#beefle@f

[thatswhatsushesaid]

nothing but fandom ship salt below, peruse at your peril 👀

this post awoke the petty ship bitch inside me and i am now compelled to list out the ships that (TO ME) qualify, so here it goes:

(NB: please please PLEASE remember that these are just my thoughts about fictional relationships, and not about any one specific person in fandom! please please PLEASE trust that if we are mutuals and you nevertheless ship one of the relationships listed below, i am NOT calling you out for seeing something in these ships that i don't! i'm not the ship or fandom police ok, i'm just one pissy little clown and my opinion is not more valid than anyone else's, especially not where ships are concerned.)

1. n!elan (mdzs) - in all the fic i have unwillingly experienced featuring this ship, it is just xiyao but cut/pasted onto nmj and lxc.

2. beefle@f (tgcf) - i can't believe how misled i was about this ship lmfao like people straight up described it to me as tgcf's xiyao and that is not remotely what is going on with these two. also i think this is an example of a scenario where what is happening in canon is orders of magnitude more interesting than what fanon has done with them. beefle@f takes two fascinating characters and makes them boring. unforgivable.

3. n!eyao, or rom@ntic 3zun (mdzs) - in canon they just would not do this. they wouldn't. pre-langya, nie mingjue would not take advantage of a subordinate in this way, and given his background, meng yao would never willingly place himself in a position where his reputation could be tarnished by spurious rumours that he is sleeping his way to the top. post-langya and post-legitimization, jin guangyao is terrified of nie mingjue because nie mingjue wants to kill him. (i do accept that the framing and acting choices in cql leave a bit of room for a psychosexual obsession with jgy on nmj's part, and i do find that compelling, but it is not reciprocated, and even if it was, that is not the stuff that lasting love builds its foundations upon.) also lxc just does not demonstrate the same affection for or emotional intimacy with nmj that he does with jgy.

4. x!anle trio (tgcf) - quick note that this DOESN'T include fengqing, which i do ship, but i don't think fengqing are at all interested in xie lian romantically or vice versa. this is another example, imo, of fanon making character relationships less interesting by shoehorning in a romance that does not need to be there.

5. l!nsu, aka lin chen/mei changsu (lyb) - okay, i will acknowledge that my feelings about this ship are informed by my having a real life friendship that closely mirrors the canon dynamic between lin chen and mei changsu, and so i struggle to see any of their interactions as having romantic under or overtones. also i just think lin chen is only interested in women 🤷‍♀️

6. d!hua, or fe!hua, or d!fanghua (mlc) - i really must stress that i went into mlc with an open mind about this ship, because i knew my pals shipped it and i did try to see where they were coming from, but my feelings on it are pretty similar to my feelings about 3zun. i could maybe get onboard with a complicated and unresolved and unrequited Thing on di feisheng's behalf, but what it boils down to for me is that dfs does not understand llh, does not want to understand llh except insofar as he can best him as an opponent, and given we have fanghua as an on-screen comparison, it's clear where llh's priorities lie. yes, i'm factoring in both the letter at the end of the show and the conversation in the wedding chambers. also, and this is an aside, but whenever fang duobing is included in this ship, he is almost never recognizable as himself.

tl;dr if i have to strain characterization credulity until it snaps to make a ship work, i can't sail it. and that is what happens for me with all of the above ships.

[zeonmiku]

im so fucking funny and none of my friends enjoy gundam enough to understand it

[thatswhatsushesaid]

not to be a cunt on main (again) about a ship i don't sail (also again) ((but at least i won't tag it!!)) but this is the moment where, during my first readthrough of the blackwater arc, any lingering beefle@f sentiments i'd been nurturing withered on the vine:

because prior to this moment, even including he xuan's brutal murder of shi wudu right in front of shi qingxuan's eyes, i think it's still possible to make the argument that shi qingxuan is just getting caught in the crossfire of cruelty between he xuan and shi wudu. and i do think that he xuan's lingering affection for shi qingxuan is what shi wudu was counting on when he made that dramatic show of trying to strangle shi qingxuan for not cutting his head off. but i also think interceding to protect shi qingxuan uses up the last of he xuan's patience and affection for him, because imo he knows he's being manipulated. and if he's moved at all by shi qingxuan's pleas for mercy for shi wudu's life, he's not moved enough to give up on his revenge. he still kills shi wudu, and shi qingxuan still ends up having to watch it happen, and then collapses to the ground covered in his brother's blood.

and i guess, like... for beefle@f to have had any chance of working for me, what i would have needed in this 👆 specific moment 👆is for he xuan to hesitate. i needed him to see shi qingxuan lying on the ground, despairing and heartbroken and covered in shi wudu's blood, saying he wants to die, and have a complicated or nuanced reaction to it. he can still do everything else that follows (no spoilers please, i know the general shape of it but i'm not there yet!), and he can still be cold and cruel and remote. but for me, the foundations of their friendship were always built upon sand, and in the aftermath of its calamitous (hah) obliteration, they don't have anything else to say to each other. there is nothing else that they could say to each other that would ever come close to overshadowing this moment.