#I involves a minor character and a character that is pretty much non-existent in the show. Yay! :D✨

[the-ninjago-historian]

I'm about to put a ship in this fanseason that NOBODY saw coming.🤣

[beauspot]

Loki Matters a Lot to Me *Long Post*

If you go on my page you’ll see that I’ve never posted about the Loki show or Lokius before so you might be wondering why now that the show is (probably) over? I always liked this show, and I considered myself a fan but coming out of it I wasn’t shipping anyone.

Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the dynamic Loki and Mobius had but I was just happy to have Loki alive so I savored that. Also I sensed some history with Mobius and Ravonna which I still think exists. I found all of the characters interesting. That includes this season but something about season 2 was different for me and I couldn’t figure out why.

Why did this show affect me so much? Why did this second season affect me so much? And particularly why did this ship, Lokius, affect me so much?

To understand where I'm coming from you should probably understand that first of all I am queer and even before I knew I was queer I had a want for queer representation. For me oddly enough it started with Owen Wilson in Night at the Museum. Jedtavius was a pairing I didn't even realized I shipped til I was older. The enemies to lovers thing was so cute and it pretty much got confirmed in the last movie.

(Just inconspicuously having your cowboy character quote Brokeback Mountain no big deal.)

I enjoy a good ship. As I got older however I began to crave real queer representation and I was lucky enough to find it in places like Steven Universe

And Adventure TIme

Then as I reached my mid to late teens I was able to see films like Brokeback, But I'm a Cheerleader, First Girl I Loved, The Miseducation of Cameron Post etc. Seeing these made me feel more secure in my sexuality.

Of course along the way I got dragged into non canon ships some of which were queerbait like Stucky or even worse, Stormpilot/Finnpoe.

The malicious part about all of these ships is the teams behind them waving these pairings out in front of people like a dog with a bone, hoping to draw them in to get their money knowing they had no intention of following through.

And I have become disillusioned with that. I have also become annoyed with fans of straight ships that oppose those queer ships acting like we're reaching.

I bring this up because there is a certain segment of sylkis(not all) and on a broader scale fans of straight ships that have this sense of persecution because fans of a queer pairing don't like their ship. It's weird and I am tempted to say it stems from homophobia. If you simply don't enjoy a ship that's fine. There are queer ships I despise, but try and assess where that hatred comes from.

There is a language that conveys romance and it seems like only when there is a minority involved do you guys become unable to understand it. This is an issue within most fandoms when it comes to not only sexuality but race in popular ships. For example, The Bear fandom in regards to Chef's Kiss, but I digress.

When a character feels the need to constantly touch another character that signals something, when a character fixes themselves so they look nice before they see another character that signals something. The way they talk, the way they act, how they are with and without one another says A LOT.

So why is it when we point these things out we get called delusional? Why do I feel like I'm going crazy every time I speak with someone about a queer ship? And why do I always feel the need to justify it?

Straight, white, pairings never have to justify their existence. They just are. Sylvie and Loki can fight, yell at one another, hurt one another, literally be the same fucking person and people will find that ok, but suddenly when people see Loki fixing himself before he meets Mobius we can't see love in that(you’re telling me this isn’t how someone acts when they see their crush unexpectedly)? We can't see loss in Mobius when he can't even do his job anymore now that Loki is gone? We can't grieve what could have been even if we find Loki as the God of Stories cool?

Why?

Mobius is the first person in probably thousands of years to tell Loki he’s not evil and he can be good if he chooses to be. We see how much this means to him. From this point on Loki is attached to Mobius like a puppy. Mobius becomes his person. I find something so refreshing about Mobius calling Loki out but then also offering him a path to redemption. He doesn’t let Loki slide, because he cares about him enough to know he can be better and Loki deserves to be better for himself.

So I was bothered by the way the finale was set up. I know they have the conversation about “the burden of glorious purpose” and often I am honestly a supporter of not everyone gets a happy ending even if they “deserve” it in a storytelling sense. I find the tragedy in that intriguing, but this didn’t feel good to me on a personal level. I didn’t walk away from the finale feeling sad but fulfilled, I walked away from it feeling miserable and empty. And I recognize that I attach myself to characters more than the general populace but I don’t really care? This hurt.

Loki wanted nothing more than for somebody to be there with him, to be for him, to love him and instead he ends up alone. Mobius ends up back in his timeline but he can't go back to his life. A version of him is already there and our Mobius doesn't even remember his children. Mobius doesn't smile at the end because he isn't happy. He's alone. They are alone and realistically there's a high chance these versions of them will never see each other again.

Does Sylvie seem bothered by that? No. She's ready to go live her life. And there’s nothing wrong with that, she took the gift Loki gave to her but Mobius is clearly, deeply hurt by Loki being gone. Because they found purpose in each other. In the order and chaos.

Having watched Good Omens and Our Flag Means Death season 2(along with the movie Bottoms starring Ayo Edebiri which everyone should watch 😁) in the same year I have become quite used to seeing queer rep in my mainstream shows. As the years have passed more and more queer characters are able to take center stage. So even though I knew Disney's track record I still held out hope because even the writer and composer saw the potential in Lokius.

Tom and Owen did too somewhat, but at the end of the day actors don't write the shows.

I think what bothers me most is that Loki is the first queer character in the MCU, we've seen him struggle and grow and learn to love and finally last season his queerness was made explicit (more than in Thor Ragnarok where he like fucked the Grandmaster or something). And they immediately paired him off with a version of himself.

Loki isn't gay so I'm not saying he had to end up with a man or anything you can be queer and end up with someone who is a gender different than yours my issue is a broader one which is, this story wasn't made to validate bi/pan people who date the opposite sex or whatever it was made to close Loki off to any other possibilities. One of those being Mobius.

Rewatching season 1 this decision is exacerbated because there are moments where they could have had him flirt with a man like when he was D.B. Cooper and boom we have on screen rep, but they decided “nah let’s just have him say it one time and then never acknowledge it again.” Again I want to reiterate, you can be queer and not be in a same gender relationship, but this is a television character. We don’t know their innermost thoughts like we’re reading a book we have to take them at their actions and we never got the opportunity for our first queer character to express that(at least in his own show because remember the grandmaster, but somehow that feels worse).

The executive producer recently came out and said Loki and Mobius were always meant to be platonic because they were trying to dismantle toxic masculinity by portraying “platonic male friendships”. A phrase I have grown to hate over the years because ALL WE EVER SEE ARE PLATONIC MALE FRIENDSHIPS. This is another parallel with issues I have with The Bear in which the cast and crew were like “why can’t women and men just be friends?” but only in reference to the black girl. Back to the topic at hand though.

Have you ever met a queer person who acknowledges they’re queer once and then never talks about it again? Especially someone with as much showmanship as Loki? Does that make sense to anybody? Even if he ultimately ended up with Sylvie(which I wouldn’t have liked but I digress) that would have been enough for me.

But instead we had this troubled character give up everything and everyone they love to sit on a throne they didn’t even want so that their friends could have a choice. So that they could have a life. And again I can find beauty in that, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And I won’t pretend I do.

🥀End of Post🥀

sidenote ouroboros is so autistic tell me i’m wrong. he’s literally an autistic with no experience of ableism just pure autistic sunshine.

[thrythlind]

A Disappointing Trip Down Memory Lane

So, Grimm is a TV show that quite enjoyed when it released but which I fell away from at the end of the 3rd Season. It released in 2011 and lasted 6 seasons.

So, some of the things I really liked about this show.

Most of the supernatural people were just people and they were as often the victims as they were the villains of an episode. People that know me will know that's a theme I really enjoy.

The characters were enjoyable.

The worldbuilding was pretty interesting and fun.

It deals a lot with escaping toxic traditions and making bridges between communities.

But I've looked back into it a bit recently and well... let's talk about what's disappointing.

There's a lot of personality traits tied into the different supernatural species. This isn't a deal breaker for me. The Sidhe in my setting have intrusive thoughts about deal making, for example. But this show crosses the line towards the inner nature of a species being monstrous and violent and something they have to work against. Basically it supports stereotyping.

It feels like one or more of the writers practically celebrated at the ability to do mixed-race and bigotry stories with almost entirely white actors. Because, you know, the majority of wesen and all Grimm are of European descent. There's a few POC characters, supernatural and otherwise, but they're very under-represented.

Corollary to the above, they keep talking about "Coming out" relating to wesen telling their non-wesen friends about the truth. So a bit of appropriating queer culture without any queer representation. So... yay.

ALL the traditions are toxic and often horrific and murderous. As much as I agree with turning against toxic traditions, the show really pushes the idea that all that past culture is terrible.

The one organization pushing for wesen to go public is also pushing for the return of all those horrific and murderous traditions. So, the story pushes for minorities to stay unseen and undercover. Yay.

The eventual romance between Nick and Adalinde (which I quit watching before it developed) isn't terrible in concept on it's own. In the manner of the witch marrying the monster-hunter... but they both did so many terrible things to each other through the first 3 seasons that it's extremely WTF. There's enemies to lovers and then there's whatever this is.

They made Adalinde and Nick work by causing Nick's first love interest Juliette, to go evil. The reason she went evil? Oh, she turned into a wesen... of the same kind as Adalinde... sometime around the same time they pointedly gave Adalinde the start of her heroic redemption arc. So... yeah, that's a clusterfuck of a writing decision.

At one point Adalinde suppresses her powers... which apparently causes her to gain empathy and better able to care about her friends and family. When her powers come back she has a literal panic attack about becoming a monster again... but of course she keeps her empathy afterwards.

Adalinde and Juliette aren't the only cases of wesen terrified of their own nature. There are wesen that have to eat people to survive.

There's a lot of demonization of sex. There is a spell to steal a Grimm's powers by impersonating a person they love and then having sex with them... see what I said about Adalinde and Nick doing terrible things to each other. There's a lot of toxic traditions involving mating. There's wesen whose mating practices end up killing their mate.

This is what I can think of right now.

It is just a mixed bag of lovely elements and neat characters tainted by those things I just listed. This could have been such a great story if it just had a little more planning and if something like a sensitivity consultant existed at the time.

[the-martyrfication-of-the-matron]

I’m new here and I keep seeing Amaranth all over and you wanna pop off with stuff about them so may I a request a beginners guide of sorts? Just the what would be helpful to know

Ahh! I’m not sure how to do this, but

Yeah!

I’m just gonna spout nonsense for a while!

Amaranth is my rewrite of Minecraft diaries which I have been doing for almost two years now, and is currently on hiatus. It consists of 44 chapters which are all, up until I think chapter 44 itself, based off of MCD or Rebirth episodes, and whilst the first 3/4s of it are based in the main plotline of season one, the ending will be different so that I can reuse s1s ending for a more Amulet-centric story arc.

If you want a list for triggering material that is/may be included, please do ask. Obviously most of it isn’t yet involved or the tags would include warnings of that, but I think it’s important to talk about the future of Amaranth too.

Love interests for Aphmau include (because this is a home for multi shipping and polyamory):

-Zoey, kind of primary love interest? There’s not much content for it in regards to pining and struggle but they’re pretty consistently in love so they’re just cute together.

-Garroth, canon love interest. Their main struggles are that he ‘respects her too much’ as his lord and so kind of goes back and forth on flirting with her and pushing her away. Also his brother… exists.

-Laurence, kind of a side thing. Laurence is into her far more than she is into him but she can at least find consistency in his attitudes towards her.

-Aaron, he’s hardly been introduced so far. The two appearances he has made are him saving Aphmau from werewolves and proceeding to berate her for thanking him. And then saving her from werewolves again and giving her over to Lucinda. Their relationship does end up far more developed than just this though and I’m aiming for it to be a primary focus of later seasons.

-Zane, her fiancé (non consensually). He wants to marry her for control, and she just doesn’t want none of that. He’s mostly there to be annoying, and also serve as a reason Garroth does not want to be romantic with her.

The most of this storyline for season one is evading any damage coming to Phoenix drop. She’s gone on a few minor quests, but her main goal is to stop Zane from gaining power and influence near enough to her village to be a threat, and even sets up the Phoenix Alliance to ensure herself allies if he does happen to attack.

My plans for season 2 thus far are confidential, though I can say that I’m trying to make use of a storyline introduced yet not used in MCD, and as a way to further explain the politics and world of Amaranth. This will be the amulet centric arc, as Aphmau begins to study them with the help of a ‘mysterious stranger’ to try and figure out Zane’s plans for the region and her people.

A few characters that are magicks-less in MCD have magicks in Amaranth (like Dante, who can look through people’s memories similarly to how Gene can alter them in Rebirth), and characters such as the Divine will be, when the time is appropriate, given more flesh to their stories than we were given previously.

There are also gods and such, though the subject of the gods themselves will be left for a later rewrite of A Royal Tale, in which gods are majorly referenced. Because in Amaranth, all of the Aphverse series are somehow connected along a timeline I’m forever trying to figure out, and the idea of this will be explored in each rewrite.

Obviously this is a very brief little. Thing. If you have any questions, or anything else you particularly want to know about, send an ask, or a message, or join the discord server where I may have answered it before! :)

[kyogre-blue]

Started a low effort playthrough of 3H Golden Deer. I actually played part of Blue Lions a year? two years? ago and got up to the month where you choose the dancer, but then just kind of put it down and didn't touch it again.

This time, I'm going to play the least emotionally involved route (or so I hear) with the least politicking, no talking to NPCs, no looking up anything about anyone's optimal builds, minimal grinding, keeping the recruiting down. Hopefully, I'll be able to get through it this way.

So far, without the personal connection the Blue Lions had to the missions, the story slants much more toward the mythological aspect, with a side of "Claude is kind of sus, what's his deal."

The progression of lore is actually pretty clean and direct. Red Canyon is a long term mystery, then we see a Relic for the first time (via Catheryne), then we get our super-Relic (Sword of the Creator), then Nemesis is introduced and our Crest of Flames, then we find out that Relics have a dark side (turning people into Black Beasts).

It holds together pretty well as a fantasy adventure kind of story, so far.

However, it does run into the flipside - (non-Avatar) characters aside from Claude and maybe Lorenz feels entirely disconnected from the storyline. Every time we get a whole class group discussion about things, it's very... awkward, because these characters were dumped on you en masse from the very start, and none of them know each OR have anything to contribute. Even once you start getting their supports, they're largely so low-stakes and simple that they don't feel like they explain the class being adjacent to the Relics and Church storyline.

Additionally, it's not immediately noticeable if you're not keeping track, but the fact that we go to the Kingdom twice is weird. We don't go to Alliance (so far), we don't go to Empire... you're just arbitrarily leaving out two thirds of the continent, including your team's homeland.

And at the same time, the more Blue Lions related aspects weren't removed from the quests entirely. Catheryne name drops the Tragedy of Duscur in a way that is very specific and too detailed for an event that's nearly irrelevant for this route. It's good in Blue because you'll be hearing about Duscur a lot from supports and such, but on Gold? You hear about Almyra, but Duscur is just a mystery noun that feels important and yet isn't. Same for stuff like the Miklan chapter being named "The Gautier Inheritance" when you're quite likely not even keeping track of what Gautier even is, or him not having a Crest coming up out of left field depending on your dialogue choices (since you're not told why he was disowned unless you picked that option).

Even Edelgard becomes a weird kind of existence that isn't really present until she suddenly barges into a scene between Claude and Byleth, where she... really just serves a ham-fisted segue into listing off all the ways Claude is sus and him dropping on you that he has a totally selfless dream, promise.

The route format of 3H is really... it's just not great.

Minor notes I took while playing, nothing interesting:

Year 91 "do you remember the Red Canyon"

"you took everything I loved" lol what about your other siblings?

birthday day 25 of moon 12 lol

chose "dreamed of a girl", Jeralt says he doesn't recognize her, this is a recurring dream, which Byleth has told him about, wonder what he says if you choose you dreamed about a war

Jeralt doesn't know Seteth, wonder why

Jeralt tells Rhea that Byleth was born many years after he left the monastery. Presumably Byleth saying they don't know their age is to facilitate this lie.

the fact that you choose a house so early is sending me

three way battle is intended to gauge current progress... But presumably this refers to their starting level, since they haven't even been assigned teachers yet

tbh this game is kinda disappointing visually

voice acting is good tho

the houses are explicitly "for students of X nation" which makes the cross-house recruiting so ridiculous...

unlike holy blood in Genealogy or Awakening, Crests don't seem to have a physical mark on bearers. Hanneman uses a machine to check its shape and doesn't ask about any birthmarks

I saw a windmill in a panning shot, but I can't see it while exploring :(

"I had a bunch of other schemes too" other schemes?? You didn't do even one scheme, Claude

the announcer on the chapter namecards and the new month images is uh... I can't say it does much does much for me

sothis music is cool

why was Zanado renamed to Red Canyon, Claude wonders, it's not very red L M A O

For Lonato's mission, we're only handling the "aftermath" when the bulk of the fighting has already been done by the Knights of Seiros

Tragedy of Duscur was 4 years ago. There were accomplices within the Kingdom and one of them was Christopher, Lonato's son. The Church passed down judgement on in place of the Kingdom, which was in chaos. Supposedly. (This won't really matter on GD, I guess)

some soldiers slipped past the knights using the fog

Claude was only recognized as Riegan heir a year ago.

Rhea is admittedly sus about "I hope the students learn not to fuck with the church" but I've heard Things about localization changes, so I wonder if this was there in the JP script too.

The tone of the deer group discussions tho...

Hilda's brother beat "Nader the Undefeated" and Claude claims (unclear if true) that Almyra has been keeping quiet recently because they're wary of him.

Ignatz's family has received the patronage of House Gloucester

The Relics glow red when used by someone with a compatible Crest.

The Flame Emperor, at minimum, knows that the Crest Stones set in the weapons are part of their power, but I'm not sure if normal nobles do. Like, has a relic ever had the Crest Stone removed?

Nemesis was the King of Liberation. Weird that they let him keep such a positive sounding title, though I guess they're selling it as him being originally worthy of being given the goddess's power.

It's kind of implied he might have a bloodline (aka descendants) but we don't actually see any, right? I guess it's just an excuse for why Byleth can use the sword.

It's been more than a thousand years since he got his ass handed to him.

Fodlan was attacked by "wicked gods" lol

Rhea hasn't explained anything about Byleth to Seteth. Which is... a choice. Does she think he won't approve of her mom necromancy attempts

Sothis says the sword feels distinct from "other Relics we've seen" GIRL we've seen ONE

Claude "finally found" the sword... so he was looking for it?? He wanted to use it?!

Judith out of nowhere

This is very funny because Claude previously said his grandfather is disgustingly healthy. 4shadowing... OR--

Byleth's crest is too... big?? to be analyzed like other crests

students do the grocery shopping, cleaning at least some common areas... These are noble kids tho.

Raphael and Ignatz have known each other since they were kids. Notable that I think they're the only ones with history in GD

Hilda and Leonie C rank... Hilda complains about organizing the library, background is the woods. Something here is not right.

Claude is very interested that Miklan had been using the Lance without a Crest.... Which is very funny because I didn't get the dialogue path about why he was disowned and didn't talk to anyone else, so I think him not having a Crest just gets dropped here out of nowhere

Claude is also very funny going "oh, you're counting on me? How about you give me your magic sword then? Haha, I'm joking" after we already had the scene of him saying he had been looking for it before

no option to keep the Lance of Ruin, guess it requires Sylvain?

I don't remember this scene of Tomas being ominous and also sus

Edelgard out of nowhere. Kind of abrupt, especially since it seems just a segue into talking about Clayde’s lack of history

Claude used to have an uncle, his mom's older brother, but he died

[incarnadinedreams]

Your favorite jc's ship?

Honestly, I am not attached to any particular ship for him! I'm open to pretty much anything - I've joked that I'm an 'allcheng, anycheng, nocheng, whatevercheng' shipper before. I'm open to anything that makes our purple boy happy! (Or sad, but in a hot way.)

My answer also depends on the setting and how "serious" it's meant to be, if that makes sense? Also whether it's aiming to be fluffy/optimistic/sweet or dark, no thoughts only horny or a well-rounded romance, etc.

If we're talking "what do I think is the most realistic person for him to end up in a relationship with in a 'serious' post novel canon setting that is not a hot dumpster fire?" If anyone, I think it would be some unrelated OC/minor background person not actually named in the novel with minimal baggage/drama/involvement in past events, set long enough after the end of the novel that he's had some time to marinate and tenderize.

But I'm not particularly bothered by a ship needing to feel "canon-rooted"/"canon-plausible" (or for it to not be a dumpster fire) to enjoy fics or art or whatever! So I'm down for almost any pairing, I don't really have any notable NoTPs or limits, and if the setting is canon divergence or AU that obviously opens up a lot of possibilities.

And the fun thing about a fandom centered on a necromancer is that even being dead is not a major roadblock to post-canon shipping!

If I were more into the CQL/Untamed side of the fandom I would definitely be super into ChengQing, there's a lot about it that I think works well, but unfortunately as a mostly novel fan there's a lot less there to work with so a lot of times they're referencing CQL-only plot changes! (I haven't actually seen CQL just enjoyed gifsets and such and have some basic ideas of what the big plot changes are/that there is a comb involved somewhere, no hate to CQL though I think there were some very valid adaptational changes going on there!) But I do still enjoy ChengQing when I come across it anyway, especially the few darker novel-based versions of it floating around out there (though that's overall a rarer take on it).

Of the bigger/popular ships, the one with the most obvious dramatic energy/intensity straight out the box is ChengXian. So much room for angsty activities in that one whooooo boy!

Some ships do take a lot more to get me invested than others though. For example Xicheng is really popular and I can see the appeal, but for me to enjoy it there's just a lot of heavy lifting that has to go on to overcome their canon "Just Some Guy I Politely Chitchat With For No More Than Five Minutes at the Yearly Cultivation Conference" energy, if that makes sense? I can be convinced, it's just a long road from point A to point B for me to be hooked.

I also appreciate the potential of a lot of smaller or rarepairs with characters like Wen Ning, Qin Su, etc.

Crossovers are fun too. That Jar Jar Binks/Jiang Cheng smutfic is genuinely a masterpiece that brings me endless delight every time I remember it exists and I am not being sarcastic about that, it's so deranged and wonderful and makes me giggle just thinking about it.

Sorry this was probably the longest non-answer ever since I really don't have any very strong opinions!

(Also if the anon who sent me that ask an embarrassingly long time ago about fic recs that I still haven't answered is reading I am so sorry I am still trying to organize my bookmarks because I am The Worst and Least Organized I promise I haven't forgotten)

[queer-starwars-bracket]

FAQ

What should I be judging characters on?

Whatever you want. How much you like the character. How good it is as representation. Some combination of the two. We just hope you take the time to read the description written for each character so that the non-movie characters have a fighting chance.

2. Why is the bracket organized the way it is?

The bracket is broken up first by continuity. First Legends characters and characters from the novel Ronin will compete amongst themselves. Once only one of them remains, they’ll be integrated into the main tournament next round. The New EU tournament is also broken up with the idea of reverse seeding, making the most popular characters compete against each other in the first round to keep them from dominating the tournament. There are two other “mini-brackets”, one consisting of all of Doctor Aphra’s exes and the other consisting of all of the non-binary bounty hunter bosses from Jedi Survivor. There are also two scripted matches: Moff Moors vs Aleskin/Pavol for being kind of problematic and Adrellia/Odellia vs Thandeka/Dima as the two generations of Eiram queens are pretty similar. Beyond that, all matches are decided randomly. If there are ever an even number of passes occurring in the entire tournament, things will be reshuffled even if it involved someone competing outside of their heat. After the first round, there may be some shuffling of the bracket to prevent passes where possible.

3. Why are some characters running as a couple?

When a couple doesn’t have many individual character traits and have really only appeared in stories together, they will be competing as a pair. This only really applies to supporting characters, as main character ships will have individually defined characters.

4. Why did you use x identity?

Specific orientation labels are difficult in Star Wars, as they do not exist in-universe. We’ve used wlw/mlm when a character has expressed same-gender attraction but there has been no textual or authorial clarification that they don’t have different gender-attraction.. Playersexual is a term when it comes to representation in video games describing characters whose only expressed attraction is to the player character in a non-gender locked romance. I elaborate on this decision here, as well as link a video on the topic by a bisexual person. If mistakes were made regarding author clarification regarding labels or instances of different gender attraction were missed, please let us know. However, only asks/DMs with sources included will be considered.

5. Why did/didn’t you include x?

Characters are only included if they have textual or word of god evidence of them being queer. Characters who have only been mentioned were decided on a case by case basis based on how much is known about them. Characters who are named and appear in a story were automatically included, regardless of how minor their role was. Characters with alternate alien gender systems were included, with such things being specified in their label.

Kallus and Zeb: While Kallus and Zeb seem like a prototypical heavily implied by not actually confirmed same gender ship, it was decided to include them without official clarification because the canon ships Flix/Orca and Chass/Yrica have the same level of textual evidence, but were meant as romantic relationships. If Kallus and Zeb were a f/m couple it would be considered obvious that they were together. This is different from something like Finnpoe, which doesn’t have quite as much textual support. Or even Chirrut/Baze, where the novelization has them think of each other as brothers.

Ahsoka Tano: The Ahsoka novel gets right up to the line of establishing that Ahsoka reciprocates Kaeden’s feelings. The author, EK Johnson, was simply limited it being awkward to fit a full romance in the story and the requirement of the story group. We weren’t quite in the era yet where a well known character could be quietly established as queer in a book.

X’ian/the male Twi'lek server in BoBF: They weren’t included in the bracket because it's unknown if the costuming details that make them seem trans are supposed to be diegetic. They will have to wait for an author to take the detail and make it canon.

List of characters in the bracket

[elav-exo]

Jily (Flowerpott) Rant

A confession: Jily really hasn't meant much to me until the Jegulus blow up (especially on TikTok).

It's not that I disliked Jily but in the main HP series, it was just a fact that it existed, and when I joined the Marauders fandom they became more than names on paper and I was able to see them as more, but still, I was mainly focused on Wolfstar.

And to be clear, this is not going to be a Jegulus hate rant even if I don't ship it. Yes, I've read Choices and enjoyed it to a certain extent. And this is where lies the problem.

One of the main things that I disliked about this specific fic (no hate to the author though) was how pureblood politics/prejudice was handled. And at its core, we know that HP is a (bad) allegory for WW2 and Jewish people have expressed their dislike at how it was handled. I won't comment further on this part as I'm not Jewish, but when I first read HP in middle school I took it and still see it through a race lens.

And let me tell you as woc I'm not saying that people can't write or read about magical racism but I would rather it be done right. And to me, a lot of Jegulus content doesn't handle this correctly which is what turns me away from it, because when it isn't done right it takes me out of the fic and has me remember irl interactions/situations that are what I'm actively trying to not think about when reading fics.

And it also includes the idea that many people within the Marauders have raised that because most of what we know has been built off of crumbs of crumbs there are several depictions of the same character and sometimes they can contradict each other.

So when I see James Potter have a romantic relationship with a person who tries not to use slurs in front of him and insinuates (even admits at one point) that he doesn't think or care much about muggleborns and in fact upholds blood purity by being a bystander fucks me up because that also makes James a fucking bystander and upholds blood purity imo one of the worst ways possible as well as deviating from his fanon characterization that has been pretty stable pre-Jegulus.

It's literally giving "liberal" yt women with conservative boyfriends.

Again, I'm using Choices as the specific fic to explain my frustrations because it's a fic (I'm assuming) most people have read and know, and/or it's the fic that introduced them to this ship.

And it irks me that in the fic Regulus called Lily a mudblood which is canonically a slur and there were people defending his actions because of his trauma and circumstances. And yes, Regulus suffered the consequences of being involved in an alt-right allegory group, but in the end, is awarded by being able to join James in the afterlife.

I'm aware of kids and teenagers in the alt-right like Regulus can go through their own struggles like seen in the fic, but it doesn't fucking excuse the fact that kids who are minorities are suffering as well.

Just because Regulus went through SA doesn't excuse a lot of the horrible things that he did. And many people like to point out the fact that he tried destroying a Horcrux and died doing so was something that absolved him of all his previous actions. Especially when in Choices, my interpretation of this situation was that Regulus didn't like being a Death Eater not because it was wrong, but because it hurt to be at odds with James. And that he wanted someone to defeat Voldemort because he wanted to be with James, not because non-pureblood wizards also had a right to live.

Lily in Choices was better than because if I found out that the person my s/o had a secret relationship with in high school was the one who called me a slur b/c at the end of the day he was a (magical) racist and allowed his friends to harass and call me slurs too AND LATER CHEATED on me with while pregnant then yeah Harry would've been fatherless for a different reason.

On a less serious (?) note, what has pushed me away from enjoying Jegulus content is the idea that mlm ships are often more shipped within a fandom compared to f/m ships. This often happens when f/m ships aren't properly handled and authors don't care enough to actually give the female romantic interest a personality so the fandom focuses on the male lead with their best friend who seems to have more chemistry.

And yes this turned me away despite the fact that I have many mlm ships because I've seen (some) Jegulus shippers say that there isn't much to be explored with Jily and I wholeheartedly disagree with that. They also say that it's a het ship and my question is, is it really? Because why are we assuming that they're both cishet? When has the ever stopped us from having hc like perhaps both James and Lily are bi? Never, so why not explore that in a Jily context?

Because it's the 70s and while gay and lesbian people were at the forefront of change in regards to LG issues, bisexual people or non-monosexual people were not only excluded from cishet society but from the queer community. We still are tbh with biphobia deniers but that's for another rant for another time.

So why not have Jily explore bisexuality within this context. Why not explore their friendship before dating in their 7th year which can lead to them having relationships with others that lead to questions like why do I feel jealous, they're one of my best friends and they can date whoever. And then they figure stuff out before they realize yeah they're the one for me.

Why not explore their bisexuality within the wizarding world and the muggle world? You can even explore pureblood politics with them as well if you really want. Like while James sees himself as one of the good purebloods he still is one and doesn't know the extent of the discrimination and prejudice muggleborns and halfbloods go through. It doesn't have to be Lily specifically teaching him, but he could learn himself when he observes how Lily's family like other muggle families doesn't have accessibility or the appropriate information about the wizarding world.

There are so many other things we can explore with Jily and it would be wonderful to see an f/m ship that's written well because again most f/m in media are half-assed and not appropriate for young audiences to have them on a pedestal especially since so many allow for internal and external misogyny, so why not try for a healthier relationship?

Anyways, these were just some of the thoughts in my head, so if anything doesn't make much sense it's because I wrote this without any outline in mind and just went with it.

I might come back to this to elaborate on certain points but who knows.

[tea-earl-grey]

Weapon of Choice "live"blog

yeah sorry it's really long so i'm putting it under a cut.

also obviously spoilers for this episode but also spoilers for the whole Gallifrey series as i mention a few future plot points.

i swear to god i can recite this entire episode from memory. it’s so engrained in me.

Nepenthe’s description of the bondspeople (slaves) is such a good parallel to Leela’s role in Gallifrey. she is tied to this planet forever whether she wants to or not and when she leaves, she will be condemned to death.

also. thinky thoughts on why the Warpsmiths changed to Warpwrights and why the element of their being non-corporeal was almost entirely dropped. i mean. i think the human slavery thing was maybe not the right tone for future Gallifrey releases & i think there were copyright issues with the term “Warpsmiths” but i like to imagine that sometime in the gap between season 6 & Enemy Lines, there was some sort of civil conflict that led to two factions – Warpsmiths vs Warpwrights. maybe the Warpwrights advocated an end to the bondspeople/slavery aspect of their existence and advocated for a permanent corporeal existence (maybe through synthetic bodies or something?) rather than temporarily inhabiting various humans for 80 years at a time. idk. i’m desperate for more worldbuilding around the temporal powers.

forever really want to study Andred’s weird political opinions. he obviously isn’t as xenophobic as other Time Lords (not a high bar to clear btw) and he does genuinely see aliens as people but the weird pretense of xenophobia he’s had to maintain in his disguise as Torvald (if it was ever a pretense) has just warped his view & moral compass so much… he’s fascinating to me.

i'll never love anyone as much as I love the s1-3 theme song.

NARVIN. BRAX. I MISSED THEM SO MUCH.

i genuinely don’t think I’ve listened to any Brax audios since I finished my novel-length character study about him so uh. this will be interesting.

i love Narvin & Brax’s shitty workplace relationship so much. they are such good foils to each other (i’ll expand on this in a future post i’m sure)

ROMANA. MY WIFE. I’VE MISSED HER.

Seán Carlsen is simply so good at playing Narvin. he’s always so earnest when he could have just portrayed Narvin as another sleazy Time Lord. but Narvin cares so much! even if before his character development it's for the wrong things!

Narvin saying that Project Alpha is “hardly relevant” after knowing the events of The Inquiry is SO FUCKING FUNNY. man really lost a version of the device they’re looking for, literally saw it vanish in front of him, and then thought this has absolutely no bearing on the fact that someone now claiming to have this device. i know you were trying to cover your ass here but... c'mon.

WHAT DOES BRAX MEAN WHEN HE SAYS THAT NARVIN & HIM ARE THE LAST SURVIVING TIME LORDS TO KNOW ABOUT PROJECT ALPHA??? like Time Lords live for thousands of years and Narvin & Brax are both implied to be pretty young during Project Alpha and were the most junior members involved. like did the CIA really kill everyone else associated with the project? why spare Brax? why was no one else recruited to the CIA like Narvin? (it is a recurring minor problem i have with the show that the entire span of events from here to the Time War could only cover a couple of hundred years which. is not that long for Time Lords. and yet anyone else who worked in the government or CIA before Romana’s presidency is entirely gone after s3. sure a lot of them probably died in the Civil War but all of them? did they all see the mess that was happening and just nope out? i mean i know in a novel i think it was stated that there was a big overhaul of the government after Trial of a Time Lord due to general corruption (which is how Romana got so high up in politics so quickly) but… i need more answers y’all)

LEELA.

i really wish we got to see her and the Outsiders together more (on Gallifrey Prime at least). like she ostensibly had contact with them since before the series (and i headcanon that she often went to stay with them on trips away from the Capitol) so she never really talks about them. could she feel herself growing more distant from them over time as she became more engrained in the fabric of Gallifreyan politics? as she became more and more of a Time Lord without her even noticing?

still so fucked up that we never actually get to see Andred & Leela happy (in the audios at least, they are in Lungbarrow together!)

lots of feelings about how the Outsiders are so removed from Time Lord society that they can’t tell the difference between a Cardinal & a Guard because presumably they associate any uniformed Time Lord with the Chancellery Guard as that’s the only body of Time Lord society they have contact with

"Many of these arrivals claim they cannot return to their own time. Apparently. Oh you wouldn’t believe the excuses. ‘Oh the Daleks will get us!’" Obviously Narvin at this point is just hideously xenophobic but god the fact that he’s making fun of refugees from the Dalek wars when that will eventually become himself is so wonderfully prophetic. Especially as when this was written, the Dalek version of the Time War didn’t exist yet.

obsessed with how Narvin rolls the r in Gryben in this scene. hello? i don’t remember him every rolling his rs again.

it’s been said a million times but Romana’s hypocrisy in being extremely moderate in her compassion for refugees as a whole but entirely compassionate to Leela (albeit in a patronizing way) is so delicious and is never really something that she makes an effort to fix over the course of the series. like. again she’s less xenophobic than other Time Lords but the amount she cares and is willing to make exceptions is so deeply attached to her personal feelings. (which is perhaps the reason why she’s always making exceptions for herself both out of egotism & self-hatred)

again it’s been said before but Narvin’s character development from here to being the leader of a resistance movement against Gallifrey is so fucking delicious

“If I knew anymore, I would tell you.” says the woman who allegedly has access to all of the information recorded in the universe

my Andred/Leela & Romana thoughts deserve a separate post. stay tuned.

i don’t normally outright headcanon a lot of characters with specific disabilities/neurodivergencies but Leela is autistic and i will die on this hill

i’ll never be over how absolutely horrible all of these characters are at intelligence work despite all of them, at one point or another, working for supposedly the most powerful intelligence organization in the universe

“Lapdog of Rassilon” is such a loaded insult considering the future of this show

Leela’s monologue about how she hates the Time Lords will never not be so good. and her criticisms of them are so well followed through the rest of the show

Leela threatening to kill “Torvald” from Andred’s perspective is so wonderfully fucked up and tragic

“That’s so CIA. All intervention, no intelligence.” has to be one of the funniest lines in the show tbh.

the true eventual role reversal in this show is that in ep 1, Braxiatel is the only character talking sense and being reasonable and by the end of the show he’ll be threatening to destroy most of the universe to save a single planet (i have complicated feelings about Beyond but. i love that he got so much Worse)

“Torvald” insulting Andred to Leela’s face by calling him liberal will never not be funny

“We are all of us willing to die to defend our beliefs.” GOD THIS LINE!!!!! it’s really one of my favorites in the whole series because it’s such wonderful foreshadowing because 1) as we’ve all pointed out numerous times, Romana reallllly can’t stop martyring herself. as in. she tries to kill herself “for the greater good” at least 20 times in this series (literally in half of the episodes she appears in). 2) though her self sacrificing nature remains consistent, over time and especially in the Time War series, she tries to self sacrifice more and more for her friends, not for Gallifrey or for lofty ideals (this can probably best be seen in Unity where Romana’s supposed last words to a Dalek she knows will kill her is “I will never betray those I love”). 3) aside from Romana specifically, it’s also just kind of the main thesis of the show. Wynter dies in an effort to stop Pandora/save Gallifrey. Andred dies because he finally decided his loyalties to genuine compassion for people means more than politics. Braxiatel sacrifices himself to Pandora to save Romana. even villains like Darkel die because she so adamantly won’t budge from her traditionalist/conservative views. as the Doctor would say – "Who I am is where I stand and where I stand is where I fall."

THAT’S THE TROUBLE WITH BEING A MARTYR. WE DON’T BACK DOWN, DO WE?

the mention that one day Braxiatel will own a K9 is one of the things that I was never quite able to fit into atbm

“I only go forward.” ironic statement from a woman who was literally created to bring back an ancient line of dictators

the fact that Arkadian is only in three episodes is such a travesty. he’s the only character aware that of the genre that he’s in and he’s having a blast with that self-awareness

Romana’s last line here being “I’m planning on keeping this job for a very, very long time.” ends up being so sinister knowing what she does to keep her position, how she eventually keeps trying to escape the Presidency & Gallifrey and yet it always draws her back in…

hey

did you know that i really love this series?

[midnightstargazer]

For the Give Me a Character ask game:

Ted Tonks or Rabastan

Please and thanks

Thanks @nena-96, I'll go ahead and do both!

Character ask game

Ted Tonks

How I feel about this character:

Ted is wonderful! Even though he's a very minor character in canon, there's enough of his personality to get an impression of who he was, and it's very positive. He's someone Andromeda loved enough to choose him over her family, who managed to raise an awesome kid, and who was very, very normal (described as a slob, etc.), but also had an extraordinarily good heart. Very underrated.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Only Andromeda. They're one of the few couples I can't multi-ship at all.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I headcanon that he was friends with Kingsley, and I have a lot of angsty thoughts about his time on the run with Dean Thomas and Dirk Cresswell.

My unpopular opinion about this character

Out of all the Marauders Era/First War characters, he's probably the most desirable as a long-term romantic partner. Not necessarily the most handsome or attractive - that's in the eye of the beholder anyway - and certainly not the most glamorous. But in a game of FMK, I'd choose him for marry, pretty much every time, regardless of the other options.

One thing I wish had happened with this character in canon.

I wish he had survived 😭

--

Rabastan Lestrange

How I feel about this character

Vaguely negative, mostly just meh. He's, canonically, a really horrible person. But he's also basically just a name on the page who doesn't really do anything individually, only as part of a group with more memorable characters. Torturing the Longbottoms, breaking out of Azkaban, the battle at the Department of Mysteries - he's involved in a lot, but everything he does, Bellatrix does, too, and he's just not all that interesting in comparison.

I've used him sometimes as a supporting character in fics. He's very convenient, as a known first war Death Eater and, before that, a Slytherin who most likely went to school with the Black sisters. I've read fics where he was the guy Andromeda was meant to marry, which isn't the route that I'm planning on going in Becoming Andromeda Tonks but I definitely think can work well.

I think what I'm getting at, is that I see him more as a plot device than a character?

All the people I ship romantically with this character

No one

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I guess Bellatrix and Rodolphus?

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don't think I have enough thoughts about him to have an unpopular opinion tbh

One thing I wish had happened with this character in canon.

This is something I literally just came up with on the spot, but I think it would be interesting if he had children. The only Death Eaters' kids at Hogwarts seem to be the ones whose parents got away with pretending to be under the Imperius Curse. But Draco is allowed to come back in HBP, so I assume other children with known Death Eater parents would also be allowed to attend. And this could lead to some interesting interactions in the later books, especially after Voldemort's return and the mass breakout in OotP. Rabastan would work well for this because the Lestrange name is recognizable, but he's not so important to the existing story that it would be a big deal for him to have children.

[gweniala]

Hogwarts Legacy: A minor rant

I have finished the game Hogwarts Legacy and I have something to say.

The dialogue was super generic. This is not how real people talk! Why did the Keepers not want to wield this "ancient magic"? What did Isidora do that was so wrong besides taking away people's ability to feel emotions (I mean dementor's kiss is lawful punishment) and harnessing the byproduct as power? Why didn't the Keepers explain their fears to her? Fancy accents don't make up for lack of meaning.

Highlands exploration was fine as long as it was about unlocking the map and seeing new places. Dungeons and Merlin's trials were useless after the first twenty.

The Hogwarts castle was absolutely amazing. Walking around the place was a childhood dream-come-true. Hogsmeade, also pretty cool. If the entire game was built around the castle with no interactive "you are here" map, I wouldn't mind that I'd need to learn the layout of Hogwarts by heart. Flying on a broomstick around the Hogwarts towers was amazing. Weird that it couldn't be done in Hogsmeade as well.

The "nasty" dialogue option was incredibly polite, which was hilarious.

It's weird how the main character gets to decide everything. There are four people involved in Sebastian using the killing curse on his uncle, but it's the main character who decides whether he goes to Azkaban or not. And at the time it's framed as "just give us your opinion".

There is not enough warm winter clothes in the gear appearances. I want my character to look warm!

The seaside vivarium music was gorgeous.

At the beginning of the game, I decided not to touch dark magic. Then I ducked inside a Dark Arts Arena, realised that I wasn't going to survive unless I use unforgivables (which were suddenly available among my spells?), and from then on every bad guy was shouting at me "Hey you're the one who uses dark arts!" :/

It's absolutely hilarious how many people I have murdered. And how the game just lampshades this. It's a big deal when Sebastian does it, but dude, my body count is in the hundreds, no one ever said a thing and the bodies all disappeared into thin air.

What part of putting beasts into your bag is "rescuing"? At best you sell them soon for a profit. The other options are keeping them in a tiny vivarium with way too many other beasts, and keeping them in the bag of non-existence forever. Dear Poppy, I am sorry but I am the most potent poacher in the Highlands. I have cought dozens of beasts, bread them and sold them. You're never seeing Highwing again. The last graphorn around? Forget about it. Phoenixes? Nope, not anymore. The only thing I didn't steal were the golden snidgets. Now that I think about it, it's really weird the game didn't let me "take care of them" as well.

The multicultural professor cast were fun.

There should be some way to mark all items in a collection as "seen". Scrolling through the list of conjurations or field guide pages and looking for the one new wasn't fun.

Hogsmeade is supposed to be the only fully wizarding village in England, which, I presume, means that it's the only one that doesn't have a muggle cover-up identity and a muggle population majority. So it was weird to have absolutely no muggles in the Highlands. Hear me out. How about a system where every village on the map beside Hogsmeade is a muggle village? If you get spotted doing weird shit or even practising magic, you get a warning, then suspension (boring unskippable mini-games), and can eventually be expelled (game over). You learn to Obliviate at some point, but you still have to find every individual muggle who saw you and erase their memories before they tell everyone.

The final boss fight was so much harder than the rest of the game that I had to lower my difficulty just for him. Goddamn. I hadn't died once until then…

Things that I wasn't able to do and it sucked the life out of me: Sitting at my house's table in the Great Hall and having dinner. Sleeping in my bed. Ordering butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks.

Some references to the books were stupid. I'm pretty sure that Harry's and Voldemort's wands connecting at the end of Book 4 was a very rare occurrence, and only happened because Harry was a horcrux (and had the same wand core as Voldemort). In this game, you get wand laser push-of-war three times an hour in the main quest line.

I absolutely adored the music sites throughout the castle. The enchanted instruments, the playing portraits, the piano in the Ravenclaw common room, the music room. I love the idea that music is such a normal part of a wizard's life that they have it playing on multiple points inside the castle.

It was weird to get one (very exciting!) stealth quest through "forbidden parts of the castle", only to be allowed to go there afterward without any restriction.

Sebastian and Ominis should kiss.

Ominis' reaction to Salazar's scriptorium was the best piece of dialogue from the entire game. Genuinely felt for the poor guy. And the way he keeps mentioning it later… A rare example where something has consequences in the game. Even if it's unavoidable and the consequences are mild.

[fozmeadows]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

[blueteller]

Let me drag you into hell named “Trash of the Count’s Family” with me...

So, I have found a new interesting webnovel lately (Action, Comedy, and Fantasy genres) and it’s driving me crazy, lol. I haven’t finished all of it yet, but I’m unashamed to admit I never cared for spoilers, and I already checked out the ending and all major plot points. I’d like to recommend it to everyone, even though the size of it might frighten even the most devoted fantasy lovers.

It’s worth it, though, I promise! I promise! ;_;

Here are my reasons (without Spoilers):

1. Summary:

In "Trash of the Count's Family" (or “Lout of the Count's Family" depending on translation), the main character - originally Korean named Kim Rok Soo (KRS) - suddenly transmigrates into Cale Henituse, a minor villain in the beginning of a fantasy novel (in-story, not a real book) that KRS was reading, named "Birth of a Hero". This red-haired character starts to use the name Cale from that point. The Original-Cale (OG Cale) was a supposedly a useless "trash" alcoholic son of a very rich Count. KRS-Cale wants to avoid getting beat up by the protagonist from "Birth of a Hero" named Choi Han (CH), who's also Korean - unlike KRS he kept his original body though (and CH doesn't know his life is a novel). As the result, Cale gets involved with CH and the plot, despite the fact that all he wants to do is live a painless, peaceful life - his "slacker life". As the result he becomes the main hero, even though he's quite oblivious to the fact, insisting that people won't remember him in the long run and that CH and others will take the spotlight eventually. Meanwhile, CH and the rest of Cale's crew become very loyal to him and don't mind not being the main heroes at all, much to Cale's dismay.

2. About the Main Character: Cale does a lot of shady things to reach his peaceful future, but most characters agree that he is ultimately the good guy, since he's doing everything he can to make sure no innocent people get hurt. The comedy comes from his obliviousness to how the others percieve him, insisting he's "trash" even tough everybody calls him a hero, the way he shamelessly scams people for money, robs places of hidden treasures and magic powers like a thief from a DND game, and trolls the bad guys by wearing their uniforms. Oh, and he also throws up blood a lot from overusing his powers, so gore warning, I guess...? (He has recovery powers, so he's juuust fine! [Cue the panic of his loving family as he faints])

(A running joke is that Cale's weak, but that's not entirely true. His crew calls him that, since they're all basically the strongest people on the continent, and he's the weakest member physically. But Cale is extremely OP on his own, and hardly a damsel in distress. He literally leads armies and is quite fearless, despite not liking pain and wanting to just live comfortably. As a protagonist, he is a very decent one, despite having some major weaknesses - his stamina being the biggest one.)

3. About the Story: The first 100 chapters or so are a bit slow. Cale explores a bit, finds his crew members, gains his powers, plans for the future war. I haven't read everything myself, but the story gains significant momentum by chapter 200, when the fighting really begins. Everything is a build-up to a huge war arch that I think doesn't really stop for at least the next 150. The fights are really interesting. And the interactions between the characters are extremely fun, and all of them are very unique and interesting as well. The plot is very tightly written and quite engaging.

4. About the (non-existent) Romance: What I especially like is that there is basically no romance: Cale is pretty much uninterested in anything except Money and his Slacker Life (an MC who is not a pervert??? What a shocker!!!), but gains a huge family throughout the the story. There are kittens, dragons, princes, mages, assassins, humans, elves, beast people et cetera. Each race has typical fantasy characteristics, but they're all very "human". Even the villains are well fleshed-out and interesting. Most characters have platonic relationships with each other, and there is very little romantic subplots, is any at all. (Also, love all the female characters. Even though most of the cast is male, the women present in the story are not sex icons written for fanservice - just how rare is that!?)

5. About the Writing: While it's not perfect, I think the writing is pretty good. Things go slow at first, then extremely fast and epic. Cale's perspective on things is usually hilarious. The other characters usually either fear him or love him, and as a reader you can tell why - he is no Mary Sue. Cale uses his knowledge of the events of the first 5 volumes of "Birth of a Hero" to his full advantage. He helps quite a lot of people, and ruins the plans of a lot of villains. He's a good person yet a scammer, generous yet very greedy, oblivious yet extremely charismatic - he is a complex, interesting character and VERY fun to read about.

6. About the Length: ...It's almost 800 chapters. And it's just part 1. No, I am not joking. It's half the size of the entire Lord of the Rings series. Truly, the size of this story is monstrous - however! That's because the author really cares about fleshing out this big, amazing world they had created and the characters. While it uses a lot of common tropes and cliches, they are mostly cliches done right. I've heard some complaints about how some people get annoyed by the "mental dialogues" Cale has with other characters, but personally I've enjoyed them. They're funny. Even though I couldn't finish the whole thing yet, I will definitely do it one day. Still, I deeply pity the current manga series (about 70 chapters at this point - barely 1/15 of the story complete), or any possible future anime adaptations (don't jump at me with names, I KNOW this is Korean and they use different names for comics and cartoons, okay??) - because that'll be at least "Naruto" size of a story to adapt, if not "One Piece" once it's finished, and that's... insane. I don't they can do it without a global following fanbase. While the story would deserve it, I doubt that will happen any time soon. IF they manage to do it, though? Believe me - it will be some of the most entertaining, epic stuff ever. I'll be cheering them on. This is first Korean stuff I've ever read, but it's really good.

7. Conclusion: I say it's worth checking out for anyone, despite how long it is. Even though this ~770 chapters-long monster of a novel might seem daunting, I personally started get invested already about chapter 20 - since I am a big dragon fan. The dragon lore alone in this story is something really incredible. Any fantasy fan will enjoy it. Though it is "just part 1", it is a very satisying story with a neat conclusion. Laugh with me as Cale faints from power overuse, and the other characters fret around him force-feeding him apple pie while he insists he's fine. It's cute, it's hilarious, it's epic, and it's very interesting.

[neptunemagia]

@its-decido asked so I shall deliver. Here are all of my gender and sexuality headcannons for Sailor Moon.

For reference I ship Michiru x Haruka, Rei x Minako, Inners poly pile, Ami x Makoto, Mamoru x Usagi x Seiya, Kunzite x Jadeite, Chibiusa x Hotaru, and Princess Kakyuu x Reformed Galaxia. The only ships I have strong feelings against is anything that breaks up harumichi and anything involving Prince Demande bcuz he sucks ass and doesn’t deserve love.

Usagi is bi with a preference for her precious Mamo-chan. She/her, potentially some cutesy neo-pronouns.

As the goddess of love it only makes sense for Minako to be pansexual. She/her.

I think Ami would be demiromantic and demisexual. Not really sure of she’d like multiple genders or just girls. She/her, but might try out she/they at some point.

Makoto is bi. She crushes on everything that breathes within a ten mile radius of her. Preference for guys and more masculine girls. She/her, I think trans girl Mako headcannons are super cute.

Rei is the man hating lesbian straight men fear. In the manga, she makes it clear that she hardly tolerates the existence of men, so I doubt she would date one. The 90s anime always felt really weird, so I’m calling it internalized homophobia (she went to Catholic school after all). She/her or maybe she/they, purely out of spite for this world.

Chibiusa, much like her mother, is bi and in love with everyone. Even horse boy gets a kiss. She and Hotaru are canonically the same age when she is reborn. It’s not problematic, you just don’t like it. Which is fine, but chill out a little. She/bunself, it’s the 30th century, her using neo pronouns is entirely realistic.

Michiru is literally the biggest lesbian to ever lesbian. I get vibes like she has mommy AND daddy issues. There’s no such thing as a mentally well artist after all. She/her.

I can see Haruka as being non-binary or a cis woman. Lesbian, potentially bisexual (NOT biromantic), with a heavy preference for ladies. Anime Haruka absolutely has some kind of religious trauma. All she talks about is going to hell for her sins. She/they (maybe ze/zir).

I stand by Setsuna being aroace. The Endymion thing felt like filler, and all she ever talked about was his lavender jacket. Next season, her only outfit is a lavender jacket (I distinctly remember her wearing a lavender tee shirt in Crystal as well). She’s even stated to be an aspiring fashion designer. Clearly she was just jealous of his suit. She/they/it, because as an eternal being this gender shit is probably pretty pointless to her.

Hotaru is some form of gay. Lesbian, bi, pan, no idea. All I know is she has a massive crush on Chibiusa. She/it, she probably has some crazy depersonalization going on with Mistress 9 and the cyborg stuff.

Seiya, Seiya, Seiya. I get heavy trans masc vibes from them, but Naoko did say all sailor senshi were women, so I’m going with the in-between of non-binary and/or genderfluid. As for sexuality, I’m just going to leave it as sapphic. She/he/they/ze. Do they even have gender/pronouns on Kinmoku?

I refuse to see Yaten as anything other than a aroace girly girl. Yaten forever chooses sleep over sex . She/her.

Taiki confuses and upsets me to no end. The hair makes it so unbelievably painful to think about them that I leave my thoughts at pansexual they/them.

Kakyuu is bi, and all loving like Usagi, our other princess. She/her.

Manga Mamoru is the token straight friend. Anime Mamoru is bi purely because of the Fiore arc. He/him.

feel free to request a continued analysis of the genders/sexualities of minor characters and villains, other headcannons, along with my list of which villains are redeemable (all monsters of the day will be included, you have been warned)

[ukaiknowsbest]

Review: Tamayomi

[will contain spoilers]

Lately I have been pretty bored with the recent developments in Daiya no A and Oofuri. New Shonen anime stuff just don't appeal to me, so I bit the bullet and watched Tamayomi for at least one episode a day.

Like me, people would normally think "HOW TF ARE THEY GOING TO PLAY BASEBALL? AREN'T THEY WEARING SHORTS??? IS THIS JUST FANSERVICE?? OMYGOD"

But I did it. I watched the whole thing. 12 episodes.

And I enjoyed it.

THE SETUP/PLOT

pretty standard fare

Pitcher Yomi Takeda accidentally reunites with her childhood friend who's actually a nationals-level in middle school catcher when they both end up in the same highschool.

School: former powerhouse located in Saitama, now baseball club is almost non-existent. Yomi and a few other will try to revive the team from scratch.

Basically Shin Koshigaya is a brand new team where they struggle to look for new members and majority are first years.

They have to face other stronger teams even when they have a few members and some decent players.

Demographic is SEINEN (like oofuri, last inning, one outs, etc.)

CHARACTERS

Yomi Takeda as Main character and pitcher- skilled, resilient, funny, hardworking, does a lot of research which enabled her to perfect her form and hone her breaking ball. She keeps improving in a good pace too.

Tamaki Yamazaki former childhood friend of Yomi. Is a decent catcher in middle school. A bit well known. Good communicator.

Yoshino - team manager and coach. srsly she is a boss. She's not infallible but she tries her best.

and other decent players with adequate skill

For a sports anime they have decent cast. This is probably the closest we can currently get of a story where the girls are just focused on the sport, do their own strategizing/planning/training. All of them are cute but also serious about what they do.

There's no boys here so there's no talk about het-crushes and other distractions. It's a clamfest babyyyy.

I've seen a little of Major 2 (the one abt the son and his coed team) and I couldn't stand it because it was just slice of life in sportsy undertones.

There is also decent communication among all the players. It's pretty refreshing to watch. The catcher is well rounded and the pitcher is good. Everyone talk things out and there is not a lot of drama.

FANSERVICE

Wearing shorts to a sport that involves a lot of making contact with the ground is just illogical lmao.

Their school uniform skirt is pretty short

A little bit of their manager prodding the thighs of each person she meets but with good reason (she can tell how much muscle/exercise a person does just by a little prodding). It's a trope thing.

That's all. There are no panty shots, unnecessary locker room nudity, boob action, see through sweaty shirts. Most of the cringy things I've seen in other girls sports anime aren't present.

Eventually I even forget that they're wearing shorts or that it impedes their performance. It seems like it doesn't matter much to the characters so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know if like the hugging or holding hands is considered fanservice. In my experiece we ladies just act like that irl. What they do is nothing out of the ordinary.

REALISM

3/5. They wear shorts and dont tie their hair up. The baseball part seem pretty decent though. The pacing of the story and matches was like watching IRL Koshien. It's all very clinical and straightforward.

Plus they include a lot of interesting baseball stuff which I haven't seen happen in early stages of other shonen anime like: specifically training the pitcher in other positions, showing what fielders yell to each other, letting other relievers start to reserve their ace (ppl can yell DnA did this but remember Tanba was injury boy throughout Act 1).

COMPARISON TO OTHER BASEBALL MANGA

based on technicality Tamayomi is prolly one of the top among baseball anime/manga I have seen.

Last Inning

Oofuri

Tamayomi

Daiya no A

Now don't chase me with pitchforks because of this ranking just yet. The fact that Shin Koshigaya coach's decisions and reasonings for plays and lineups are discussed makes the show at par with Last Inning and Oofuri. (we dont see DnA kataoka talk abt this sht like..ever)

Moreover Tamayomi has similar vibes to Oofuri/Big Windup but less dramatic. I do not think it's good for beginners too (especially with just 12 episodes). You need to have prior baseball knowledge to understand what the characters were doing.

However, this show is probably the most no-fuss baseball anime/manga I have watched. It does not rely on hype like DnA and it also don't have heavy topics like Oofuri and Last Inning. It's not wacky like One Outs and it's not uber slice of life like Cross Game. It's just baseball.

My minor complaint is that they don't give numbers when talking about things like pitching speed tho. It would've been more realistic if actual numbers were dropped XD

ART/ DESIGN/ANIMATION

A.k.a the thing most viewers complain about.

Character design is subpar. Everyone's faces are almost the same. You can tell who's the character not by face but by hair and height. Personally I don't mind this. I don't really look for realism in most things I watch. And I think the hair designs are cool.

Lots of people drop this show because of bad animation. There are shots/scenes where it's like I'm watching fanmade AMV's in nicovideo/youtube from the early 2000's. Pitching motions and Batting motions look like character movements in rpg games.

It's not really a problem for me though. I think it's charming for some reason. I don't mind it. A lot of people do but I'm not them.

CONCLUSION

NGL I wanted more. 12 episodes is too short. I hope a better animation company picks this up. I'm rewatching the whole thing because I enjoyed it a lot. I'll even check out the manga if I have time.

If anyone's interested here's my tamayomi livetweet thread

This is one of the closest thing I could get to what a decent girl sports anime looks like. If the character designs, art, animation and the uniforms were just better this show would have gone pretty far.

Compared to Shonen types of manga this was relaxing to watch, especially before bed. I'd honestly recommend it you wanna watch smth that doesnt involve a lot of feelings and drama but still feel like watching an actual sport.

Girls are fun. Finally.

[personal notes under the cut]

I get that people reading this would think I'm being too optimistic about a show they considered shtty but I kid you not, I dropped Bakuten (boys gymnastic's anime) coz even with it's wonderful animation i thought it was boring af.

I have dropped so many prettily animated shows coz i just cant get into the characters nor the story.

I've also said before in my Two Car review that I am actively avoiding shows with popular VA's. Idk much abt female VA's in anime, therefore watching Tamayomi was the perfect solution for me.

The reason I like tamayomi so much is that it gave me the same feeling of watching Summer Koshien 2021. I just think an anime that made me remember that kind of feeling was cool.

I'll rewatch hanebado next. wish me luck.

[untitled-seven]

I ask of the ocs

oh my god i owe you my life now hope u know that

they r literally just vibing omg so they r homestuck fellows but ngl they r so distanced from homestuck by now the sheer number of aus --

currently @mr-loverbee & i r doing uhh lets see werewolf au, magic au, and most recently angel/devil au magic school au is fun because its really great to think of better ways to handle this shit than jk rowling the possibilities r limitless so far i have a rly detailed idea of the magic system & vague plot 4 this so if u wanna see any of that i have a few spreadsheets worth of info & a good 4000 words of non rp writing

main recurring characters are:

naivix (nick)

cody

yvaowo (yvonne)

siuoll (saul)

maynrd (maynard)

huntte (hunter)

auriga (austin)

alexia (alexia)

amorei (amy)

vaughn (veronica)

tadcen (thaddeus)

fedexx (fabian/fedex)

falvyn (flynn) (villian)

green lady (grace) (villian)

codys dad (villian)

maccoy (extremely minor character for comedic relief & any arson that isnt naivixs fault)

most of them have 1-3 character sheets but im 2 lazy 2 dig those up rn so ill give a brief summary of them all or whatever

uve met naivix & cody, they r the head honchos of this operation & the originals (i mean technically siuoll came first but nobody cares)

their main schtick is that nick is a wonderful amazing alien boy (in like 3 aus) and otherwise just a wonderful amazing boy. he does him some archery & shit, he is amazing in every way, he is hot, and he is @mr-loverbee's idea of a manwhore. cody is a human sack of shit. in p much every au he is a conspiracy theorist who lives in his basement, which his father set up for him after pulling him out of school in 7th grade. from there codys education consisted of 4chan browsing. since i wrote this character 4 the 1st time hes changed a little bit -- for one ive made his story a little more watertight and yk. just generally fixed it up. he was intended to be a joke character. he ended up being the reason i got a boyfriend. shit changes.

they are basically all relationship goals. thank you.

siuoll and yvonne? siuoll likes yvonne. yvonne really doesnt know how she feels. they are childhood friends with naivix, who loves them but continues to pursue a wider circle, leaving siuoll, the depressed homebody, and yvonne, the shy introvert, to fend for themselves. in most aus, siuoll considers cody, who joins their group very late, bad news. (basement dwelling alien? potential friend stealer??). yvonne and cody, though, become very close and reach a deep understanding. this group is cuddly. they are an outlet for cuddles. these four absolutely cuddle profusely.

maynrd and huntte? huntte is minding his own business. he is an upright prick who would never break a rule. he has a repressed desire to be a rock star and he keeps a guitar that he cant play hidden in his home. maynrd is annoying, flawed, and painfully charismatic. he is an actor, he wants to be seen, and he and huntte are matched mostly in their egomania. they are opposites and so they r vry funny to play and 1000% good corruption arc material. maynrd and huntte r go-to main characters for black-and-white morality plots -- superhero/supervillain, angel/devil, etc. these two are fun -- i love making huntte go absolutely batshit.

amorei is caught between the two. she starts pretty consistently as hunttes girlfriend, however, the two are similar in their strong wills and quick tempers. though maynrd, amorei, and huntte are three of a kind, they are just different enough that no matter how you slice it, it just doesnt pan out cleanly

most plots involve some sort of huntte corruption arc, or require maynrd to be hurt before the two realize how one truly cant exist without the other. a fantastic outlet for drama

to continue on amorei, after huntte turns his back on her, she pursues vaughn. though she still has feelings for huntte, she would prefer to ignore them and seek easy outlets for her bitterness as opposed to addressing the bigger problem. in some aus she is good friends with maynrd despite their love triangle -- they both need someone to gripe about huntte to, after all

vaughn tolerates amorei, though at the end of the day she isnt entirely invested in it. she cares, but in a distant way, and she isnt able to return amoreis angry passion. amorei deserves a lot better, in short

auriga & alexia r off 2 the side. auriga is often unexplored and alexia is mostly just the glue holding everyone together -- she spends a lot of time being the mom friend and putting others first. auriga is the one she goes home to -- in the sort of "main" au auriga is an empath who is troubled by the conflicts of the others (naivix ends up burning down the library where huntte works after a troubling event involving siuoll questioning their friendship in public (for additional context, in the frame of reference that troll romance gives, naivix is sort of kind of cheating on siuoll with cody in a friendship way). siuoll being jealous of cody leaves cody adrift in it all, he has no place to stay because he lives with naivix so he turns to auriga and alexia and eventually yvonne (who is roommates with maynrd). auriga is unable to stand his worry and grief surrounding where he stands with naivix. long story short, that was a long story and thats the very very short version)

continuing down the list, fedexx is troubled and tad is caught up in it. thats the only way im going to put it because thats an even bigger can of worms. fedexx is a sort of semi-friend to them all. tad is their latest conquest who gets a bit too mixed up in fedexxs shit, proving that tad is in fact the unluckiest bastard to ever exist by catching feelings for the guy. yikes. anyway.

falvyn and the green lady are assholes inspired by characters played by a batshit lady on a roleplaying server. falvyn hit on naivix and is, as such, portrayed as a creepy ex who preyed on naivix when he was too young to really understand what he was getting into. the green lady is either portrayed as his mother or as the omnipotent being she was originally cast as. yes. the lady who stands and watches cody for an extended period of time, calmly breaking down his worldview and providing incentive for codys once baseless paranoia. ah yes, exactly the way to handle an anxious, abused kid who learned everything he knows from his jackass dad. in one particularly spicy au, codys dad and the green lady are together, making flynn codys stepbrother. i could overexplain that one anytime -- the plot and character dynamics are amazing in my opinion. creme de la creme

thats another story

codys dad is bezos personal stalker. i really want to say all about him but this is getting long. suffice to say that hes a dickbag and a waste of air

a few of our aus are:

heathers (first au)

it was all a dream (nick works at publix)

naivix fucking dies

party

superhero/soulmate/alien school au

plain ol superhero au

werewolf

monster under the bed

angel/devil

zombie apocalypse

fluff

magic school

i dont blame you if you didnt read this all the way through! ik its a lot & some of its dumb af but these characters hold a special place in my heart and they often feel like friends to me. several of them were the catalysts for some of my strongest relationships. i still act out these characters lives on a daily basis, they are growing with me as people. many of them started as two dimensional characters who gained a life of their own. they litter my sketchbooks, most of my writing is about them, they are the subject of so much of my conversations. they saw us in and out of some of the worst bits of our lives. hell, i even have a fucking naivix sticker on my computer that my boyfriend made for me.

so yeah. thank you for asking about my ocs.