceroba getting involved in the Trolley Problem Mission, wooden actor that she is). In a Neutral Run, if Starlo is spared, Ceroba will throw a party for him to celebrate him reuniting with the rest of the Feisty Five because she wants him to be happy. Despite how different they are in terms of stuff like personality and interests, they both like and respect each other a lot.

They also have so many parallels despite their differences and know each other so well. Clover shows up and Starlo falls too deeply into the persona he invented and becomes a reckless, selfish jerk. He drives away his friends, he nearly kills Clover and there is nothing that Clover can do to snap him out of it (yes, Clover can Surrender in the end, but that only makes him hesitate. And if Clover does anything but Surrender or FIGHT him on the final turn, Starlo will nearly pull the trigger on Clover until Ceroba interferes). Ceroba is the one to call him out on his behavior and make him remember his conscience: he's not this selfish jerk he built himself up to be, he's not a killer. In the Pacifist Run, Starlo goes after Ceroba once he realizes the truth of why she's accompanying Clover to Hotland. It's not solely to protect Clover, though that's a massive factor (if this was the case, he'd accompany Clover back to the Wild East instead of going after Ceroba); he wants to protect Ceroba's heart: she's not the sort to murder an innocent child, she's not a killer. You can especially see this mindset that Starlo has when he calls Clover out in the Flawed Pacifist ending: while the law and everyone else may see Clover killing Ceroba as the equivalent of putting a dangerous murderer down, to him, they killed a desperate mother pushed to an extreme. Unforgivable in his eyes.

There's also how Clover can only say the same responses to killing either Starlo or Ceroba ("..." or "I'm sorry."), depending on the run. As well as how only Starlo or Ceroba can be fought in Flowey's mindscape in a Neutral Run, depending on how the Neutral Run is done. Never both. Could mean nothing, but I like pointing it out.

They're also pretty damn patient with each other despite being impatient people overall. You can see Starlo's impatience with how eager he is to push Clover into being a deputy and how dismissive he acts about the rest of the Feisty Five when they bring up complaints/try to get him to slow down. But when Ceroba wallops him then he gets back up in the True Pacifist ending, then it's a "Well, I guess I deserved that :D." Not a lick of anger for being knocked unconscious. Likewise, when Clover was in the Wild East in a Pacifist Run, Ceroba is likely straining at the bit to get Clover to the Royal Laboratory as soon as possible. But she also knows that having a human in the town that Starlo made to imitate the Surface means a lot to him, so she lets him have his fun with them until he's ready to let them go.

Starlo's and Ceroba's dynamic is founded on a deep understanding of who each party is at their core, mutual respect and kindness for one another, and patience. They're best friends with each other but that relationship also has the potential to evolve into a romantic relationship just as much as it can withstand remaining purely platonic. There is no "this one is the boss of the relationship and this one is the one that defers to the other" dynamic in the relationship because both sides are equals who are willing to listen to each other (Ceroba and Chujin's relationship more closely adheres to that dynamic actually, with Ceroba deferring to Chujin because she sees him as this perfect, untouchable character. You can see this with Ceroba hesitating to kill Clover because she genuinely likes the kid but because Chujin asked her to reap an innocent human SOUL for his serum, she goes all-out to accomplish this). They love each other a lot platonically and I can see the opportunity for some romantic attraction to crop up as Ceroba starts to move on from Chujin and Starlo starts being more responsible post-True Pacifist. They would be two people who mutually grow into the best versions of themselves and also love each other.

[maoam]

"Kishimoto make sasuke and naruto gay intentionally and not on accident" Okay then so why did he go on multiple interviews insisting that naruto and sasuke's relationship is brotherly and is inspired from his twin brother and that people shouldn't interpret their bond as romantic but platonic?? Source : https://twitter* com/uchihassasusaku/status/1419104011265974275?

If a writer writes homoerotic subtext in his material and expects people to read the material as romantic, he doesnt go around calling the characters "siblings" and asking people to not interpret their dynamic as romantic because then people wont read into his queer subtext like he wanted to

Ship what you want to ship. But stop acting like everyone should buy into your delusions. Kishimoto never said or implied that he wanted naruto and sasuke to be seen as gay but he did say many times that their relationship is brotherly

Ah, another shipper who ships a ship where creator implied twice they never kissed. And whose couple never had a meaningful conversation in a 700 chapter manga. And linking me to some SS stan who gave Elon Musk money for bluecheck mark. 🤣 A good ground to stand on. Okay, I will guide you by the hand since you don't seem to understand. It's okay, illiteracy is a common problem these days. I will put this in easy sections for you, with added links.

Also you and your "queer" nonsense... we are talking about gay, homosexuality. Not slurs.

About the interviews:

The Kizuna thing isn't even written by him, it's an article by another person. These books aren't written by the mangakas ever, they do not have the time nor is the article written from Kishi's pov. Shocker, people write a lot of things in anime merchandise that the creator isn't even involved in. [link] If it were written by Kishi, then an interviewer wouldn't have had to ask Kishi years later whether brotherly relationship was what he was going for with Naruto and Sasuke's bond, and Kishi wouldn't have had given such a cryptic answer where he mulls over it. Because he would have given the answers years back already. Also the fact that he's asked to define their relationship shows how weird it is to the readers. He NEVER told people to not interpret their relationship as romantic. And personally, I have seen movies and a comic where two characters referred to each other as brothers, and their creator referred to them as "soul brothers" but later revealed them to also have romantic feelings.

But I don't expect your mind to be able to comprehend things like this, it does require a little bit of 1+1=2 math. The interview about Seishi is about the feeling of empathy, not that they are literally Naruto and Sasuke's characters. It is one aspect. Kishi has joked about how Naruto and Sasuke are him and his editor too, because he will try to impress his editor. So? And he has said Kushina is based on his wife. So Naruto is him and Kushina is his wife? Why aren't you freaking about this freudian stuff? I know why. I also remember someone saying if Kishi REALLY saw his relationship with his brother as the exact same as Naruto and Sasuke, his brother would need a restraining order against him. It was funny and accurate.

I have wrote about the inconsistencies in his interviews and what shows that he definitely didn't write their dynamic as the same as with his brother despite having one aspect of it [link] and here is another post talking about it more deeply (they also linked my post I just mentioned) [link]. This post also explains how Kishimoto wrote Naruto constantly to do what Sakura can't for Sasuke, and she also included many links to my other posts where I talk about how Kishi wrote Sakura and Sasuke's dynamic, which you can also read if you feel like it. Unless you are scared of being proved wrong, you will read those right, or at least the linked post itself?

About how the audience perceives their dynamic:

The thing is, you and SS fandom don't understand how stories are written. Authors don't do stuff randomly. They use narrative and literary devices to tell their story. Kishi himself has remarked on it many times how careful he is about writing characters, how much he does research, how careful he is about angles etc. [link] If Naruto and Sasuke's relationship was written as brotherly in the text, in the manga, it wouldn't make a bunch of people uncomfortable. There wouldn't have been meltdowns after specific chapters nor would we have people saying when the manga was going on that they are annoyed by the "gay stuff". [link] [link] [link] (there are many more, but here's some collections for an example). Here's one more talking about the Japanese fandom. [link]

When Luffy was saving Ace in Impel Town/Marineford arc, no one in the dudebro community was uncomfortable nor saying it was gay. Eventhough it was a touching and dramatic storyline that showed us how much the two cared about each other. When Alibaba and Cassim were having their past and relationship unravelled in Magi, no one was uncomfortable. Eventhough it was tragic and dramatic and touching yet again. Because despite neither of these pairs being blood-brothers, they were WRITTEN to have a brotherly dynamic/development/relationship in the text, in their behavior. Which is why this also translated to the audience successfully.

If Naruto and Sasuke were written to be brotherly, they would refer to each other as such, including in Boruto, and would tell other people such as well. Hell, they would be proud to tell other people that this person they respect and admire the most is like a brother to them. But they don't. Naruto even told Hagoromo they aren't siblings, but friends. Sasuke said he has only one brother and that is Itachi. If they were brotherly, Kishi wouldn't make Naruto kiss Sasuke, even if accidentally, and have that to be their first interaction. He wouldn't say he wants to be the first one to have rivals kiss in shounen. Not a single brotherly relationship in media is written like this. You know, tropes matter. He wouldn't have Sasuke think fondly about the kiss as one of his most precious memories when he is dying, while years later implying more than once Sasuke never kissed Sakura lol. He wouldn't say Sakura had her first kiss stolen by her rival Naruto. He wouldn't make Sakura be jealous of Naruto's importance to Sasuke, while also giving her zero importance in saving Sasuke. He would not constantly make fun of Sakura by having her be thirsty/desperate for Sasuke's attention, any little crumb from him, while Sasuke ignores her and focuses on Naruto. Kishi knows how his writing comes off. Plenty of people, both men and women who weren't shippers, made jokes about Sasuke going "where's Naruto? hey Naruto" whenever Sakura speaks. Because Kishi made it such a constant dynamic with the three of them. People who have the basic amount of media literacy will get it, and thus all those jokes and memes were born. [link] [link] [link]

If they were brotherly, the anime studio wouldn't have them make eyes at each other while lyrics "please kiss me all night" play in the background, aside from all the other gay ops/ends with romantic lyrics to them. And since Kishi watches the anime, he would have probably point out it's weird. That's what I would do if I wrote about my relationship with my brother and people did that. Magi anime didn't have Alibaba and Cassim in romantic endings...

Kishi wouldn't put this in the movie he made if he wanted them to appear as brothers. Everyone was saying this looked gay/homoerotic when the movie dropped. I saw men on forums say "lol this looks so homoerotic, why did he have to catch Sasuke like that" and even in Chinese theaters people were giggling during this scene. Because it's so in your face fanservice. And Kishi said he cares about angles a lot in his story and that he redraws them if they aren't good enough to drive the message home. So what exactly does that tell you?

People usually aren't sexual about their brother

He wouldn't sexualize and put so much homoeroticism surrounding Sasuke's character, if Sasuke was solely inspired by his brother. You know, unless he had a questionable obsession with his brother. [link]

He wouldn't make Naruto literally get sexually excited when about to fight Sasuke lol [link] [link] that's so obvious Japanese men got amused, uncomfortable and even angry about it, if Sasuke and Naruto were him and his brother.

Romantic tropes/brotherly tropes are not the same

The fact Kishimoto's het couples parallel Naruto and Sasuke's dynamic is very evident. If "brotherly" relationship resembles romantic couples by the same author instead of the other brother dynamics he has written, guess what, it's not written as a brother dynamic lol. Again, proof that he didn't write their dynamic as brotherly. Both Mario/Saori [link] [link] and Minato/Kushina [link] [link] parallel Naruto/Sasuke and have the same tropes as them.

Raikage/Killer B is written as a normal brother relationship. Itachi/Sasuke is written as a complicated brother relationship with a lot of tragedy. Shikamaru/Choji is written as a normal friendship. Kakashi/Obito is written as a complicated friendship with a lot of tragedy. Naruto/Sasuke resembles the romantic relationships Kishimoto wrote, instead of these ones I mentioned. Even in their world, Naruto's actions are seen as irrational and obsession, and the weirdness of it all is constantly pointed out, by Sai, Kabuto, Sakura, Raikage, Itachi. This is a choice Kishi made when he wrote them. [link]

He also made a homage to Devilman and Akira/Ryo relationship that even people in the Japanese fandom noticed. [link] He specifically picked the chapter where Ryo admits having romantic feelings for Akira, and the fight (which parallels Vote2) ending with Ryo realizing how deep his feelings for Akira lie. Kishimoto would not do that if Naruto and Sasuke were based on him and his brother. Why would he pick a character famous for being gay for his best friend/enemy in a chapter where we finally get to see inside Sasuke's head?

Aside from paralleling Hinata's feelings towards Naruto in the Pain arc with Naruto's feelings towards Sasuke in the very next arc, he also foreshadowed a romantic double-suicide with Naruto and Sasuke during said arc. ROMANTIC. [link]

Sasuke on the other hand, was never satisfied with Naruto calling him brother or friend. If their relationship was strictly brotherly, they wouldn't need to ponder about the nature of their relationship, because that's not how any brotherly relationship is written in media. [link]

Kishimoto dislikes SS and talks about Sakura's "love" negatively more than once. [link] Sakura's love is selfish, toxic... yet this doesn't mean anything. Sakura wanted to save Sasuke, yet the one Sasuke said saved him was Naruto.

Now think hard. Use the modest intellect you possess. So aside from Kishimoto having Naruto show sexual attraction towards Sasuke to the point it made Japanese men uncomfortable, he also used romantic tropes (one of them being double-suicide which a writer Kishimoto admires is famous for because he mostly wrote romantic plays ending in that) and romantic parallels to show Naruto's feelings towards Sasuke multiple times, which he did not use for other male friendships in the manga. To the point many Japanese men wondered why Kishimoto "has to push homosexual agenda with Naruto's character", despite the fact he's supposed to be " a normal/good guy". All of these things somehow do not mean anything, nor do the multiple other things I have pointed out on my blog.

I'm not asking you to "buy" into anything, because understanding Naruto is a love story between Naruto and Sasuke and that Kishimoto does not even like Sakura let alone SS would require a little bit of reading comprehension and common sense. Which you and the person you linked sacrificed at the pink altar of Sakura worship, because to you not having anything in common with your partner nor having anything meaningful to talk about nor knowing anything about each other is somehow love. To you having someone else help and understand the person you love because you can't somehow makes an ideal relationship. You mistake Sakura's onesided melodrama for love. She has never said anything meaningful about Sasuke's character, neither has Sasuke said anything meaningful about her. Yet you believe Kishi wrote some deep relationship between them. How am I supposed to reason with someone like that? But your gaslighting doesn't phase me, I have seen all this before many times, it's old news by now. You can call me delusional all you want, but I trust my own understanding thank you very much. It's not like that much is even required, as proven by how many people, even the ones that don't have any need to (casual viewers, straight men, etc.) see it, still see it. Because it is that obvious that only desperate need to not see it blinds someone like you from seeing it.

I'm actually working on another post about Narusasu and Kishi's writing tools regarding it, so stay tuned 🩷

[antimony-medusa]

honestly yeah u make a really good point in ur mcyt rpf post. i was Also the person bemoaning how mcyt defaults into vbrpf tags and that there isn't a separate set, but then i realized like. i spent Years writing fic about the roosterteeth crew, which all fell in a very similar gray area like mcyt. like looking at shit like fake ah crew fic, the characters written about there are very obviously separate from the real life people, but also they are intrinsically linked. the characters don't exist without the people. and even though we were all in fandom talking and writing about them like playing with dolls, it was still like... yeah okay this fits under the rpf umbrella still. i never questioned it then, or was bothered about it not being a separate tag set, because it didn't feel necessary. which is really the same situation with mcyt!! its just that for any number of reasons, mcyt fandom in particular tends to have a very loud and very vehement group that think rpf as a whole is abhorrent and doesn't even want to be clocked anywhere close to it. which like honestly thats a personal issue at that point, thats not on everyone else to deal with, and certainly not on ao3 to sort out.

Yeah like I think RPF has a bad reputation because of some very obvious bad actors who've behaved badly in the past that the whole internet knows about, and especially because MCYT was kind of the butt of the joke and hatred for a lot of social media sites, a lot of people were eager to emphasize that they weren't behaving like that, it was fine, they were being totally normal (and they had the creator's permission, hence the boundaries discourse and the twitter cancellations for anything "weird"), and nobody should hate them cause they totally weren't like those weirdos.

And that's a really understandable reaction to try and do, I also have gone into the comments of bracket polls and seen hate, but that also ignores that the vast majority of RPF is a) not actually hurting anyone b) is not any more egregious in its content than any other fandom c) Is not inherently weirder to the creators than anyone who avidly follows their social media and shows up at their meet and greet and like— tts them stuff. We've all seen people TTS stuff that should NOT have been said in view of the creators, but the vast majority of it is perfectly fine. I very much think we shouldn't be showing RPF to the creators, and because the boundary is thin for MCYT I extend that to thinking that there's a WHOLE bunch of stuff that we shouldn't be showing to the creators— from gore to shipping to nsfw to aging down family dynamics to stuff about people they've lost— but I don't think that reacting with a horrified gasp to anyone saying "oh yeah rpf" is actually necessary. Or heck, if you were watching twitchcon vids and you want to straight up write tagged-as-RPF, go with god, I don't think that's inherently any weirder than people who go to twitchcon to meet streamers. You like them a lot and you want to rotate them mentally and get a picture with them, that's like, fine. As long as we keep it in fandom spaces and don't make the streamers feel weird cause we're showing them it, you're just doing what people who got really into polygon videos over the pandemic did, or historians who write historical RPF about their ancient blorbos, or whatever. it's fine.

Particularly cause what I write is mostly aus, I've had to wrestle with the question of if what I'm writing is RPF, and I think it's (usually) not, I can tell in my head when I'm thinking streamers or when I'm thinking characters, but like, we're talking *really* fine distinctions at points. If someone thinks that it's RPF it's not an insult to me, I can tell how they get there, and me reacting like it IS an insult is kind of rude to my fandom neighbours who are writing Gamechanger RPF where they design their own challenges cause they just have so much fun with the show, you know?

Some of this is just that I'm in my 30s and I'm tired of fandom policing, I can coexist with a lot of shit if you just tag it appropriately so I can filter it if I need to. For the holiday exchange last year we had no RPF as a rule not because I had an issue with it, but because the form to get the information for it would have been literally two hundred checkboxes long and I didn't want to do that to my spreadsheets.

I kind of drifted from your point there, but yeah, I think MCYT is legitimately in a blurry spot when it comes to if it's RPF or not, but that's not something I think we need to get all up in arms about, and we certainly don't need to, as I saw someone recommend we all do, file a ticket with Ao3 to remove MCYT tags from Video Blogging RPF.

[crispy-crust]

top 10 yuris

usually i would answer these asks in a jokinG manner but you've asked me about a topic i am extremely passionate about so prepare for a massive text post

addinG a cut here because this post is larGeee and i don't want it cloGGinG up any dashes

NUMBER 10: hatbow!

at number 10 due to the extreme lack of canon interaction but the fact it's here at all despite how little of it exists is a testament to how much these two have rotted in my brain. Go play a hat in time it's so cute and so fun i wish there was more content of these two

NUMBER 9: kimona!

ah kimona. how i wish there was more actual canon content of these two. this shit made volume 5 for me it's the reason volume 5 is the only volume i own of the hardcovers (for now). there is undeniable tension between these two i refuse to believe bryan lee o'malley wrote this without the intention of makinG it seem romantic. and as a friend once said "they two bad bitches n they kissin each other 🔥🔥🔥🔥"

NUMBER 8: ROSEMARY

iconic in every sense of the word these two are special to me. i have to include them here purely due to how influential they were it's awesome not much else to add here as this isn't one of the ships i'm severely brainrotted about i just think they're neat!

NUMBER 7: lumity!

i used to be biG into these two they're wonderful and it was Great seeinG somethinG like this on modern television. shoutout dressinG up and travelinG toGether (iykyk)

NUMBER 6: weblena

now we're GettinG into brainrot territory. the showrunners said somethinG alonG the lines of "webby won't Get a romantic interest because the show isn't about romance" and i Go "what the fuck are you talkinG about we already had a romantic subplot with her and lena that was clearly the point of all of that" there is a scene in season 1 where webby calls lena a "beautiful idiot" and then looks at her like this

TELL ME THAT ISN'T gAY! YOU CAN'T BECAUSE IT'S gAY AS SHIT THESE TWO ARE SO FRUITY TOgETHER DUCKTALES 2017 I LOVE YOU FOR EVERYTHINg BUT I WISH YOU ALLOWED THESE TWO TO HAPPEN

number 5: sashanne!

much can be said about this ship and the anGst behind it and all that. i'm huGe on sashannarcy as a whole and i considered addinG that ship to this list but i thouGht talkinG about the dynamics of the pairs would be more interestinG sashanne is a stronG case of missed potential to me, a lot could have been done to make their dynamic a lot more compellinG even more-so than it already is and a lot could have been chanGed about the way they handled sasha's "redemption arc" in season 3. season 3 as a whole is a mess that i have many opinions on but that's for another day. despite all the flaws and missed potential this ship still aches me in the best way possible. they were 13 years old at the time of amphibia and they had to deal with ALL OF THAT. at aGe 13 sasha elizabeth waybriGht attempted actual honest to God suicide due to a fiGht she had with anne while lean on me was playinG in the backGround and the world was forever chanGed. amphibia was so held back by so much and the amount of missed potential in it (especially in season 3) kills me but despite all of that this relationship shined throuGh as one of if not the best part of the show for many people. Good shit!

NUMBER 4: lapidot!

NOW WE'RE gETTINg TO THE gOOD SHIT how come even in media that has explicit queerness everywhere i always tend to Gravitate towards the dubiously canon clearly more than friends who were done dirty by their lack of screentime toGether? lapidot is a lot for so many reasons and i'm very much not alone in beinG abnormal about these two. IN FACT REBECCA SUgAR HERSELF DREW HUMANSTUCK ART OF THEM! AND THE OFFICIAL CARTOON NETWORK SOCIALS HAVE RECOgNIZED THIS SHIP MULTIPLE TIMES!! the way these two Grow to be comfortable around each other and learn to live in this new stranGe place toGether is so charminG and so Gut wrenchinG when you're rewatchinG the show and know what's cominG. in the episode where peridot learns to bubble stuff for the first time she sends the bubble off and when she asks steven where it'll Go he says "home" AND THEN IT CUTS TO LAPISSSSSS. SHE THINKS OF LAPIS AS HER HOMEEEEEEE DON'T EVEN FUCKINg gET ME STARTED ON DISTANT SHORE I ACTUALLY SOBBED SO FUCKINg HARD WHILE WATCHINg THAT SCENE IT'S UNREAL they were done so dirty with their reunion as well what do you mean all we Got was a "hey" I NEED TO SEE TEARS AS THEY MAKE OUT DAMN IT!! these two are imperfect and they stumble throuGh this whole life thinG a lot and there are many ups and downs to their relationship but that's what makes it compellinG that's what makes it so Good and damn it at the end they made it back to each other... if we ever Get more official su content and these two aren't canonized in it i will end up on the news

NUMBER 3: stephcass!

yea what did you expect of course this was Gonna be here these two are everythinG to me and every day that passes by where they aren't canon is a day i am in physical pain their dynamic throuGhout batGirl 2000 Gives me life and the anGst that comes from it is delicious the obvious queerbait in batGirls doesn't help this at all. they knew what they were doinG and you can't convince me otherwise these Girls and their relationship persevered despite all the editorial nonsense that tried to split them up and each time they came back stronGer than ever they have such undeniable chemistry and they're universally loved as a pairinG come on dc you would be actually stupid not to put them toGether come on everyone already clocked them like 2 decades aGo

NUMBER 2: junerezi!

dear lord this pairinG has had an affect on me. you really do Go into the epiloGues expectinG roxyGen and then end up on the other side screaminG and clawinG at the walls in the name of junerezi i was hooked on them before i even read meat! the little crumbs in candy were so dense and so impactful to me their dynamic is so incredibly fun to read and their scenes in meat are so painful and so powerful they are the reason i own the epiloGues physically i need beyond canon to be done already so i can see the end of this plotline throuGh i need them back toGether you don't understand june's death in meat while in terezi's arms actually made me feel numb irl for like a week i wish people would Give the epiloGues a chance because they're actually really damn Good and the junerezi is sooooo delicious i cry so hard i usidgfbuiydboguiszdghbfuijdsbvgfyihsdfobuijgbf[9usapigbvfuidjbsfuijdb

NUMBER 1: MARCANNE

spoiler warninG for amphibia

i don't talk about these two often on here, not as much as i'd like at least. but marcy wu as a character and this ship specifically literally chanGed me as a person. there is a reason i still call marcy my favorite character in fiction despite havinG read stories i consider to be much better than amphibia since. and this may sound stupid but i Genuinely do not know if i would be alive today were it not for marcy i started amphibia at a very rouGh time in my life and the character of marcy and the lenGths she went to for anne hit me so incredibly hard due to that imaGine with me for a second that you are 13 years old. a child Genius! everyone around you recoGnizes you as someone who will be incredibly successful later in life you have 2 people who are incredibly important to you. they mean everythinG to you you would Give the world for them and yet those two people cannot be bothered enouGh to enGaGe with you about your favorite movie or your interests in General

marcy Gave up her entire life back on earth just to be able to exist around anne and sasha. she had everythinG GoinG for her earth was her home she Got Good Grades her future looked briGht she was studyinG for the SAT from aGe 13 and earth was where all of her interests were. everythinG she knew. and she Gave that up for anne and sasha. do you know how deeply you have to care about someone to be willinG to do that? do you know how stronG your love for them has to be? cut to true colors. this episode ruined me i won't even Get into the confession scene. i have that scene memorized by heart and i start to tear up whenever i think of it i Genuinely don't think i can handle talkinG about it the stabbinG scene however.

once aGain i remind you this is a 13 year old. imaGine beinG 13 and usinG what you think may be your very last words ever to apoloGize to someone. someone you so deeply care about. you are dyinG in front of them and all you can think to say in that moment is sorry. because you believe they hate your Guts at that moment. could you imaGine GoinG throuGh that?

could you imaGine then wakinG up realizinG you're alive only to be Greeted by niGhtmarish hallucinations of your worst fear. and what's your worst fear in that moment? your friends hatinG you. them leavinG you behind after all that you went throuGh to stay close to them

the first thinG she said when she woke up was "sashy...? anne..??" SHE WAS DREAMINg OF THEMMMM

AND THEN WHEN SHE'S TAKEN OVER BY THE CORE HER FANTASY IS gETTINg TO EXPLORE NEW FANTASTICAL WORLDS ALONgSIDE ANNE AND SASHA!!! ALL SHE WANTS TO DO IS SPEND TIME WITH THE PEOPLE CLOSEST TO HER this is quickly turninG into an essay about just marcy so let me try and Get into some of the more liGhthearted aspects every sinGle scene we see of marcy and anne throuGhout their time toGether in season 2 is the Gayest shit i've seen in my whole life. them sobbinG and huGGinG each other after beinG reunited... anne boopinG marcy and tappinG her on the head later in the episode.. anne tryinG to impress marcy by actinG smart... marcy STANDINg STILL IN ONE SPOT UNTIL THE SUN WENT DOWN IN A DAY AT THE AQUARIUM AFTER ANNE LEFT TO gO WITH THE PLANTARS. ANNE BLUSHINg AT MARCY'S INFODUMP IN NEW WARTWOOD. THEIR ANTICS IN THE SLEEPOVER EPISODE. THE PROCESS OF ANNE gETTINg HER NEW ARMOR AT THE END OF SEASON 2 AND THE WAY MARCY LOOKS AT HER AFTER SHE DECIDESSSS

as previously stated this ship is extremely influential to me and i would not be the same person today without it. i don't even know if i would be here today without it. so i would like to close this post off by sayinG thank you amphibia. thank you matt braly. and most of all thank you marcy wu <3 you are a treasure that i will cherish for the rest of my life nothinG will ever compare to you

[chaikachi]

Listen as a RG shipper who has been burned by other shows with ships I don’t wanna put my tin hat on. But NEO??? Has been using Oscar A LOT to mess with Ruby. And assuming she turned into Ruby to trick Oscar to get the lamp back in V7 👀👀👀 also I just rewatched V5 and when they all have a sit down he just stares at her and Ruby giggles and I’m like “HE THINKS SHES PRETTY AWWWW” like I’m not calling it shipbait bc I have no idea if they will become Bee levels of canon and I’ll be fine if they don’t. But MAN do they care about each other A Lot in canon to the point where the Optical Illusion character uses them to hurt each other. Like Yang? Her big sister totally get it. Penny? Neo knew when she died with her first body that’s her best friend after or alongside Weiss but Weiss isn’t dead. But OSCAR!?? The guy she only met THREE volumes ago HES the one who shows up? Not her UNCLE or JAUNE but FARMBOY????

Neo ships it (evily) is all I’m saying

I don't wanna get peoples hopes up in case crwby somehow swerves off course or we just don't get to see the end of the show, but I genuinely don't think it's shipbait at this point.

First want to bring up the v5 thing. Yes he stares at and giggles at her, firmly believe that boy had a case of love crush at first sight... but Ruby ends up mirroring very similar tone, dialogue, and body language later on in the fumble scene.

Oscar: Ah, sorry! Ruby: Heh, sorry-

Putting behind a read more cause i'm riled up with new rwby/whole loaf of rg bread zoomies and don't feel very coherent rn aha.

There is a post somewhere on this site that i can't find anymore which goes through all the BB/RG parallels (a shorter copy of it exists here on twitter) and that list since v9 just keeps getting longer.

Like... Sorry, Blake's biggest fear in v3 was that her past would come back and hurt those she loves. She is proven right to fear that when Adam shows up and attacks Yang and then because she can't handle that guilt, Blake runs away??

Vs.

Ruby, being terrified that if she carries on the path she's headed down, more of her friends will die. And Neo uses Oscar (and Little, who strongly parallels him) to prove Ruby's fears right which also leads her to 'running away'? Because the thought of hurting him, of losing him is just something Ruby can't bare????

Bro.

The ship parallels themselves are so specific and are absolutely worth mentioning, but RG itself stands so strongly even on it's own. The narrative orbits and constant, consistent emphasis on how much Ruby and Oscar care about each other is deafening at this point.

Just about everyone in the main cast has gone through huge portions of their character arcs in the previous eight volumes. Except for our protagonist... until now.

The scene we get in v9e8 where Neo uses Oscar as the last nail in Ruby's coffin ties him directly to her fatal flaw. They could have used anyone else. It could have been Yang. It could have been Qrow. It could have been her team partner Weiss. It could have been Blake, someone that's admitted to looking up to her. It could have been Penny a third time.

But. It. Wasn't.

It was Oscar.

Oscar, who was the first illusion Ruby saw when falling. Oscar, who is the only person she's close to that she didn't get to properly reunite with in v8. Oscar, who's absence in the Ever After has been SO STRONG to anyone that's paid attention to their dynamic up until now.

Ruby's fatal flaw is her grief, and by extension, loneliness and guilt. Ruby has shouldered all of this weight for so long alone and every volume up until now shows us that there is one person that made her feel like she was actually on equal footing for once. Maybe not completely alone. That she had someone looking out for her as much as she looked out for them. Oscar. And when Neo, the illusionist, uses Oscar's death against Ruby? That is her first of two breaking points.

I'm sorry - and i gotta emphasize this isn't directed at you so much as a general declaration - but at this point any anti, meaner, or non-believer that tries to tell me there is not very clear evidence in show pointing to RG needs to stop telling me to take off shipping glasses and has to just put like... normal reading glasses on lskd;jlfks

It is just... undeniable to me at this point. Despite still hearing people refer to them as siblings when it's like... if they wanted to emphasize the sibling bond, YANG WAS RIGHT FREAKING THERE!!

If Ruby is getting a love interest in show (cough cough she already has one) there is literally NO ONE else that fits the bill. They wouldn't introduce someone new this late in the game, and of the rest of the remaining cast, she has not been shown as close to any of them in the ways that tie to her character arc as strongly as this one does.

Ruby is the protagonist, Oscar is the deuteragonist. The core of this story orbits around both of them as the the chosen warrior destined to defeat Salem and barer of Oz's curse, respectively. Their individual character arcs also tie to and parallel each other's consistently: Oscar, who is trying so hard to hold onto his identity despite the merge vs Ruby who has spent this entire volume trying to push hers away.

Yes, all other Ruby ships are valid, don't get me wrong. But from a canon, narrative perspective, Rosegarden is the only one that is being pushed this aggressively.

And I can't be convinced otherwise at this point 🤡

[lesbiansanemi]

Hello, I really like what you write🥰, I wanted to ask what you think of the relationship shown so far with Sabigiyuu? Do you think they felt romantic attraction or just a very close friendship? do you find differences between sanegiyuu?

Aaahhhhh, thank you so much <3 I'm glad you enjoy!

And I really liked the way the anime portrayed Giyuu and Sabito's relationship personally. I think it did a good job of showing how close they were and how much they meant to each other, even with such limited screen time, as well as why Sabito's death had such a lasting and profound effect on Giyuu (esp when compounded with his sister's death)

As far as romance or friendship, canonically, it was a very close friendship. Not that I am big on "um, they didn't have feelings in canon so it's not valid to ship them" (obviously haha), just that I definitely don't think there was any hinted or implied romantic feelings on purpose in canon. I'm only specifying that because based on your phrasing I assume you mean how I feel about them canonically? Unless I'm misinterpreting

That being said, I do "ship" them! My personal headcanon for them is them being queerplatonic, so not friendship or romance. So yeah, I ship them in a qpr, which I have a lot of thoughts on, but I won't get into too much detail here (always down to share more complex thoughts or headcanons about that though if anyone wants them). So I guess to answer your question, I don't see it as romantic, nor a very close friendship between them, but something else entirely

As far as the last part of your question, yeah, I do see a lot of difference between sabigyuu and sane//giyuu personally. I see Sabito get compared to Sanemi a lot which I... don't really get to be quite honest. We don't see a ton of Sabito, but imo he doesn't have a similar personality to Sanemi at all, nor really even similar convictions. I also see a lot of people compare them in looks, and while they both have purple eyes and Sabito does have a face scar, that's about... all the similarities I see? Which, to me, doesn't feel like nearly enough for all the "comparisons" I see at the volume I see, and how hard some people try to stress them. Tbh it honestly just feels like a fanon thing of people trying to shoehorn that Giyuu has a "type" that Sabito and Sanemi fall into, but to me that kinda just ends up as feeling like a shallow viewing of both Sabito and Sanemi's characters, as well as Giyuu's relationship to both of them. Feels like a case of sanding away the interesting aspects of characters to push a "ship dynamic" ppl want rather than what actually makes sense for the characters. Very much an aspect of fandom and shipping culture I'm not a super big fan of

Beyond that.... I'm just not really a sane//giyuu shipper in general. I get why people ship them, it's just not my thing. The dynamic between Giyuu and Sanemi just really isn't one I'm a fan of personally, so I like to avoid it. The whole "we're on the same side but are hostile towards one another and need to learn to get over" or "rivals" thing is just... ah... a bit boring to me, to put it lightly, and people tend to get so obsessive with that dynamic and the tropes surrounding it that most fan content is far too ooc for me to enjoy

That being said, I can find sane/giyuu kinda interesting in a canon compliant, post-canon sense, wherein with them being the two survivors with very little to live for in their eyes end up developing an almost unhealthy attachment to each other because of a "no one else will understand what we went through" mindset. However, even then I'm not quite too sure how I feel about that being in a romantic sense or not, and is rarely what I see explored in fics with them

Sorry, I don't really mean to slam the ship, and that's not my intention. I've just had a few interactions where people have assumed I really like the ship because I really like Sanemi and it's the most popular ship involving him, so I like to clearly explain why it's not to my taste. Obviously this isn't to say no one else can like it, I'm very much a ship and let ship person, but it's not one I enjoy interacting with, and quite honestly try to avoid

So yeah. I personally don't see a whole lot of similarities between sane//giyuu and sabigiyuu haha

Thanks for the ask! And I hope this answered your questions

[kysoncat]

ES Journeys Main Cast: Crystal the Vaporeon

Hello again everyone. I'm back again to talk about another one of the main cast of ES Journeys which for this post will be about Crystal.

Remember that the main thing you should know about my version of the cast is that they are supposed to be as closely accurate to how they were in the comic in terms of personality and backstory as possible while also changing things to improve them by adding, removing, or expanding things about them.

Now without further ado, here's Journeys Crystal.

(Note: Not everything is fully fleshed out. These are just the main ideas I have and am currently trying to flesh out)

Crystal Ah so now we're on Crystal the Vaporeon. She's known for many things like breaking the 4th wall, her dynamic with Silvia and Lazuli, shipped with Trace or Silvia (They're both fine, I'm fine with either), being the middle child in her family who has absolutely nothing to do with the Beserker Virus or the timeline junk, and just having literally nothing or doing anything to make her important.

Now I wanna go back to the last thing I listed for her as that bothered me and this doesn't just apply to her since others also barely did anything. As one of the 9 main characters in the comic you'd think she'd be relevant in someway seeing as she's 1) One of the main characters and 2) The sister to Speed and Flare who both have such significant roles because they're tied to the complex BS lores but guess what? She got nothing and is nothing more than comedic relief and a background character. I plan on changing that for ES Journeys.

Personality Crystal in ES Journeys has basically the same personality as her comic self. She's jolly, optimistic, and likes to be playful and pull pranks that are usually harmless but would get her and the team into trouble.

Crystal is considered to be the heart of the Eeveelution Squad team as she's the one who keeps everyone together with her positive attitude. Whenever the team is feeling down she's the one who cheers everyone up by either making them laugh or giving them encouragement. When the Eeveelution Squad began adding new members to the team she's always the one to help them feel welcomed and settled into the team.

While Crystal is usually happy being on the team, there are times where she gets questions her placement on it as she feels she's either holding the team back or isn't as special as the others, specifically Speed and Flare.

Crystal is sensitive when it comes to the topic of evolution due to her causing her younger brother, Flare to evolve into a Flareon by accident.

When it comes to doing battling and Contest, Crystal at first didn't take them seriously but after some time she started to get serious for different reasons for both sports (Which'll be explained later in the post). Crystal likes both sports a lot but likes Contest just a bit more.

Crystal likes to dance and draw.

Moves, Ability, and Battle Style Obviously Crystal in this AU is stronger than her comic self since this one actually fights while the other never did. As a Vaporeon she's a really good swimmer so she has an advantage if the arena is a body of water.

Crystal has a pretty generic battle style and she does some light taunting while in battle. While Speed focuses on strategy when it comes to battling, Crystal is all about unpredictability. The way she fights is she thinks outside of the box on how she can use her abilities in a way where her opponents or even her teammates don't understand what she's trying to do. Crystal sometimes implements dancing into her battles as a way to constantly keep moving around and dodge attacks or pull off the Countershield technique (Look it up, it's from the anime). Out of all the members of the Eeveelution Squad team, Crystal likes to Dynamax the most.

Crystal has a wide array of Water-Type moves as well as other Type moves. Her movelist and when they're learned: -Water Gun (TB) -Acid Armor (TB) -Tackle (TB) -Tail Whip (TB) -Body Slam (TB) -Bubble Beam (OI) -Hydro Pump (OI) -Whirlpool (GS) -Aqua Tail (RS) -Aqua Jet (DP) -Aurora Beam (DP) -Attract (XY) -Rain Dance (MJ) -Hydro Vortex (SM; Z-Move) -Acid Downpour (SM; Z-Move) -Max Strike (SWSH; Dynamax) -Max Geyser (SWSH; Dynamax) -Max Hailstorm (SWSH; Dynamax) -Max Ooze (SWSH; Dynamax)

Unlike her brothers, Speed and Flare who have their special Coastal abilities, Crystal sadly doesn't have one and has one of the two Vaporeon species abilities, Water Absorb. When Crystal has her body absorb the water around her she replenishes her energy so that she can keep fighting and using moves. Crystal can't use water that she's used for her moves to replenish her energy.

Crystal's Backstory Crystal hatched on February 15, 2000 and she hatched an hour after Speed did. She was brought into Sunny Town and lived in an orphanage with him and her unborn sibling. While she lived in the orphanage she played with the other kids and got along with everyone well while also getting herself into trouble with the mother occasionally. When Crystal reached the age of 3, the age of being able to attend school she wanted to go but Speed was against it so she got homeschooled which made her upset but she got over it.

Years go by as she grew up in the orphanage. During those years, Crystal has rarely left the orphanage due to Speed not wanting her or Flare going out because of Shade being around. Whenever Speed came back to the orphanage injured and was questioned about them he would assure everyone that it was nothing to worry about but Crystal would pester him about it as she thought he was hiding something but never got the truth out of him. One day, Flare had a sugar rush after eating too much chocolate and overwhelmed Speed and Crystal with his hyperness and ever since then, Crystal gets scared whenever she sees Flare eat chocolate. At some point she meets Trace when he came over to the orphanage and he instantly had a crush on her. She rarely saw him after that due to him meeting with Speed outside of the orphanage and when he is at the orphanage he drags him away from her.

In 2010, Speed tells her and Flare that their parents were dead after Trace told him which saddened them. A few months later she along with Speed and Flare watched a battle from the Indigo Plateau Conference on TV and when the mother explained what a competitive battling team is and does, Crystal thought it sounded cool and wanted to do it to which later when the three were in their room Speed said they'll do it when they're all old enough to be a team which gets her excited while Flare was hesitant but she manages to pressure him to come along.

In 2011, one day Speed and Crystal were in their room with the now Jolteon getting ready to leave and head over to Professor Robert's lab. Before he left he told Crystal not to open a small box that contains Evolution Stones that he's been collecting for Professor Robert. As soon as he left the orphanage she opened the box to see all the Evolution Stones and touched the Water Stone that was in it since she always wanted to become a Vaporeon after learning about her evolved forms while homeschooled. After evolving she thought of pranking Flare by scaring him that she's gonna make him evolve into a Flareon so she grabbed the Fire Stone in the box and left the room to find him. When Crystal found Flare outside the orphanage, she threatened to evolve him to which he started running away in fear and Crystal gave chase. After chasing him around the orphanage for a bit she found him hiding in a closet with cleaning items and he begged for her not to evolve to which she tells him it was just a prank. She tried to help him out of the closet but trips over an item and falls on him with the Fire Stone landing on him and making him evolve into a Flareon. Crystal realizing what she has done asked if he was alright but saw that his eyes were glowing red and he looked mad as she gets blasted out of the closet from a powerful Ember. Once Flare stepped out of the closet, Crystal began to run while he chased her. During the chase, Flare parts of the orphanage on fire and soon Crystal was cornered but Speed arrived and tried to calm to him down but he didn't listen and used Ember on the both of them, blasting them through the wall and have them lying outside of the building. Before Flare could use another attack on her and Speed he faints from using up his energy.

After Flare woke up and was released from being tied up, Speed grounded Crystal for a week and Flare didn't talk to her at all and wouldn't do so for a week as well. During the week, Crystal snuck out to follow Speed to Professor Robert's lab because she wanted to asked the professor if there was a way to devolve a Pokemon to which the professor tells her it's not possible right now but maybe sometime in the future. A week later and Flare still hasn't said a word to her which causes her to cry as she tearfully apologizes to Flare for what she's done and is thankfully forgiven by him.

On May 30, she along with Speed and Flare went out for a walk through the forest around Sunny Town and during it they found a rundown house. Crystal is the one who went in to check it out and was also the one to find an egg in it The egg would hatch and an Eevee who they would name, Sunshine later would come from it to which the three took her back to the orphanage and the mother let her stay with them in their room. They wondered why her egg was all alone in the abandoned house and when Speed learns from Trace that two Eeveelutions were killed around the area of the house that the egg was in and tells her and Flare about it, they decided not to say anything about it to her for now but know they'll have to eventually.

In 2014 sometimes after Flare turned 13, Speed filled out the paperwork to create their competitive battling team. When Speed needed to fill out their team's name, after throwing around some name ideas, Crystal came up with the team name "Eeveelution Squad" which both Speed and Flare liked. She also provided a drawing of their team logo. After submitting the paperwork the three siblings would talk about how exciting and nervous it was gonna be for them to go out traveling and as they talked about this Sunshine overheard them. Sunshine asked them about what they were talking about and Speed tells her they'll be going away for a long time soon which in response she asks if she can come with them and while he was against it at first he hesitantly lets her tag along after being convinced by Crystal. A few days later a letter came for the three siblings and when they opened it a form was in it that approved the creation of their team and that they're officially one now. They decided to wait till April to begin their journey.

On April 1, 2014, Speed, Crystal, and Flare begin their journey as a competitive battling team.

Crystal's Journey In The Beginning, Crystal loses most of her battles due to not taking it seriously. Even though Crystal met Trace before they began their journey, she never has once said his actual name. When she learned Trace is the son of Professor Robert she kept calling him the "son of a professor" or something similar and as she continued doing that, Trace got more and more annoyed as he doesn't like being called those things and being connected to his dad. Eventually he blows up on her and apologizing shortly after as he then explains why he doesn't like being talked about regarding his dad (I'll explain in a post about Trace, maybe). She apologizes and she eventually begins to call him by his name.

In Adventures in the Orange islands, Crystal looks back on her performance during the Indigo League and realizes she barely did anything to help as it was Speed who mostly battled and even Flare got a win. She questions her place on the team and asks her brothers if she's holding them back to which they assure her she's not. Crystal learns to take battling seriously so that she helps carry the team instead of just being dead weight.

In Gold and Silver, Crystal was the one who brings up the subject of adding someone new to the team. When Speed tells Pearl about the thing involving their mom, Crystal gets suspicious because she could tell that he was hiding something from her and tries to get him to spit out to her and Flare.

In Ruby and Sapphire, Crystal was the one who was most interested in doing Contest however when she did her first ever one she failed badly. Despite the failure she was determined to get better at it. She would get her own set of Contest rivals while being the leader of the Eeveelution Squad Contest team. Unlike Speed who tries to be a leader and have the team do things his way, Crystal is more open as a leader as she trusts the others with their abilities and comes up with ways they can use their abilities in the best way possible for Contest. Also Speed would learn from her about being a leader.

In Diamond and Pearl, when Leaf and Lazuli join the team she develops a bond with them. With Leaf, she and her would get along well as she influenced Leaf a little with her playful personality much to Lazuli's dismay. With Lazuli, Speed told Crystal to go help her feel comfortable while on the team to which the two would form a bond and become best friends with Crystal learning Aurora Beam as a sign of their friendship. As for Black, she helps him not take everything so seriously and try to make him relax and have fun. She would drag him to do things with the rest of the team and help him smile a bit.

In Black & White, Crystal was the reason why Flare developed a crush on Leaf as she teased him about liking her which planted the idea into his head. With the team's burst in popularity, Crystal let that get to her head for a bit but eventually gets overwhelmed by it and humbles herself.

In Battle Frontier, Crystal has the team return to doing Contest and with the return of Contest rivals from both Hoenn and Sinnoh she is more determined than ever to win this year's Contest Grand Festival.

In XY, Crystal along with the rest of the team offer their hand to Silvia to help her with doing the Pokemon Showcase sport since they have some experience due to the sport despite being different from Contest has some similarities to it. When Speed learns about his Turbo ability and tries to master it as well as Flare trying to master his Blaze ability, Crystal feels insecure as she feels she's not as special or strong like her brothers again but this time it was because she didn't have a Coastal ability. When she expresses this feeling to the team, Speed and Flare assure her she's strong in her own way and she doesn't need a special ability like them as they remind her of her accomplishments that she's made without having a Coastal ability.

In Sun & Moon, Crystal learns to appreciate life as well as the Pokemon around her which is her team who she starts to see as family. She also gets to meet her dad and uncle thanks to Tapu Fini and gets closure with them. Before the Alola journey, Crystal along with Speed and Flare realized that Mollie is their mom after spending time with her during vacation and after seeing their DNA samples matched, they tell her that they're her children and the family is reunited.

In Sword & Shield, Crystal is the one who is the most experienced with Dynamax out of all the members of the Eeveelution Squad. Whenever the Eeveelution Squad battles she is eager to Dynamax and everyone lets her do it unless the team is losing or at a disadvantage and needs someone else on the team to do it which while upset about not being able to Dynamax she understands. Crystal has a rivalry with Klara.

In Master Journeys, when Speed tells the team that they're gonna split up for a few months to train on their own, Crystal is one of the members who was against this but eventually gets convinced that it's for the best of the team if they wish to get through the Ultra Class in the World Championship Series.

And that's Journeys Crystal. What do you think of her? Leave your thoughts for me to read. Next post will be on Journeys Flare's and his post will happen soon. Until then, bye!

[theroundbartable]

You said to ask you about your takes about Merlin, and I always find it interesting to find out which angle people approach an ot3 of, so which edge of the triangle arthur/merlin/gwen was the first you shipped? Or was it the full ot3 right away? 👀

Ah, yes. When I started watching Merlin back in 2019, the very first thing I shipped was Merthur.

I usually don't start shipping right away, I start looking at the different dynamics and wait where it may take me. And the very first episode left all dynamics open. So, I wasn't an instant Merthur fan but I could tell that this was where I was heading.

Even though I wanted to ship Merlin x Gwen first because Gwen had a crush on Merlin and Merlin was oblivious and Arthur was an arse in season 1. I still knew I would end up a Merthur main.

Back in 2019 I was still working through a lot of stuff when it comes to relationships, sexuality, identity, trauma, etc, It sounds weird but what I needed at the time, was characters that I couldn't "be" and that also couldn't be attracted to me. The reason for that is too personal to post here but that's why I distanced myself from female characters in ships at the time. That's why I knew Mergwen wouldn't be where I'd end up. I didn't hate them, I just couldn't deal with certain things.

And then came the Elena episode in which Merlin tells Arthur that he will be a better king with a woman by his side whom he loves. I was already lowkey shipping Merthur by then, but THAT scene burned itself into my DNA and changed me forever. I LOVE that scene! If I ever had any doubts until then, they were gone the moment Merlin hands Arthur the sword and says: " I think you're mad."

I knew from the beginning that Merthur wouldn't end up canon, and that without looking at spoilers. The show is from 2012, I just knew. In fact, I was delighted with how FAR they took it despite that!

And I absolutely loved how the canon ship actually made sense. And Ioved how it was a learning curve for me too, to see them grow to make sense. In the beginning it felt a bit sudden but when I watched the show again, I realized just how many moments they actually had.

Plus, Gwen wasn't a mere love interest, she was a real character. Basically, she passed the bechdel test, lmao. I love that she's a blacksmith, that she had her own story arc, her own tragedies and losses, a full family that we SEE in the show, etc. And I loved her dynamic with Arthur growing from awkward to genuine. I always thought that relationshipwise, they were one of the best portrayals of lovebirds I've seen in a series in a long time. And BBC merlin is PG so that was a bonus. And they always had space for Arthur's friendship with Merlin. (This is very important to me, as an ace person who used to think they would lose their friends due to their relationships)

And well... years have passed and I slowly got over my trauma through writing fanfiction and some mild confrontation therapy. There was one fic especially, that paved the way for Mergwenthur. I think that one was Wired... (2021) in which time is a circle and Merlin lives long enough to see Arthur be born again. In that one I tried to be as close to canon as I could, while also writing a Merthur story. Originally, Arthur was meant to choose Merlin, but during the darkest hour, in which the story begins, he's already head over heels for Gwen. And the more I tried to grasp Arthur's feelings after the magic reveal, the less possible it was for me to not see Mergwenthur.

As Arthur starts realizing his fellings for Merlin, his feelings for Gwen don't change, because why would they? The feelings were different but they were both of love. And when I tried to characterize Gwen, I ended up thinking of their three person date in season 4(?) in which Arthur says:" Isn't it nice to be here? Just the two of us?" And it's GWEN who says: "you mean, the THREE of us. " When I thought of that, I just couldn't imagine that Gwen didn't already know and accept Arthur's feelings. And I couldn't imagine Merlin wanting Arthur to choose him over Gwen. While at the time, Mergwen wasn't really on my mind, I thought this was where the story was naturally progressing, so I let it.

I've always been a multishipper. But this dynamic is important to me. I've analized their relationship a couple of times and come to the conclusion that Gwen is the better Queen (some people like to call Merlin Arthur's queen). Because her relationship with Arthur is build on mutual goals and their future vision of Camelot. Their relationship is reasonable and healthy. I think their love is very soft but strong. While Merthur is just unhinged soul bond, ready to sacrifice everything for each other, including Camelot. Merlin would be a terrible Queen, like, seriously. Camelot would be destroyed the moment Arthur gets abducted once. Their love is intense and fickle in the sense that they can't live without the other. And Mergwen should have had more moments. Gwen was always the one person picking up that some things about Merlin were a bit odd, like the Lamia episode, or servant of two masters, etc.. I feel like Mergwen is a ship that's friendship first and can be both wholesome and completely mad, depending on which of the two indicates the action.

So, it was a bit of a curve for me. I ship them individually, I ship them together, apart, with other characters, everything. But the more I look into the show, the more sense Mergwenthur makes to me. Regardless of whether they are platonic or not, I can't unsee them. And why would I? they are fun.

Haha, this answer was very long, but I hope it answers your question :D

[johaerys-writes]

About that post of yours about people getting upset about Patroclus and Achilles being seen romantically, I've seen every single thing that made me so "wtf?"

I've seen them use the justification that they're cousins, from some sources. This doesn't make sense bc cousins getting along in Ancient Greece wasn't all that fuss, it's not like they were brothers! And they're cousins once removed…Orestes and Hermione are first cousins and no one finds it strange!

I've seen people use the justification that Achilles is married (Deidamia). Firstly, it depends on the source, secondly…he still has Briseis? There are sources that there are Briseis and OTHER characters (e.g. Polixena). Even in the sources where he's married, that doesn't stop him from doing anything. Not only Achilles but other characters! Agamemnon has been married for years and had Chryseis and Cassandra. Odysseus is married and his lovers vary with sources. Even before Helen was kidnapped, Menelaus already had a child with another woman. "Ah, but he would still prefer Deidamia, just as Odysseus and Menelaus still preferred Penelope and Helen" well, Agamemnon explicitly states that he prefers Chryseis, and Jason preferred Creusa over Medea…maybe we can assume that different characters are different characters!

I've seen people use the justification that both he and Patroclus had slaves… which, again, doesn't change anything. Again, married men had slaves, I don't know why we're pretending otherwise. Having a slave does not prevent having other relationships, after all, not even a legitimate wife prevents it (or married men wouldn't have bed slaves in the first place). "Ah, but that shows they like women in mythology!"…yeah…but well, some people like more than one gender. That still doesn't rule anything out, I don't see where we're going!

I've seen people explain that it's bc this is something modern… which isn't, there were already romantic interpretations of them in antiquity (Aeschylus, hello? Plato?). But then you point that out and they say "well, but it's not Homer" but then they bring up things like Polyxena and Penthesilea as proof and…their myths with Achilles aren't Homeric! And then they say it's not one of the explicitly declared couples…which, again, doesn't stop anything?? Even more so bc one of the people I saw saying this shipped two characters who never had any romantic text or subtext so it's a walking contradiction!

And even with this "explicit couples" thing, I've seen people talk about a vibe like "oh why focus on Patrochilles, which isn't even canon when there's Apollo x Hyacintus" and I'm still trying to find WHAT is the similarity between these two ships besides being between two male characters. Not even tragedy can be considered a determining factor since tragic couples are not exactly rare in mythology…like, oh tragic couple, so Megara x Heracles is the same too! C'mon, guys! I got the impression that these people have the idea that the ship only exists bc it's MLM and, therefore, any MLM ship plays the role even when the dynamics AREN'T the same…

Or they'll say "the fans make them into a straight stereotype of rigid gender roles", which if you go to the Ao3 tag and read the fics is easily refuted! Especially for Achilles, who depending on the fic isn't even a perisex cis man. But they really don't know the majority preferences of shippers bc e.g there's an idea that absolutely everyone is strictly bottom Pat x top Achilles bc "furious warrior Achilles" and "cool guy Patroclus"… which's funny bc it couldn't be further from reality! And the same person who says this has a ship with strict gender roles, for the love of god!

Even if the ship were canonically impossible… well, hcs exist! As a kid, I watched Naruto and thought Ino x Sakura was very cute, but that doesn't mean I DIDN'T notice that the canon couple was going to be Sakura x Sasuke. It looks like they've never seen shipping before, my god!

Finally: I left the most absurd for last. This wasn't on Tumblr, it was on another social network. Basically, user kind of texted something like "of course you like Patroclus x Achilles, you're not Greek!" And I'm still trying to understand the relationship between someone being Greek and someone liking or not liking a ship. Could it be that in the documents that ask for nationality, if you put "Greek" a questionnaire appears asking you if you ship Patrochilles and if you click "yes" you are taken for falsifying your nationality or something like that?

P.S.: You don't even need to answer this ask. I really just needed to comment on this nonsense, and my friends aren't mythology fans, so here we are!

Okay so I'm just over here nodding aggressively to a lot of things you said, I know you said I don't need to reply to this but let me just add a couple thoughts:

1. Seriously the cousin thing is laughable to me, like who cares who CARES!! Literally it doesn't even matter, not only were romantic relationships btwn cousins not that big a deal in ancient greek works and mythology but also there are so many literary works written before the 20-21st century that feature cousins falling in love, like in the realm of fiction at least it isn't the big and shocking thing the antis think it is, and it hasn't been for centuries, I don’t get why people get so worked up about that...... it doesn’t even count as an argument, moving on

2. People saying that Achilles can't possibly be queer because he sleeps with women and has a son etc etc..... I feel like they’re missing the point, because the thing about Achilles, in my opinion, isn't whether he’s gay or not, or even if he’s bi or not. Those neat little categories are a relatively modern invention I think, and I don’t think that any ancient person would identify as gay or straight or what have you. In some places being a little too close with your buddies (or your students, particularly young male students --athens i'm looking at you--) was a thing, in some others it wasn't, but it wasn't part of their identity like it is now, ykwim? So I think it's pointless to try to put Achilles and Patroclus in those boxes, many people have tried it and it doesn't work. Achilles may have a son with Deidamia but he doesn’t mention her in the Iliad not even once, he cares about Briseis and in the text he lies/sleeps with her but he wouldn’t stop Agamemnon's men from taking her nor would he return to the fighting for her, his relationship with or feelings for the women he sleeps/has slept with doesn't really affect his behaviour. It is Patroclus who he has the emotional bond with, Patroclus who convinces him to do something other than sulk in his camp, Patroclus whom Achilles values above all, Patroclus's death that changes the trajectory of the war and Achilles' own life. The bond between Achilles and Patroclus has cataclysmic consequences for all the Achaens and the Trojans, no other woman in Achilles' life comes close to what he has with Pat.

So like..... that's what's important here. Achilles could have slept with a thousand women and Patroclus with a thousand more and it wouldn't matter. I'm not here to argue whether they were exclusive or not sexually speaking, that's irrelevant and frankly I don't care. I also can't comment on Achilles x Polyxena or Penthesilea I'm not very familiar with those myths and they aren't even Iliad canon anyway so who cares. People have been writing fanfic about him for centuries, what's new.

3. As for the rest of the arguments against Patrochilles I have to admit I stay as far away from drama as I can so I don't really know what is being said online about them. The things you're saying honestly sound like toxic fandom behaviour and antis being at it for no goddamn reason. I'm not even going to respond to that because again, I don’t think there is anything to say. People can ship what they want and headcanon Achilles and Pat boinking any which way they want as long as they leave me alone lmao. Like as long as they don't come to my ask box or ao3 comments with dumbass or exclusionary views (or if Tumblr doesn't decide to spam me with them) then I'm good. I'm definitely not going to go looking for those views on Tumblr or elsewhere.

4. Honestly I didn't even know racism had been brought into this LMAO like I was not familiar with the take that if you're Greek you can't like Patroclus/Achilles. Like.... why is that? Why wouldn't a Greek person like Patrochilles? Do Greeks not have good taste then? I don't get it. Maybe it's because the Iliad is so deeply rooted into ancient greek culture and we learn about it in school or what not, so like it has to be this sacred thing that no one can touch/spoil? For me, shipping ancient dudes is the best way to actually learn a thing or two about history and literature and what have you LOL like I care so much more about the Iliad now than I did in high school. The sad thing is that I feel like if I ever told people irl that I ship Patrochilles they would first be baffled and then probably appalled lmao I can't even imagine their reaction if they ever saw the Patrochilles shrine I keep in my study 😂 Homophobia is a big thing here sadly, and I personally know people who would literally fight anyone who says that mlm was a thing in ancient Greece (because as we know the ancient greeks were the pinnacle of perfection and wisdom and the gays now just want to ruin that 🙄). I'll never forget my high school ancient greek teacher going into a whole rant about it for an hour, and also the school textbooks we had themselves were so heavily censored. It's just such a sad way to be if you ask me, both because you're a fucking homophobe but also you're missing out on so much of the nuance of this culture that you're supposed to "revere", it's always been super baffling to me.

Anyway this rant got away from me so I'll just stop here lmao. At the end of the day I think people will just say whatever they want about whatever they want, I sometimes also get upset and hurt by those dumb takes but it's really not worth it. I try to stay in my lane and block liberally and nerd out with like minded people and I think that's what life/fandom is about, you know

[moltensmusings]

About you getting hate for liking the Freezerburn ship and then getting even more hate for politely asking to be left alone:

idk what the fndm's been drinking lately to get like this but it's kind of everywhere nowadays, which is one reason I no longer participate in things like the freezerburn ship week or stuff like that. It's become so popular to cyberbully people in this fandom, especially if they hold any opinion outside the extremely limited and strictly enforced one-way-only 'acceptable' opinion, and for some inexplicable reason, Freezerburn has been declared Unacceptable and Wrong and Bad, and that goes double for the shippers.

I once saw someone say that shipping Freezerburn was "homophobic."

A ship... between two female main characters... is "homophobic..."

The reason given as to why it was "homophobic" to ship those two characters was because the person making the declaration irrationally declared that every single Freezerburn shipper is also a BlackSun shipper and furthermore declared that the "only reason" anyone could ever possibly claim to like Freezerburn was if they were "pairing Yang off with a random girl so they could force Blake to belong to a man without being accused of homophobia"

I also once saw someone say that shipping Freezerburn was "disrespectful" and "egotistical" and "ungrateful" and - again - "homophobic" because Yang kisses Blake in canon and apparently that means that every viewer is legally obligated to praise the ship and make it the center of all their fics and fanart, because anything less is you "choosing to hate bumblby because you're a homophobe" and "failing to show the proper gratitude and reverence to the writers" and "stuck up and conceited and arrogant enough to think you could come up with better ideas than the writers" and "disrespecting all their hard work"

Aaaaand I've also seen people post lists of "rules" that every fic-writer or fan-artist is apparently required to follow, and if they don't then they get written off as "part of the HTDM" and they become a socially-acceptable target for cyberbullying and harassment, on the grounds that "the HTDM refuses to respect rwby, so why should we respect them?" And what'd'ya know, one of the many rules every fan is now expected to follow is literally "you must ship bumblby and you must make Blake and Yang get together, and you cannot pair either character with anyone else in the series."

I'll tell you what; the show claims to be about artistic expression, freedom of speech, and trusting love - but the biggest fans never got the memo.

No one is allowed to make art unless it is Canon-Compliant

No one is allowed to express an opinion unless it is a Glowing 5-Star 10/10 Two Thumbs Up monetizable recommendation

And no one will choose kindness if you break either of those two rules. Differences and Dissent are the enemies in this fndm, and if you get pronounced guilty of them, you become an acceptable target.

Because you ship two female main-characters with each other

Just not the ones that became canon

And the fndm seems unwilling to confront the fact that "doesn't ship bumblby" isn't included in the definition of Homophobia - but "attacking people and inciting hate against them through smearing their reputation and getting them branded as a toxic monster for no other reason than they posted content about a wlw ship on their tumblr" kind of is

Anyway Freezerburn is awesome

Ah. Yeah I've been out of the fandom for a minute, fell out around volume 4 and came back in with a recent rewatch so I was around when Shipping freezerburn was less controversial I guess. That and one of the only people in this fandom I've been following for the past decade is a multishipper who only posts postive content.

But this all does track. I did at one point ship Blacksun but it's been years since that happened and I find a lot of enjoyment in Blake and Sun's sibling/friend dynamic more than anything.

Even funnier since my post that started this mentioned that I support Yang having two girlfriends, but I have seen how serious rwby fans get about people criticizing the show even before I left. I remember when there were wars about posting in the rwde tag and fans who would start fights with bloggers for posting in it because they didn't think people were being nice enough in the rwde tag despite it being labeled that way for a reason.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain fandom history I missed out on to me.

Been a freezerburn shipper since volume 2, and surprisingly, that hasn't changed even after 6 years of being gone. If there's one thing I'll always support, it's Yang and her many suitors.

[citystoryscapes]

bad buddy fandom getting-to-know-you meme!

yayyyy thank you for the tag deepa, who is the best! @fiercynn <3 I've been meaning to participate in this for agessssss

since there are both recent newcomers to bbs fandom and people like me who are new to bbs tumblr, i thought i'd create a getting-to-know-you meme for people to introduce themselves if they want! all questions are optional

note: i consider "fanworks" to pretty much everything people create related to a fandom, including but not limited to meta/analysis/discussion, gifs, fanvids/edits/fancams, filk, fanart, fanfic, fan food, fan crafts, etc. please include this note with the meme unless you have a different definition!

name and whatever you want to share about yourself

hey, I'm rain! that's not my actual name but it's all the internet is getting. my pronouns are she/they. I'm in my 20s and a grad student, and fandom has been a (selectively) great place for me in terms of finding supportive, brilliant friends. I like to write a fair bit; occasionally, I post it too. I also like cats, big cities, good tea, and old houses.

when did you watch bad buddy/join the fandom?

I'd heard about bad buddy because it was airing around the same time as another show I was watching, but I wasn't toooo interested until episode 5, part 4/i4. when I tell you that kiss UNLOCKED SOMETHING IN ME... I caught up on the first 5 episodes pretty much immediately after that while quarantining alone over Christmas, and it pretty much kept me sane. I watched the rest of the show as it aired- please spare a moment of silence for the people who had to wait out the two-week gap between episodes over New Year's.

bad buddy has always made me SO genuinely happy and hopeful, reminding me that there is hope for queer Asian people even if our families aren't always supportive.

favorite ship(s)

patpran, inkpa, and some comic relief waikorn

favorite character(s)

in terms of fanworks, it's a very close call between pran and pat, but I think pran is my favorite by a hair! I love his character arc throughout the show! I especially love his confidence and the way he grew into himself. pran might win in terms of being inspirational, but I have to say, I LOVE well-written pat meta.

in terms of who I'd like to channel in real life, it's obviously ink. she is the absolute coolest, a proud simp, and a protective girlfriend.

(I'm great at avoiding making choices)

favorite episode(s)

episode 5, because what could ever compare? I also love parts of episode 3 and 11 (I'm saying this as if I don't love the entire show).

favorite scene(s)

ep 5 rooftop kiss!!!! ep 3 bus stop and mini elevator scene; ep 4 pran's injury and the three wontons dinner; ep 6 beach scene where they're paired up in the game; and their trip to the market, ep 7 confession scene; ep 9's 'anyone taller than me is fine'!!!!! ep 11 bus scene, beach scene, and song montage; ep 12's entire bait and switch reveal, and pat pran's dinner out with friends.

see what I meant about avoiding making choices?

one thing you would change about the show if you could

seconding deepa, WHY DID INKPA NOT KISS??? also this isn't a change I would definitively make to the existing show, but I'd love a b-side where we see patpran's relationship in the years between their graduations and pran's return from Singapore.

what are your some of your favorite fanworks made by other people?

I can't believe this is a question I am legitimately choosing to answer:

Fic:

make my body say ah, ah, ah by Sabulum

heart in a cage by sunshinedobi

paradox by Everybodyknows

dynamic by riddles2

a nose boop and the rest is history by seekingmoonscapes

don't forget me when I let the water take me by gilly_bean

your love is your life by threewontons

Videos:

same page by dkyth73

just friends by fiercynn and scribe

dancer by coldties

(if you create fanworks) what are your favorite fanworks that you’ve made?

technically I've only published one bad buddy fanwork (it's a fic called these violent delights). my favorite thing I've created for the show is an unpublished canon-divergence fic where patpran have sex and possibly get together during their ep 6 beach trip

a song that makes you think of bbs (the ones in the show don’t count lol)

I'm sticking to the classics; same page and just being friendly by tilly birds are my top choices. I also made playlists for pat and pran, for said unpublished fic, so here's some of the songs I picked for both:

for pat: the loneliest time by carly rae jepsen, double take by dhruv, better by khalid, the enemy by andrew belle

for pran: washing machine heart by mitski, 18 by 1D, and dancer by leon

idk anything else you want us to know?

I love all of you smart meta writers, I'm kissing your big beautiful brains

okay i'm literally going to tag all of my tumblr mutuals that i think are still in the fandom (if i missed anyone sorry!!), but also if you want to do the meme consider yourself tagged! please don’t let this flop lol 🤞🏽

[unityrain24]

Why you don't talk Wattpad ? I feel more.comfortable in there actually just curious abt it

Ah!

So wattpad was the first fanfic site i used, starting back in middle school. Ao3 seemed sketchy to me at the time, and wattpad was well-known and looked clean and neat and tidy and professional. I read on there for a small while, and even posted, before trying ao3 and discovering it was way better. While i still sometimes post on wattpad, i don't read on it anymore.

Below are some of my reasons as to why i think ao3 is superior to wattpad:

EVERY aspect of ao3 is 100% completely free. No paid stories. No ad-free version

ao3 doesn't have any ads whatsoever. Wattpad does.

ao3 is run by volunteers, while wattpad is definitely a Company. Wattpad is advertising to you, tracking what you read and recommending things to you (yet somehow really only recommending their paid stories rather than what you would actually read). It reeks of capitalism.

Watpad also tracks where the readers are reading from, their gender, and age. They show these things to me as an author. And i think that's creepy.

ao3 is set up as a library/archive, not a social media site or shopping site. This is really refreshing.

Ao3 is completely customizable if you have an account. You can change the colours, fonts, and even formatting to cater to what you personally want. Wattpad only has its usual mode, and maybe dark mode if you have the app?

Ao3 feels far more personal and private, which actually makes any community built there feel way nicer + more genuine. Comments on ao3 and comments on wattpad feel different.

Ao3 has a much, much better search engine. Got can search and sort by title, author, fandom, rating (general, teen, mature, explicit), tags, language, length, date, ship, ship dynamic (m/f, f/f, etc) and more. On wattpad it's really hard to find what you want to read, due to 1) it's search engine sucks 2) even when you search something specific, their completely unrelated paid stories come up in the search too and 3) their tagging system isn't that good

ao3 had an AMAZING tagging system. and the tags aren't hidden either, nor is the tag limit small. You see all tags to a story before you even read the summary, so you know if you even WANT to read the summary. Tags make searching for what you want easier, and also knowing what stories to avoid (which is especially good if you have triggers!!)

wattpad only has general and mature labels, and no content warning. Ao3 has general, teen, mature, and explicit, and well as required warnings. All these things are easily, simply, and clearly displayed.

once again TAGS

tags my beloved <33 what would i ever do without you

While uploading to ao3 is more steps to learn, once you know how it works it's WAY more efficient & easier than wattpad. I still upload to wattpad bc i feel bad for anyone who started reading my fics there before i got ao3, but. I have to like force myself to upload. It is a fucking pain in the ass and it is so SO glitchy and not user-friendly at all. I dread uploading to wattpad.

also idk if it's just me but i fell like i find much higher quality stories on ao3. Obviously someone's story doesn't have to be high quality, it's art, it's an expression of the soul, art doesn't have to be good. But as a reader i want to read something high quality that i will like. And i feel like i find that more on ao3.

anyways i love ao3 so much. if you are still using wattpad and are too scared to try anything else, PLEASE consider trying it. While there is a lot of fucked up stuff on ao3, but it is made very clear what those things are so you can avoid them. Ao3 has some really beautiful, meaningful, soul-wrenching things too. ao3 has everything. it's a library, it's an archive. it doesn't have recipes though. And if it does? well, that's against the law.....

[shaanks]

Zoro and Sanji for the ask game <3

You are a wonder and a dear, thank you for this <3

1: sexuality headcanon

Zoro: I think Zoro is like. THE posterboy for demisexual. demisexual, demiromantic, the whole thing, I don't think gender makes much of a difference to him in terms of attraction but he's gotta know you and trust you, he's gotta be invested first or he just doesn't think of folks that way.

Sanji: the ultimate bisexual disaster case. He and Ace and Shanks all attend the same "gorgeous pitiful bisexual disaster" support group, as a small aside.

2: otp

other than x me...

Zoro: I think probably ZoLu or ZoSan, tho likely leaning more in the direction of Luffy based solely on ration of Fics I Have Chosen to Read lmao. There is just something about the way they met and it took Zoro exactly 24 business hours to be like "my life and my sword for your cause," the way they just. get each other, half the time without even needing to speak, the softness and solidarity of it all. Just gets me, ya know.

Sanji: SanLu or ZoSan (are you sensing a pattern lmfao). In general maaaybe SanLu bc like. I think Sanji is very much inside himself about his own worth and place in the world, and Luffy is like. Relentless (as he is with everyone he loves and cares for) about reaching down into that pit and pulling Sanji out into the sun over and over again and there's just smth really lovely about that. Monster Trio OT3 is lovely soft times I feel.

3: brotp

Zoro: Chopper oh my god. He's the lil dude's big brother, his dad, his bestie, please listen to me every MOMENT of their interactions breathes new life into my rotten dusty soul. Also Nami, they met and were like "ah. my long lost sibling. what if I killed you" and have such a wonderful dynamic.

Sanji: Chopper also, tho not quite to the degree that Zoro is. Also, altho probably a controversial opinion, I really like his relationship with Robin. I don't wanna spoil anything (in case you or anyone reading is watching/gonna watch) but there's a particular arc in which the only person more relentless than he is about bringing her home is Luffy, like. I think he's a wonderful sweet boy all around but smth about his gentleness with Robin really warms my heart.

4: notp

Zoro: Nami, they are just. SO so sibling coded to me like. Perona for the same reason tbph, they're Mihawk's adopted goth siblings and I can't really extricate that from my brain. Mihawk. For that matter. That's basically his dad. (Not yucking anyone's yum idc what other people ship tbph but I don't like these ones personally)

Sanji: I've just sat here staring into space for like five minutes trying to think of smth. I haven't seen much of anything for him that really yucks me out (unless I'm just blanking which like. happens. I have the brain of a 90 year old), but I guess like. Not notp-levels exactly but I don't really get SanUsopp or SanLaw? The latter might just be a "wait til you get to Wano" situation like so many other things, but yeah.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

Zoro: saw a post a while back that was someone's headcanon about Zoro lending out his earrings to his crewmates for like. especially dangerous missions, or to give them a lil confidence boost, or as a promise that he would make it back from something scary, and that's stuck in my brain so hard its basically canon for me, so yeah.

Sanji: I think he's basically a nutritionist in everything but paper certification, above and beyond just making sure his crew is fed and goes to bed with full tummies he is SO dialed in to what they like and what their systems are sensitive to and what they need for training/devil fruit powers/etc like. It's not just "here I have made this hearty delicious meal that covers all the food groups" he makes a bunch of different meals catered to everyone's needs, he gets it.

6: favorite line from this character

Zoro: "That's what it means to be Captain, isn't it. Don't lose yourself. If you waver, who can we trust?"

Sanji: "Leave this guy's key to me, I'll do what you cant do; you do what I can't do. Think carefully! Read the situation. If you're here, there's got to be a way Robin-chan can be saved! Usopp!"

7: one way in which I relate to this character

Zoro: TERMINAL sleepyhead disorder. Tired all the time, sleeping in the background of every scene.

Sanji: I'm capable and competent while simultaneously having no sense of self-worth whatsoever. ya know.

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

Zoro: Where!!! Is he ever going??? He gets lost while MAKING EYE CONTACT WITH THE SHIP. MULTIPLE TIMES. Babygirl beloved I'm BEGGING you rn...

Sanji: I mean. I'm just gonna say Fishman Island and leave it at that. (They brought him back from the timeskip a completely different person and I'm STILL waiting for him to return from the war...)

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

They're BOTH cinnamon rolls in my heart, but I am aware like. Sanji technically falls into the problematic fave category for like. myriad reasons.

[harpywritesfic]

Look at me, a wants-to-write-but-blocks-themselves-because-the-first-letter-I-type-down-has-to-be-perfect-fanfic writer.

I've been hoarding various prompt lists like whumptober and fluffbruary. I even snatched myself one of those ironstrange bingo cards in hopes I could fill one of prompts in a year. But now half of the year is over and my card still empty.

I feel like a failure 😞

ah, you've come to the right place. abandon your perfectionism, all ye who enter here. this is a land of unedited drafts, fics written in a haze of hyperfixation, caffeine highs and/or mental breakdowns. i've mastered the art of "good enough".

remember- writing is messy! the process is messy, and the product can be messy too. in a sense nothing people write is ever truly 'finished'- there's always room for improvement. that's how art works, in my humble opinion. try to find enjoyment in the process, not the product. as the artist, your own work will always seem imperfect. but that doesn't make it any less valuable.

it might help to know how i write most of my fics. maybe my method isn't your style, but i'll walk you through it anyway since it might help.

sit down to write. or write standing up. where isn't important. what matters most is you've got an idea or a prompt or an anything that makes you want to write.

word barf. this is the very rough draft phase. throw out everything you know you want to have happen into the doc. try not to read over what you're putting down (the messiness of it all can be daunting). mine often are made up of unfinished sentences, half-baked scene ideas, 'they do x and then y", mixed with some finished portions. if you get stuck, you can always come back, and you'll already have a little something on the page :)

splice and dice. this is where i put my scenes in their order (if they weren't already, it rly depends on what you're writing. sometimes it's linear, sometimes it's not). biggest thing i use this phase for is working out where i need transitions between scenes, where i need to expand my "x then y" bits into writing, and and where i can just put a empty line with a "-" in the center to indicate a new scene.

flesh it out. i get stuck here a lot. this is the step where you weave your scenes together, write your dialogue, fill in your placeholders. it's okay to just skip parts and come back to them. some parts, if they're really giving you trouble, can just be removed entirely. you're the writer- it's up to you. choose your battles.

(optional) editing. sometimes i just don't even bother, especially if i know i'll hate reading what i've written (if this happens to you, it's best to skip the editing! a few mistakes are no big deal. i find it easier to just throw it to the wolves (readers), who are usually very nice and rarely point out mistakes. they're not picky). sometimes editing is just a quick pass for typos. but you can also get into it a little more, really go elbow-deep, and edit to improve things like flow, pacing, tone, and other boring stuff. totally unnecessary, though. if you hate this step? skip it.

it took me maybe a year to feel comfortable enough to post something i'd written. and it's okay, too, if you don't feel comfortable posting anything. you can never post it. or you can do it anyway. sometimes i say to myself, "i want to read more of this specific ship/trope/situation/dynamic/whatever" and i make it myself. they say to write what you want to read, and that's even more true for fanfic. there are people out there who want to read the same things as you. sometimes you gotta look your fear in the eyes, quote Freddie Mercury and say, "I'll fucking do it, darling."

having said that, this might be most important- it's okay if you never post anything you write. fanfic is something we do for fun- there is no failure. the most important thing is to enjoy yourself. there doesn't have to be any finished product- just enjoy the process.

i hope this wasn't too ramble-y or anything. my brain works in strange ways, so this might be totally unhelpful. who knows! but i'll post it anyway, in case it is.