#average multishipper activity

[marvinmaee]

I'm going to be honest, Jackonathan is probably one of my least favorite 30 Rock ship. Like, I understand the theory that Jack doesn't like Jonathan because since Jonathan tries copying Jack's interests (for example, they both can play the flute.) And Jonathan copying Jack's interests makes Jack remind him of himself, and I guess he doesn't like that (??). But Jesus, watching Jack insult Jonathan right in his face just feels so brutal, I never got the hype for this ship. I think Jonathan deserves better😭

[reestallized]

Get me out of this hell bruh

[theguildawards]

Hello guildmates!

The Nomination Period is now closed! Below the cut you will find a complete list of all the fanart nominations received for The Guild Awards this term! The mobile-friendly version can also be found in a Google Doc here that has the complete list!

You can find the list of all the fanfiction nominations here!

If you do not see your nomination, or you find issues with the links, please reach out to us as soon as possible!

We are going to give you 2 weeks time to enjoy all the pieces nominated for this term! We strongly encourage that when you view a work of art or read a fanfiction, please reblog or leave a comment to let the creators know how much their work and talent is appreciated!

The voting period will begin November 15th and end November 29th at midnight PST!

In order to be able to vote, you will need to login. We will be posting the link to the voting form on the first day of the voting session.

Got a question? Check out our FAQ Google Doc or send us an ask!

Message one of the mods directly: @classysassy9791 @phoenix-before-the-flame @kiliinstinct @ratretro @phoneboxfairy

Thank you to everyone who nominated for making this term absolutely wonderful and happy voting!

[please reblog to help spread the love of these amazing creators!]

FANART

Best Action/Adventure

"True Heavenly Body Magic: Sema"  by @robboyu

"Team Natsu" by @astral-fairyy

Best AU/AR

“...and she took my breath away” by @kaleilaart

“the haters can’t stop me” by @captainuranium543

“Cobra’s forms” by @thehiddenrewrite

"Compilations and Requests: 13. Castle"  by @gymjunkie412

"✨witches AU✨"  by @fantazi13

"Happy Gajeel Day" by @gajeeyenjoyer

"gratsu frozen au" by @jiwasaissappy

Best Canon 

“Troubled Trio” by @dravendraws

"Red, The Colour of Life" by @pencilofawesomeness

"For the first time... I'm scared of Natsu's flames..." by @marisashinx

"untitled" by @g0ldenlumiere

Best Angst

“Stay with me” by @acejk-arts

“Happy Rogue Day🖤🐸” by @oryu404

Best Dark

“God’s Gift” by @phoenix-before-the-flame

"Acnologia Eats Irene"  by @love---mandy

"Manipulation upon Manipulation" by @werewolfcave

Best Humor/Parody

“Glowstick Mode Activated” by @castkorb

“comedically jacked baby” by @captainuranium543

“He tried his best😔” by @acnologias-ass

"Ora? Ora!"  by @fantazi13

"Pay back" by @shiiro-arts

"average dragon slayer meetup..." by @philophobic-honeybee

Best Kiss

“Untitled” by @lidiscr

" 🌱🌿" by @gajeelenjoyer

Best Romance

“a soft Lokana” by @artsophiehml

"Nali Commission" by @minnimayhem

Best LGBTQ+ Romance

“Day 1: Cursed” by @mintyfreshi

“Causing problems and sucking face” by @phoenix-before-the-flame

"I know what you tell your friendssssss" by @zqttixx

Best Character

“Lucy in a starry dress” by @firapolemos05

“My first fashion icon was Lucy” by @hyun-illus

"Mavis Vermillion!" by @kuratamashi

Best Duo/Pairing

“my girls <3” by @fourclovermoon

"Fairy Tail Platonic Week: Day 5" by @pencilofawesomeness

"Leave this to us" by @celestialrayna

Best Group Depiction

“Team Natsu” by @ars-de-elysium

“Team Saloon” by @zai-doodles

“It’s nice to have a family” by @classysassy9791

Best Manga Coloring

“💚A SIGH OF RELIEF IN NATURE💚” by @fairy-edits

“FT Big Project” by @fairy-tail-trash

"My Character Design is Peak" by @fairytail-multishipper

‘"Fairy Tail/Lolu Colouring" by @almaween

Best Redraw 

“The Sky Sisters” by @cloudindeed

"Natsu Redraw" by @mintyfreshii

"erza redraw" by @raptortier

Best Overall

“Art Contest” by @pencilequipped

"Like Some Kind of Supernova" by @ziidoodles

"Inktober Day 4: Spell" by @kaleilaart

[consistentsquash]

https://consistentsquash.tumblr.com/post/735968615712653312/favourite-snape-characterisation-in-fanfic This range is genuinely shocking. From outside Snape fandom look like they agree on Snape's characterization unlike Marauders fandom. How are these different headcanons coexisting without discourse friction?

Hiya!!

The actual range in Snape fandom is huge!!! That post is my personal Snape reading range. Lots and lots of great fic with softer/darker Snape characterizations on either side of that range.

My takes as a reader below the cut. YMMV. Also tagging @danpuff-ao3 who knows this fandom inside out, @perverse-idyll who is the best for history <3

Of course Snape fans have pretty strong personal takes on Snape characterization. But folks are probably older on average and more chill? This type of ship is a pretty different vibe compared to other popular ships because of the powerdynamics and age gap. Also a lot of folks probably exhausted forever because Snape fandom OoTP/HBP/DH was pretty intense. Plus Lily. It was the type of intensity which really burned out a lot of folks. Not saying we dont have headcanon wars but like its a different stage of fandom compared to Marauders. I am pretty jealous of the level of activity in Marauders tbh but otoh it can also get exhausting. Snarry/Snape fandom isn't really huge like Marauders. Probably shrinking based on the fandom ship stats. Also a ton of folks are multishippers. Those folks are chill about headcanons because they probably have different dynamics for Snarry/Snack/Snupin/Snamione/other ships.

Tl;dr we have headcanons and stuff. Folks probably dont notice because other ships/fandoms have more activity. It's not really a cult with one standard Snape characterization version. Not saying we don't do cults because Snapewives was a thing :D

Also hard to generalize. Snape multishippers/Snape OTP fandom, Snape het fandom/Snape slash fandom, Snape age gap fandom/Snape peer ship fandom, Snape shipping fandom/Snape gen fandom have some overlaps but also lots of differences. Also the folks interested in the type of Rich Pure Blood Snape before OoTP/folks interested in reading/writing him after OoTP/after HBP/after DH are really pretty different because his character arc had lots of twists.

Maybe check out the Snarry fanlore article to get an idea about that range/history. Also really good info on the history side in this interview from Ellen Fremedon

The only list that I really stayed active on was the Snape slash list, and pretty much I made the transition from Star Trek to Harry Potter when I found the Snape slash list and realized that that was where the grownups were. It — especially at that point in the fandom it was very Balkanized, and the Snape slashers were actually renowned at that point for generally being level-headed and rational grown-ups that it was fun to be around. (laughs) Well, because they were grown-ups who'd been in other fandoms before and who'd come to this out of other fannish communities and knew the fucking social norms and were not a bunch of feral teenagers that had to be socialized. And they also were not heavily invested in shipping wars because they were Snape slashers and they knew that Snape was not going to get a boyfriend in the books. Ever. So, we were not looking for textual validation. (laughs) So, yeah, it was sort of its own little polite, well-mannered, sane — it sounds crazy saying this at this point now, but that's really, yeah, it was where the nice, polite, well-mannered rational grownups hung out when I first got into Harry Potter fandom. (both interviewer and interviewee laugh) Well, remember this was also before any of the movies, so there wasn't the Alan Rickman thing going on yet either.

[janewayseven]

gotta say I didn't plan on diving into discourse on shrinking fandoms, but you're not the first person to bring this up, so just my two cents here.

#every time i see this - the chasm gets a little wider #and it hurts - as a 'creator' to see this #even with an older fandom such as j7 #buts its also telling of why new works have stagnated #a lot of consumers but not a lot of creators (inb4 its brought up about stop thinking of fanworks as content - its how i speak pls sit down) #even tho theres isnt much participation on this poll

So I get how it looks, and I have thoughts™️.

I've made this point in a reblog before, the "content creation" guideline goes something like 90-9-1: 90% consume, 9% interact, 1% produces. We're actually doing amazing when taking that as the average baseline. Especially considering that this fandom is a solid 30 years old!

My experience with the J7 Discord (and just paying attention to other people I know in fandom and my own behavior) has taught me that people dip in and out of fandom, it's asymmetrical not linear. There's never the same amount of people looking for content at one point, and that's ok - we still enjoy content that was made years ago, some of it is infamous. Especially in fandom, longtail content is super important.

I think the low-ish participation on the poll also shows an issue with platform-split/tumblr: people aren't all on the same platform. Some are on FB, Twitter, etc. Some aren't in social media fandom spaces at all. And tumblr itself has a bit of an interaction problem - I'm sure tons of people know creators they like but only one person tagged them - so it may be just an issue of distribution. I have a long list of creators I know of that just... aren't here. But I'd definitely ping them through whatever platform they're on about a challenge!

#when fanworks halt or slow down - all those consumers dip and flutter away to more active spaces #and now those remaining creators dont get as much interaction as before and kinda....dont want to put the effort in

Just from the perspective of running a literal J7 blog: People still like and reblog, the more content I post, the more they interact. So the interest in content (and new! content) is definitely there - which is a good thing. My bigger issue here is finding new content / sifting through old stuff to share. Of course, it may be less than before in sheer numbers - I can't really judge that.

#yes - create for yourself - but the dopamine rush of seeing someone tag/comment on your work is so fucking fulfilling #and i also understand that interests change - im a multishipper multifandom bullshit blog - that just happens #but its happens more when activity ceases on both ends

Yeah, I feel this - the interaction is so important because yes create for yourself but also made a thing and show the thing so please let people know what you think or that you saw it - it's just so human to want some feedback.

And also, as a fandom ages, I'd assume that the people in it age with it - so day to day responsibilities rise and keep people from being super active maybe, but they often come back to enjoy what has happened in the meantime.

#so as many creators say in posts - pls reblog and interact with content that you like/see #likes are fine but maybe billy joe mutual over there may like the content too - we wont ever know unless you fucking reblog it

yes yes yes! just. reblog. tag, send a message, just... support creators!

I'm actually considering - based on the poll - to create some kind of challenge for the people that consume fanworks, whether it's a "create a collection of your favorite stories" or "share your favorite artwork" kind of challenge - but something that works with the people that love the content and helps them to give that love back to creators.

#SORRY JAY #im bitter and angry and this poll keeps popping up in my fy section and it actually makes me want to stop creating for ST

no worries, I get it. It can be frustrating, especially when you create for fun and fulfillment. Luckily the poll is over now, and I hope you will keep creating for ST! More cake! 🍰

Digging into the archives is always great in a fandom as seasoned as Voyager, but new stuff is fun too - if you’d be interested in this, please let me know!

Fanworks could be anything - from fics to art to gifs to playlists to vids… if you come up with it, it’s fanwork!

Please share this little poll around/reblog if you vote so I can gauge the interest, tyvm!

Also: if you’d like to help organize such an event, please also let me know!

[maliciouslycreative]

How I played damage control to an anti in a small anime fandom and may have led to her ultimate downfall

I know I had a really nice write up of this at one point but oh well. I’ll spill more of the tea in this one because honestly the tea was so hot.

There are a few things that I have to give context to first. Gaia online was like THE mega forum of the 2000s, you made a little avatar and through posting and doing other activities on the forum you made money to buy clothes for your avatar. There were forums for everything but the fannish portions were really what drew in most of the people. The anime I was into was Beyblade. It was a shonen anime about fighting with tops that were possessed by the spirits of magical creatures. The story was honestly pretty average but the characters were fantastic and the fandom is to this day still one of my favourites. The series had a primarily male cast and didn’t even have a female lead until the second season. This led to the fanfic for the English fandom being about 70% canon/OC, 10 % canon m/f, and 20% slash. The most popular character in the English fandom was by far Kai Hiwatari, the loner badboy of the team.

Also before we get started I would like to add that one of my best friends was neck deep in this and the two of us were more or less fandom married. This is the same friend that I fake dated, had feelings for, and she nearly got me into kpop in 2011 so like if you haven’t read that story please read it too because it will give you a good idea of how stupid I am and how much of a fanfic I have truly lived. 

To set the stage I was 16, soon to be 17 when I joined the fandom and it was 2004. In September of that year I wrote a humour longfic that became an absolute smash hit and I found myself somehow fandom famous. It was around this time that I joined Gaia online. I made my little avatar and immediately went looking for the beyblade thread so that I could make new friends. I found the main thread, made my little introduction and at the end of it mentioned that I was a slash writer but I supported all ships. This is where I met C. She had declared herself the authority on Beyblade in these parts and I had just committed the crime of mentioning slash which was very obviously not canon and we did not discuss in this thread because we only discussed canon things. I was like well that’s a bit severe but like sure whatever I just want to hang out and have fun. 

Oh boy did I have no idea what I was in for. 

C was a year older than me and unfortunately that made her older than the majority of the fans at the time. Her favourite character was Kai, and she was not shy about talking about this fact. She stanned Kai above all other characters, and often at their expense. She was also a fanfic writer of a popular canon/OC series. Actually, she was so full of herself that she didn’t even call herself a fanfic writer, no her stories were in fact novels and were apparently very good. I never read them. But more on that later. 

Eventually the slash fans got tired of her being rude to us in the general thread so we made a Beyblade slash thread. There was a core of like 8 or so of us and we honestly had sooo much fun. When C would be too unbearable in the main thread the people from there used to come over to our thread and we’d chat with them about non slash stuff because we were honestly all multishippers and just wanted to have fun. We’d get comments like “wow, I’ve had more pleasant canon het ship discussions in the slash thread than the regular thread”. We never worried about C coming over and getting upset about comments like this because she refused to be associated with anything related with slash lmao. 

I tried my best to keep the peace between C, myself, and the rest of the fandom because ultimately I hate being in fandom drama. I just want everyone to have a good time. I’m a people pleaser. Unfortunately my newfound fame put me in the awkward position of being the most fandom popular person in our small community aside from C. Virtually every fan that read fanfics that came into our thread knew one of us or the other by reputation and C HATED this. Especially because people would come in to the thread, recognise me and go “oh my goodness I love your fanfics!” and I’d be super sweet with them and it’d lead into “I can’t believe how nice you are, I love you” which would lead to us crying at each other. This was not the kind of fan interaction that C got, no her fans were more kind that were there to praise her and worship her like a deity that had blessed them with some gift. Rarely did they tell her how kind she was. 

Back in the mid 2000s there were really commonly those commercials (usually by Christian organisations) asking people to sponsor say children in Africa or to help build schools or provide drinking water. You all probably know the ones; know the language that they used in those commercials. My fandom wife, who I suppose I shall call wifey because yes we were THAT couple back then, once said that C described her fics like those people described donating money to save the lives of Children in Africa. So we used to joke that her fics were so good they’d save lives in Africa. Looking back at it all, she almost had a very fundamentalist Christian approach to bringing people into her fanfics. She of course tried to get all the slash people into reading it. None of us read canon/oc fic mostly due to our poor treatment at the hands of their fans and creators. Getting fed up I one day told her that if she would read any one of my fanfics that I would read the entirety of her novels. Yes, I was willing to commit to read a couple 100k of canon/oc fanfic that I’d never touch normally if she would even read one of my 1k 1 shots. Heck, I had a fic even that shipped 2 minor characters so she didn’t even have to sully herself reading about one of the main characters. It was honestly a good deal in her favour. I kept this up until the day we all left the fandom. Sometimes I do wonder if her fics were even ¼ as good as she claimed, but I will never know because she refused to read my fics. 

She wasn’t all bad and a tyrant all the time. As long as people kept the conversations on track and didn’t come in to the thread saying things like “KAI IS SO HOT ND T3H BEST N I AM GUN 2 MARRY HIM” she stayed mostly civil. It was always hilarious watching InuYahsa or Naruto fans try to come in and bad mouth Beyblade because they’d unleash the dragon and C was great at chasing off undesirables in the thread. 

The real apex of goings on though on Gaia was the guild drama. So guilds were like exclusive themed mini forums within Gaia. Anyone could buy one and run it however they want, as long as it still adhered to Gaia’s ToS. C of course was the owner of the only Beyblade guild. The fandom wasn’t really big enough to support 2 guilds so we just kind of let it go. Technically she allowed people to post slash fanfics but like everything had to be explicitly tagged and there was absolutely no slash RP. Wifey and I controlled a handful of minor characters together in the forum RP and definitely used to try to push the boundaries a little bit. Some ambiguous flirting here, a stray comment there. It was such a fragile balance though because C was heavy on the ban button. The active portion of the guild was just people that were in the cult of C and worshipped her writing. 

Understandably the other slash fans and myself were getting disheartened by this. So we pooled our funds together and decided that we’d open a second guild that though it was run by slash fans we would welcome anyone into our ranks. We just wanted to have a fun place for everyone to hang out, and to hopefully run a few events out of. In hindsight, we should have seen what would happen. When we opened the guild, with me as the guild leader, it was like somebody blew up the whole dam protecting the delicate ecosystem we had cultivated. Every single person in the Gaia fandom that was not a zealous follower of C applied to be in our guild and left her guild. We of course figured that we’d attract some of the gen population but we did not expect to accidentally poach all of it. All of the moderators were getting messages from people thanking us for giving them a place where they could say whatever they wanted without fear of getting their faces ripped off or banned. 

C lost her shit. She was so mad that we went behind her back to ruin her guild. We literally had to show her posts in the very public slash thread that we had been planning this in public and that it was not to ruin her life. We just wanted a place where we could freely post slash. The two of us had some spicy comments back and forth and then she dropped an absolute bombshell on me. Since Gaia’s mail system is terrible I unfortunately no longer have exactly what she said but it was something along the lines of “Ok, you win. I’m going to close my guild.”. Us slash fans had never been doing this to win anything. We had never been competing. We just wanted a safe space to be ourselves. 

C never joined our guild. The fandom slowly faded out within the next year anyway. We weren’t getting new content so naturally people just drifted into other fandoms. C kept up with the main Beyblade thread for a lot longer than most of us but eventually that eventually faded into obscurity too. 

I learned a lot about fandom bullies from those days. But honestly the thing that stuck with me the most out of everything was that if you provide a positive safe space for people they will flock to it. It may seem like there are so many hostile people out there, but there really aren't. They're the minority but they just make sure that their voice is the loudest. The best way is to ignore them and just do your own thing. The bullies just want attention and if you don’t give it to them and prove to them that their opinion doesn’t matter to you then they’ll move in and find something else to yell at. 

[lady-literature]

I haven't even started to watch the second season of TOH and yet all those lunter fanarts and posts that you reblog have made me fall headfirst in this ship!!! Like every day, before i go to sleep i must put my clown shoes again and scroll through the lunter tag, hoping to find something new ,,,,, i am in RUINS . anyway, would you share some headcanons of them, please? I´m need more content of them ლ(╹◡╹ლ)

I am in multishipper hell and don’t know how i ended up here but boy am i glad i dragged a friend down with me :)

I really like to play up the whole ‘rivals’ thing for them in my mind, or even ‘star-crossed’, but not in like,,, a sad way.

They’re on opposite sides, but Luz doesn’t actually let that stop her from befriending Hunter. And, after the fourth unnecessary truce the two enact on another adventure gone wrong, it’s pretty clear that Hunter’s protests to the whole arrangement are just for show.

~~~

Luz’s wild magic has more oomph to it than the average user--not that they really know that since there’s only three of them, but it’s true. Luz’s magic is all power and little control, she throws so much will into her casting but doesn’t visualize/guide it through, letting the magic do as it pleases most of the time.

She experiments with new spell circles, because she likes to learn, but in practice she sticks to the basics because she doesn’t need to get complicated for it to work for her.

Hunter, on the other hand, once he learns how glyphs work, shows exactly why he was the coven prodigy. Hunter doesn’t have that oomph to him, he lacks the same stubborn determination Luz has. But he more than makes up for it with his skill.

Hunter looks at a problem and can construct a complex spell circle to deal with it in the space between one blink and the next. He just knows how the magic is supposed to fit together, can see all the pieces in his mind and snap them into place to accomplish what he wants.

In battles, they’ve developed a system of Hunter creating the spell circles and Luz activating them. It’s a devastating combination, and it isn’t long before the Isles start whispering of the duo in the same tone they had once used to speak of the Owl Lady.

~~~

Hexside, and eventually most of the Boiling Isles, find out about the strange friendship between the Golden Guard and Luz, wild witch apprentice, when Hunter is tasked with doing some kind of official business with Bump. He’s walking through the hall when Luz suddenly spots him and, well…

Luz isn’t great at keeping secrets, obviously. And, sometimes, she forgets that they’re even supposed to be a secret.

Which they aren’t after she calls his name in front of a whole crowd of students and then tackle hugs him when he doesn’t say hello back.

(Most of the student body expected Luz to be blasted to the Knee, but all the Golden Guard does is sigh and answer all the questions she asks him in a quiet tone of voice.)

((it’s a good thing he’s wearing a mask, because otherwise everyone would see the not insignificant amount of fondness on his face as he spoke to Luz, even as in the back of his mind he though of all the consequences of his actions he’d have to deal with later.))

~~~

Hunter pulls a Kovu when the Emperor confronts him about his relationship with the Human Girl, Hunter tells him he’s only trying to get close to her so that he may gain her trust before destroying her and the owl house.

“We cannot let disrespect such as theirs go unpunished, now can we, Uncle? They are weakened now, but that is merely just the best time to strike.”

Belos doesn’t quite approve of Hunter’s little scheme, but he likes the viciousness of it and thinks it will keep his nephew out of trouble until the Day of Unity, so only asks that he be told what Hunter learns.

Hunter has successfully sidestepped one problem, only to find himself with a new one though. If he’s not digging for owl house secrets, then what is he meant to tell his Uncle to keep him from suspicion?

[redjennies]

Why do you think that b/j and w/j are so popular? Not asking you to engage in hate, you just seem level headed about this stuff

in general, Jester ships are so popular because Jester hits the Katara/Hermione Granger/Bella Swan/etc character mold where she's the fun, relatable, pretty but not too pretty girl that the audience can latch onto and imagine "character I'm attracted to is attracted to me." while this can lead to problems of "reducing a character to a shipping prop" especially when the extremely shippable character is female, this "character a is me and character b is what I'm attracted to" model isn't an inherently bad thing. it's where most shipping comes from. so when you consider that Jester ships are popular and that w/j and b/j were also the sort of "underdog" ships to fjorester, which anyone half paying attention saw coming from a mile away, it's kinda unsurprising that these two are so big.

speculation on contributing factors to the popularity of these ships specifically under the cut. full disclosure, I am specifically looking at these through a "how fandom works" lens, not a "how they are in canon" lens because it's a more interesting perspective for me.

so by this logic, w/j is popular because it's most popular guy character/most popular girl character. like seriously, Jester and Caleb could probably barely ever interact and not have anything in common and even actively not get along at all and this would probably still be an immensely popular ship. so the fact that Jester and Caleb do get along and do interact frequently and do have things in common and Caleb does have canon feelings for her only adds to this popular formula the ship already has going for it. in fact, the way fandom generally works dictates that this probably should be the most popular ship in the fandom, if not second to a Caleb m/m ship.

but it's not. which is insane.

from a "just how fandom works" perspective, b/j has everything going for it that w/j does: canon feelings from one party, the inherent popularity of Jester ships, not being fjorester, etc. while it's not most popular male and female character, Marisha and Laura were the only two female players at the table for the majority of the campaign so that's going to win over the f/f shippers. but for the life of me, I am amazed that an f/f ship beat out every single other ship in the fandom without being the central focus of the show (such as catradora or xena/gabrielle). like the beauyasha in me is *eye roll* at this development, but the lesbian in me is living for it.

here's a few of my theories as to how the fuck this managed to happen that were not mentioned above:

in the same vein as "beauyasha is a good shipmate for people who want Jester with Fjord or Caleb," beaujes is a good shipmate for m/m shippers who want to see Caleb and Fjord with Essek, Molly, Caduceus, or each other. I have thoughts as to why an m/m ship hasn't managed to get extremely popular but I do think this feeds into it.

it's relatively inoffensive as far as the major Jester ships go. where some people who don't have strong opinions on any Jester ships might still hate widojest and/or think fjorester is just god awful boring, beaujes is really only disliked by people who are really, really invested in beauyasha, widojest, and fjorester. while tons of nasty shit has been said about it during ship wars, I think the average multishipper probably has a positive, if not particularly invested, opinion towards it.

a friend pointed this out to me but it's actually the closest to a good girl/bad "boy" Jester ship. like Fjord and Caleb both have their dark sides but let's be honest, they're kinda dweebs. Beau actually has an edge to her and that's a very popular ship dynamic.

hell, I've noticed even FJs and WJs who don't particularly like beaujes tend to prefer it to the Jester/dude ship that they don't like.

anyway there's legit canon based reasons to ship either of these. I don't ship either, but they have their moments. this is just some of why I think these ships in particular flourish in a fandom environment.

I say this as someone who draws, Beau and Jester are extremely fun to draw and so there's a ton of fan art of it and some really fucking good fan art of it and that's gonna further the positive fandom opinion of it. shit I don't even like beaujes and you can still catch me liking art of it on a regular basis. it's fucking cute.

eta, because I cannot believe I forgot to add this back in after my app crashed and deleted the initial response: never underestimate the shipping power of "oh my god, they were roommates."

[kyoanikis]

❝  HC MEME  ✹  romance  ❞

name: kyōjurō rengoku

nickname:  aniki, kyou, sweet potato ( only his family knows about this one )

gender: cis male

romantic orientation: bisexual/biromantic

preferred pet names: call him p much anything, honey / sweetheart / babe / and he’ll melt tbh. bonus points if it’s something creative though!

relationship status: main verse - single ( ships are subverses! )

favorite canon / fandom ship: rengoku x happiness :) / rengoku x LIVING. KYOU X REALIZING HIS WORTH AND IMPROVING HIS SELF-ESTEEM, KYOU X HEALING FROM THE PARENTAL BULLSHIT SHIN PUT HIM THROUGH - asdfghjk clearly i have a lot of Feelings about this. for fandom ship fav, aahhh man im too much of a multishipper to have one favorite. akaren / uzuren / rengiyuu / kyoumitsu are all amazing tbh

favorite crossover ship: OOOHH i love crossovers!! i can’t pick one right now bc my brain is so zeroed in on kny though heck. hmu for crossover ships though [insert eyes emoji]

opinion on true love: kyou, though a romantic at heart, doesn’t believe in true love! he’s far too realistic about human nature to buy into it, though he thinks the idea that there is someone out there for everyone is heartwarming.

opinion on love at first sight: t b h same deal as true love for kyou

how ‘romantic’ are they?: oh gosh he’s!! very romantic tbh. he loves making his partner feel loved. kyou really has a romanticized view of domestic life too, partially bc he didn’t get to have a good domestic household for years, so he puts a lot of emphasis on that. making dinner together, doing house stuff, taking baths together = super romantic for him.

ideal physical traits: he doesn’t really have any, though he’s especially weak over a person with kind eyes

ideal personality traits: kindness, understanding, idk how to word it perfectly but he does best with someone who has traits that bring out his vulnerable pieces, you know what i mean?

unattractive physical traits: tbh not much he doesn’t care for/couldn’t find beauty in. kyou is there for the person and not their looks

unattractive personality traits: greed, selfishness, if you’re a dick to kids he doesn’t wanna be your friend

ideal date: honestly just a night home, making dinner together and then relaxing in a hot bath before heading to bed early sounds ideal to him. he also loves to be outdoors too.

do they have a type?: hmm!! if you can kick his ass he's probably into you, but like in a basic way and not a romantic way if that makes sense. and it doesnt apply to like, people actively trying to kill him. but other than that, kyou doesn’t? really have one ‘type’ that he falls for on the regular.

average relationship length: he’s never been in one!

preferred non-sexual intimacy: hold his hand and play with his hair okay. he’ll melt.

commitment level: kyou is 100% loyal to his partner and he’s in it for the long run if he’s in a committed, serious thing

opinion of public affection: he is into small doses of pda! mostly hand holding, forehead/cheek kisses, sitting next to each other and bumping arms

past relationships?: none!

tagged by stolen from: @fleshdrop​ <3 tagging: @pasttorn​ for akaza and/or the vulcan man! / @dobushira​ / @moonchains​ / @historias-multorum​ for harubean and/or mama naomi! / @silentknivves​ / @timidplum​ / @galebreath​ / @holylies​ / @karismatickitty​ & you, if you fancy this hc meme dash game! steal it from me n tag me if you wanna!

[sheikah]

No, anon, I’m not mad at the footage. I’m so unbothered by it that I gifed it myself to spread with other people on tumblr. Happy to see another Stark Sibs reunion. (More below cut because I went off today sry)

On this, the one year anniversary of my delicious canon ship having sex and looking at each other like this: 

You know, an episode after Jon looked at Dany like this.

And three episodes after he unabashedly stared at her like this:

The very last thing that concerns me is Jon Snow hugging his sister. His sister that he went weeks, maybe even months, without bothering to contact at all after he went South, building up to HIM being the one to approach DANY and going to her cabin to bang her into oblivion. 

So, again, Jon hugging his sister is the least of my concerns. Let’s take this moment to reflect back on Stark familial affection, shall we?

Gotta love normal, healthy signs of affection between siblings and parents with their children, huh? I’m glad Jon and Sansa can hug like family. They both deserve it after everything they’ve been through.

So, no. this is not something that worries me. I honestly wasn’t even going to respond to this because the idea of still having to prove or defend Jonerys, or say that J0nsa isn’t canon... at this point it’s beating a dead horse. Like I respect most J0nsa shippers. I follow several J0nsa shippers and several follow me. That doesn’t just count for multishippers, either. Some people who ONLY ship J0nsa are still my friends. But it’s you insane J0nsalockers who can ONLY like your ship if it’s canon that make this fandom so impossible to exist in. You have to stop. You’re ridiculous. 

D&D and HBO have not, by any stretch of the imagination, “officially” promoted J0nsa. And I was going to be nice and diplomatic and not even address this but you know what? Fuck it. I’m so tired of you guys ruining this environment for the sane members of this fandom.  You know the real, ugly reason that that footage was chosen? Not to showcase J0nsa. That’s for damn sure. I would say first and foremost they show it because it isn’t too spoilery. It’s just a hug between family who’ve already hugged and who we already knew would reunite. It’s a really bland first look at s8. But more than that, this particular scene seems to be here to tease StarkBowl. Again. 

Now, I’ll preface this by saying I don’t believe that StarkBowl will happen. Not at all. Because unlike you guys, I don’t find it necessary to tear down Sansa so that I can feel better about my ship. But D&D constantly tease this idea. It started in season 6 when they had Sansa withhold the truth about Littlefinger and his army from Jon. It continued with the cryptic look she gave Littlefinger during the KitN scene. And in season 7 they hinted at it by having Sansa and Jon disagree over pressing matters in eps 1 and 2, and making it seem like Sansa was agreeing with the Northern lords who distrusted Jon’s leadership in later episodes. It was the entire driving conflict behind Arya’s distrust of Sansa.  Speaking of Arya, there was also a deleted scene in which Sansa apparently considered executing Arya, and only decided not to after consulting Bran personally. It was cut to make it seem like Sansa trusts in Arya implicitly without such a conversation needing to take place to set her on the right path. Add to that the script for 7.07 which explicitly refers to Sansa at this stage as “Dark Sansa.”

Wanting to be respectful of my friends in the J0nsa fandom I ignored the prevailing interpretation of the new s8 promo footage and posted the gifs without comment. But most people have been reblogging and saying in their caption or tags that Sansa “looks mad” or is “scheming.” 

I don’t think that’s off base. Look at her expression here.

She seems distant and detached. Instead of nestling into Jon’s hug or closing her eyes like she did here:

Her eyes are open, looking past Jon, clearly thinking about something serious instead of simply hugging him back. So yeah, if you ask me, THAT is the reason this footage was used. Because to the discerning viewer or a member of the GA who has no idea wtf J0nsa is, this is just further teasing of “Dark Sansa” and StarkBowl, creating tension and sparking conversation among the viewers over what this could mean. No, I don’t think Sansa is evil or will betray Jon. But D&D clearly want us to think that she’s at least thought about it. And while I don’t agree with that characterization, they pushed it A LOT last year.

Back to the point. I can’t stress this enough: the average viewer has never thought about J0nsa a day in their life. It wouldn’t occur to them to ship Jon, the righteous and upstanding hero figure, with his sister. Not when the show goes out of its way to speak to the controversy of Cersei/Jaime. Hell, even Hannah Murray looked at the interviewer like they were out of their mind when asked if she ships J0nsa at Con of Thrones. 

She was confused as hell. Someone who WORKS ON THE SHOW and is a major cast member, has never thought about it before. Shouldn’t that tell you something?

Anyway, with the promo, HBO is reaching out to the GA--people who, like Hannah Murray, have no idea about our crazy shipping preferences here on tumblr dot com. They are not promoting J0nsa. They are trying to drum up controversy over StarkBowl. Just like they did in the past. Just like they teased Dark Dany, too. It’s just what they do.  You’re welcome to languish in misery convincing yourself your ship is canon and that Jonerys is stupid until you’re blue in the face. You’re only going to be disappointed when the season airs. (And I think that even you know that deep down, anon). 

I’m perfectly fine with people shipping J0nsa. The actual content creators (see: not antis) are talented and nice. But I block every anti blog I see, and I’m no longer actively seeking out discourse on this subject because there’s no point. It’s not up for debate anymore. It’s over. So please stop sending anon hate to Jonerys bloggers, especially people like me who do everything in my power to avoid this kind of nonsense. Just stay in your lane and ship and let ship in peace. P.S. I screenshotted this instead of answering it directly because you spelled out J0nsa and it didn’t want it to go in the J0nsa tag. It’s called being courteous. Learn it.

[sayitwithsarcophilus]

Which Pathfinder deity should you be a paladin of?

Abadar:

Knows how to calculate compound interest

Teacher’s pet

An Alexander Hamilton fan before the musical got popular

Finds Javert more sympathetically tragic than Victor Hugo probably intended

Always has exact change

The “sounds fun, but how are you going to pay for this?” killjoy

Andoletta:

Aspiring Discworld witch

Good with kids

Full of interesting corvid facts

Spends a disproportionate amount of time and energy correcting misinformation in viral tumblr posts

Big fan of abrasive but highly moral and competent older women and wishes they could be the protagonist for once

Wears lots of black but not a goth

Arshea:

Queer as hell

Sex-positive

Glam rock fan

Above-average tolerance for Special Snowflakeism

Doesn’t believe in apologizing for liking things

Erastil:

Wears a lot of flannel

Doesn’t care whether same-sex marriage and adoption are assimilationist

The Grandpa Friend, regardless of age or gender

Gets twitchy when they can’t have a garden

Thinks all these kids getting themselves worked up discoursing would be happier and more useful to everyone if they’d just go outside and do some real work in the fresh air for once.

Iomedae:

Sword Lesbian

Obsessed with Joan of Arc as a teenager

Wants more butch representation in canon f/f

Strong opinions about Arthurian adaptations

Tears up listening to “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha

Lady and Knight kink that can be seen from space, but may be in denial about the kink aspect

Irori:

Fitness blogger

Big believer in meditation

Would rather approach situations from a “what can we learn from this?” perspective than outright approval or condemnation

Self-disciplined but chill about it

Great abs

Kurgess:

Softbro

Gives great hugs

Never stopped loving “become the best (x) ever!” tropey shonen series

Eats lots of protein

Hopes warriormale responds to one of their posts someday

Ragathiel:

In principle, knows that the lack of overt fascist activity in their immediate vicinity is a very good thing, but part of them is still disappointed that they have not yet had the chance to punch a Nazi.

Should probably stay away from callout culture, since it brings out all their worst qualities

Overidentifies with characters who are bundles of emotional conflict and rage but manage to be heroes and help people anyway.

Daddy issues

Takes promises very seriously

Sarenrae: 

Forgives but doesn’t forget

Loves redemption arcs

More scarves than Stevie Nicks

Supports hijabi cosplayers

Owns too many candles

Favorite season is summer

Doesn’t drink alcohol, but has an entire cupboard dedicated to different kinds of tea

Shelyn:

So nice cynical onlookers assume it’s an act, but is actually completely sincere

Doesn’t enjoy being mad at people, and consequently feels out of place in many activist and social justice communities

Multishipper

High femme

Encourages novice artists

Makes their own skincare products

Torag:

Strategy wargames enthusiast

Beer snob

Goes to the hardware store for fun

Never half-asses anything

Gets very cranky about impractical and inaccurate armor designs in historical and fantasy media

Holds grudges

Vildeis:

Forgives no-one, including themself

Treading the line between scruples and scrupulosity ever damn day

May have been an anti at some point before turning their attention to larger issues

Refuses to chill as a matter of moral principle

Poorly closeted masochist

Zohls:

Regardless of neurotype, identifies heavily with autistic-coded characters

Strong opinions about Sherlock Holmes adaptations

Plays a lot of text adventures

At least one intensely geeky special interest/hyperfixation that’s hard to share with people who aren’t already into it

Kvetches about bad forensic science on crime shows; watches them anyway

[maliciouslycreative]

So I’ve mentioned a lot of times over the years that I used to be fandom famous in a small anime fandom and I spent a lot of my time running damage control to an anti however I’ve never actually recounted the whole tale for you all. Buckle up and crack open a lemonade because we’re going on a journey (more under the cut).

The year is 2004, I’m 17, and in my final year of high school. I wrote a lot of fanfic back then, mostly for anime fandoms and around the time I joined Gaia I started posting my fanfic “Several Blows to the Head” which became unexpectedly extremely popular. But before I go forward I feel I should give some back story because some of you will probably get extremely confused very fast otherwise.  

For those of you who don’t know about gaia online let me give you some history. Gaia was pretty much THE SHIT back in the mid to late 2000s. It was an anime themed forum website where you had a little avatar you could dress up.You gained gold by posting, playing mini games, posting in polls, or even just browsing in general. There were hundreds of subforums and in each of them a tonne of active threads. Another feature was the guild system. Basically anyone could create a guild which was pretty much your own themed subforum that  the guild admin could decide the rules and who was able to join as long as they still followed Gaia’s ToS. 

The anime I was into was (Bakuten Shoot) Beyblade, which at the time was an ongoing series. For those unfamiliar with the series a bunch of teenagers use battling tops possessed with the spirits of ancient mythological creatures and even gods to fight each other. Let’s just say it wasn’t winning any awards for amazing writing but it was a lot of fun and I LOVED my small corner of the fandom. It was pretty much your average shonen series of the time which meant that it had a main cast of 5 male characters (with a female lead added in the second season) and then very few minor female characters. The only actual canon ship was only made canon in a post canon addition to the manga that was not even released outside of Japan. So I bet you all are coming to the same conclusion that yes, there was incredibly bad shipping drama. The breakdown of shipping pretty much looked like this

10% slash

70% canon male/OC

20% canon male/canon female

Now to resume our story. I joined Gaia and headed over to the anime forum and found the main Beyblade thread. I posted an introduction and in it made mention that I was a fanfic writer and I liked slash. This was when I met C. I’m not going to drag her name as all of this went down over a decade ago and I hope that she’s grown as a person since then. If any of you are REALLY resourceful I mean the threads still exist. You can go find them and see just how awful it got.  

C was a year older than me and apparently the authority in these parts on all things Beyblade. She was also a writer but in her own words did not write fanfics, she wrote and posted novels. She was pretty well known in the canon/OC circles and had a pretty enthusiastic following. 

So when I came in to that thread and introduced myself I opened a can of worms. I was told that we did not discuss slash ships in this thread because it was not canon and it made some people uncomfortable. And ok, I can see that. It was cool. I was there to have fun and chat with people. I mean anyone that wanted to chat slash I could add on YIM, MSN, or LJ. However, 2 things started driving the knife into the wound.

It was not ok to talk slash but it was perfectly ok for C to discuss in depth her fanfics because it was an OC and obviously did not contradict canon as the stories were post (a currently unfinished) canon

People kept recognising me because my fanfic was exploding in popularity. So people kept bringing up slash and I’d get dragged into it as my fic was usually a catalyst for discussion. 

To keep things from escalating us slash fans decided to make our own thread to talk Beyblade slash. Now, there was some divide in the slash fandom and people pretty much shipped only Kai/Takao or Kai/Rei but for the sake of everyone’s sanity we put our shipping differences aside in the thread and aimed to make it a positive space for everyone. I mean, most of us were multishippers so we tended to just be excited to read anything that wasn’t one of the 9000 OC fics we had to wade through to find any slash. 

Whenever people would come into the main Beyblade thread now if they happened to mention slash they would get an extremely cold message from C if one of us didn’t manage to intervene first and direct the new member to our other thread. 

The other crux of the problem was Kai. Kai was probably the most popular character in the English fandom and Kai was C’s favourite character. She had an extremely specific idea of how people should interpret Kai. If anyone came into the thread and made a post like “I LOVE KAI <3 <3 <3” she would be rather unkind to them making back handed comments about how the person only liked him because he was attractive or a “bad boy” or that if they didn’t have anything to add to the thread they should leave because we didn’t like spamming in the thread. If we ever started character analysis on Kai then C had to have the last word. After all she shared some characteristics with Kai and obviously that meant that she therefore knew him the best. 

You all can probably imagine how well conversations went in this thread. I did my best to kindly welcome people to the thread, redirect them when they needed to be, and tried to calm down discussions when they got too heated. And if things got too bad in the main thread we’d just move to the slash thread and be super excellent to each other. There were days where C became so unbearable that her friends that didn’t even ship slash would come into the slash thread to hang with us because we were just really nice. 

She was also extremely pushy with her fics. Whenever fanfics would come up shed be the first to suggest to anyone that they should read her novels. She even tried it repeatedly on the slash fans. Being completely fed up I one day made her an offer that if she read one of my fics I’d read all of hers. I didn’t even specify which fic. So she could’ve chosen one of my under 5k fics and I would have agreed to read like 200k worth of her fics. She never agreed to this in all the years of me dealing with her. 

The worst part of it all was we couldn’t even really report her for harassment or anything because she was friends with a lot of moderators. The last thing any of us wanted was to get banned over some petty grievance since we’d lose all our hard work to making our avatars look fabulous. 

If the whole mess in the forums wasn’t bad enough there was 1 Beyblade guild and guess who the guild admin was. The atmosphere in said guild could best be described as… tense. Anyone that wasn’t one of C’s rabid followers ran under the constant fear that they’d be booted for saying something that didn’t agree with her narrow view of things. My best friend and I were honestly surprised that she even allowed us into the guild. But she probably couldn’t afford to outright deny us as I was a pretty prominent writer in the english slash community then and my friend was also a prominent writer and artist. 

Eventually we got tired of walking on eggshells constantly so some of the other slash fans and myself pooled our resources together and I created a second Beyblade guild. Our message was simple, we were just there to be a safe haven for ALL fans of the series. We were expecting pretty much the people from the slash thread and then maybe a handful of other people to join.

The entire fandom on Gaia over the course of a couple days abandoned C’s guild and joined ours. Whereas before we created ours hers was on a steady traffic decline our guild was BOOMING with posts. 

Unfortunately the oldest mail I have is from 2007 on Gaia so I don’t have any screenshots of this but C was understandably upset that we’d sniped her entire user base. We did try to smooth it over with her saying that that was never our intention but it ended with her sending me a message that literally said “ok, you win” and this is something I still think about over a decade later. It forever shifted how I perceive antis. 

My whole time in fandom I’d just been here trying to have a good time. I didn’t intend to become fandom famous. I didn’t intend to be in charge of one of the most active Beyblade forums at the time. I wasn’t trying to change C’s mind or fight her. And this whole time she’d thought I’d been fighting against her because we had different views on the series. 

The last episode of Beyblade G Revolution aired in September 2005, her guild officially closed in 2006 and the fandom eventually started drifting into other things. I stayed active in it until probably 2008 when personal stuff drew me out of fandom and then officially took a leave from fandom in 2009 when my best friend passed away. I don’t know what happened to C but I know she was still writing her novels at that point. Whenever I see fandom drama brewing I always think back to her and how frustrated she used to make me and then I think of the “ok, you win” and I’m just left feeling sad for her and people like her. I just don’t understand how people can let their hearts be so consumed by hatred and self righteousness that it poisons their entire fandom experience. I guess that’s a conversation for another time.

One final comment that I would like to make here since I didn’t know where to fit it in above is that my one friend was completely DONE with C one day and we were talking to each other and she was like “she acts like her fics save lives in Africa!” and honestly this is the most perfect description of C’s attitude. Like good for her for believing in her writing but there is sometimes a point where you need to chill out with self promotion.