#I mean there are worse ships in both fandoms

[welivetodream]

✨ My BSD hot takes/unpopular opinions ✨:

1. Identifying BSD characters as Queer, is not problematic. STOP being so Heteronormative. Gay characters are not gonna kill you.

If I see another "BuT tHe ChArAcTeRs nEvEr SaId tHeY aRe GaY" I would bomb you 💣/j

2. Skk/SSKK/Fyolai/other popular ships, exist because people like it. If you don't ship them, don't engage with their content. Not all shippers act crazy and toxic. Stop blaming everything on shippers.

3. Atsushi/Kyouka is problematic, stop justifying it with "only 4 year age gap". Kyouka is a CHILD, ship her with Kenji if you want. Atsushi, like a normal 18 year old would never look at a highschool freshman and date her. Even if they date in the future, he knew her when she was younger and they had a sibling like dynamic. Lucy is a way better love interest to Atsushi (Don't know if this is an unpopular opinion tho, but I saw some people justifying it 😐😐😐)

4. DAZAI IS NOT EVIL. HE IS FAR FROM EVIL. He is, despite being super popular and the face of BSD, the most mischaracterized and villified character. Morally grey characters exist??!!!

5. Mori is a way worse person than Dazai ever was.

6. PM members get a free pass for any heinous crime they commit by being hot or babygirl-ified (still love them tho, we do not often discuss how bad their actions have been, you can like criminals and acknowledge they are criminals in fiction. I would add DoA to this too, but it's worse with the PM)

7. Akutagawa's abuse of Kyouka shouldn't be forgotten just because Dazai abused Akutagawa.

8. Mori emotionally manipulated and abused Dazai when he was a teen. Just because it wasn't physical, doesn't mean it was nothing.

9. Atsushi is NOT a soft boy, he is way bitter, salty and sarcastic than we give him credit

10. Poe is important to Ranpo and their friendship/relationship is wholesome as hell

11. Ranpo and Yosano's friendship is way better than them being in a relationship in the future

12. FukuFuku is better than Fukumori (imo!!!!)

13. Buying real authors work after watching BSD is actually a really good thing, since more Gen z kids (or other people) will read classics

14. There are layers to Atsushi and Akutagawa relationship/rivalry, and they have the MOST important relationship (not meaning romantic, just in general) in the entire canon.

15. Kunikida and Yosano could be a power couple

16. Fyodor is not a great villain (yet)

17. Nikolai CARRIES the DoA

18. Sigma shouldn't be in the ADA, he needs a happy home, family and some time to adjust to normal life

19. Q and Elise are both underused characters and could become a great dynamic

20. Ango deserves more love, the amount of pressure and stress he deals with is INSANE

21. It's OKAY if everyone joins the fandom for Dazai or skk (I did at first too!!)

22. Higuchi is annoying as hell. I do not get her hype, I like her but not as much as most people (just personal opinion, do not flame me 😭)

23. Everyone in The Guild is forgettable or boring (except Fitzgerald, Poe and Lucy. I like Louisa, but I forget her all the time)

24. Hetero ships are just not that great/interesting in BSD to me 🤷🏻‍♀️ (except maybe AtsuLucy or rare pairs) and female characters are not best utilised, I wish they play more major roles (can't wait for Agatha to arrive!!)

25. Some fan theories/arts get the story better than "canon" stuff at times. Fanon is NOT always the worst (sometimes enjoyable when the canon gets too dark or sad)

26. Toxic ships are okay in fiction as long as they are legal. Humans like toxic things, we consume it like junk food 💅🏻

(These are all personal opinions of mine and do not matter. Feel free to disagree. But, do not hate or be toxic!!!! 😇😇😇😇)

(PS: I compiled all these because of posts I have seen in, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitter and sometimes Tiktok. These aren't really abt you Tumblr folks)

[pinktwinkiezoppo]

I apologize to any Danny Phantom fans looking through my blog only for them to find out that I ship Danny with Ben 10

[seiya-starsniper]

.

[greensaplinggrace]

unfortunately i'm like 160 episodes into tma and still don't get the obsession with martin. like i don't hate him but also- literally every other character and relationship is more interesting. also fanon version of him sucks lol. canon version of him is actually appealing to me in some ways, but considering fanon martin makes 90% of tma fic unreadable, i'm not too stoked about even having him tagged half the time.

[soubiapologist]

i don't expect any of you to understand the reference but alice cooper. from riverdale. is a little like if a loveless character was really really really fucking funny

[grimm-the-tiger]

I propose an alliance between the Our Flag Means Death and The Terror fandoms. Our Flag Means Terror. 

[anurarana]

does anyone else with ocs ever like idk imagine the like "fandom" surrounding ur characters and just wanna blow everything up

[shipsandmyths]

lately I've come across a couple people both here and on tiktok that are now getting into supernatural and basically going "woah you destiel shippers were not kidding, I always thought you were probably exaggerating". And it's like we definetely were not, but I also wonder where this reaction comes from and I think I've got it.

We all know what fandom is, especially if we're talking about non-canon ships. We take the subtext and make it textual, we live in the crevices of stolen glances and romantic paralels. But most of the time there's another (straight) canon ship that the writers can use to queerbait us, being like "see? this is who he really wants". Take BBC Merlin, for example: the devotion and closeness between Merlin and Arthur is obvious, but it's easy to point at Arthur's feelings for Gwen and say "see? this is what's real. you're reading too much into it".

Destiel doesn't have one. The very (mysoginistic) nature of the show means neither Dean nor Cas have any significant relationships the writers could point to and show us the "truth" so there is nothing to distract from what's obviously happening on our screens. There is no great romantic storyline to tell us "this is who he really wants" so they are all that it's left and what's between them becomes undeniable. What's even worse, the other main relationship in the show is as platonic as you can get because Sam and Dean are related (let's ignore the existence of wincest please and thank you), so the difference between Dean's relationship with Sam and his relationship with Cas is so stark, so obvious, that is hard to even begin to compare them and try to paint them both with the same brush.

I know I'm just rambling but would love to hear your thoughts on it.

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

yooooo!!! you’re my favorite ethan winters artist i just wanna say that first and foremost, thank you for the wholesome content of my comfort character and father figure 🥹🫶

i’m really curious bc i feel like i see a lot of people against mithan (not me personally, i’m p neutral on them!) but i’m curious to know all your thoughts on them! thoughts on their canon relationship, their fanon portrayal, the backlash against them/mia accusations, and your headcanons? i’m just really interested!!! hopefully that’s not weird :”)

have a good day!! sparkle on!!! ✨💖

i heart mithan... i think that they can be so cute...

i personally hc them t4t and i like to think that the dated in highschool before they both had fully transitioned

mia likes to bake and ethan likes to scrap book and he always likes to take pictures of mias cakes/ baked goods and has a album for them 😭

i am a multishipper so i draw a lot of ethan ships so my girl is left out sometimes and im sorry mia 😔

i actually really like their relationship, its a really complex dynamic that i like to talk about with my friends

i think the issue is that when talking about mithan or mia in general, theres just SO MUCH misinformation that its honestly a pain the butt to talk about

people still think that she was responsible for the creation of eveline, people still think that she experimented on eveline, people still use examples of her attacking ethan as if she did it on her own will instead of being mind controlled

in reality she was just someone who oversaw the transportation of evie. im not excusing her or anything because obviously she knew what she was doing, but people really try to accuse her of doing something she didnt and it bothers me alot lol

the problem with the fandom is that people either try to water her down to girlboss who did nothing wrong and fail to acknowledge the complexity/ moral grayness of her character and the other side is misogynists 😭😭😭😭

its hard to talk about her without people either going "stop trying to villainize her and make her look bad!" or people ACTUALLY villainizing her and acting like heisenberg would have treated him better 😭😭

mithan is such a sad relationship because they loved each other so much and that ended up being the reason their relationship fell apart (sort of... its not like the broke up... ethan kinda just straight up died)

i get a lot a trouble for saying this, but mia is a selfish person.

its not a bad thing! well i mean it is but it doesnt make her some evil witch who is somehow worse than the guy how made a werewolf american ninja warrior. its just a major character flaw she has! which is good! mia being a flawed person who makes mistakes and morally gray decisions make her a more interesting person!

she is selfish in the way that she wants to keep her family with her no matter the cost. even if it means lying to ethan about her job so that he wont think different of her. here is a interrogation from the re7 DLC, which is easy to miss!

she isnt necessarily trying to apologize for the things she has done, she is more of a, "u wont need to forgive me in the first place if we just forget it all and move on"

she doesn't try to redeem herself for what she has done, she tries to move on and return to the normal life that she wants so bad. which is fine! everyone copes a different way and she has to right to move on from her trauma. the problem that lies in this is that she has a shared trauma with ethan who still has no idea what went on in dulvey and still effects him till the present (he is mold! this is a important thing to know! most people would want to know if they were a walking corpse)

she played a direct part in what happened in dulvey, and im not referring to the email, she did not send that. she never wanted ethan to come in the first place. she tried her best to send a video to him, begging him to forget about her because she wanted to protect him, BUT it didnt send.

he got involved because she was involved. its honestly a series of really really unfortunate events.

THOUGH! she did know what she was getting into. im tired of seeing the narrative that mia was innocent and didnt know what was going on or was simply a bystander. she knew what she was doing, she knew eveline was a bioweapon, she knew eveline was a child. she used a MACHINE GUN! she knows how to use weapons and was obviously trained for it.

she tried her best to keep everybody out of the mess, ex: warning the bakers not to take them in, warning ethan not to find her, sacrificing herself for ethan in the later half of re7

but again, those are the consequences of HER actions

her consequences just happen to get really big and end up hitting ethan on the head like a metal sheet 😭

their relationship is really so interesting, it makes me really sad to think about sometimes 😭they both went through something that nobody else would ever understand, in the end they really only have each other. they get moved to an entire different country and the dulvey incident gets covered up with a "gas leak"

its really tragic because their marriage definitely had some flaws and bumps. and i know im repeating myself but its because people always take this in the worst way possible but just because i say their relationship was rocky doesnt mean im saying they dont love each other!!! thats the entire basis of mias character!! saying she doesnt love ethan would destroy her entire character!

you can see in the re8 DLC how fondly ethan talks about mia! he loves her so much, though im not sure if his comments in the DLC are him narrating current (post re8) or his thoughts before everything went down and he died (pre re8)

everything mia did was because she LOVED ethan. she would never do anything to intentionally hurt him, she is not a cruel person. she hides the truth of her job from ethan pre re7 because she loves him and doesnt want her job to drive them apart. she CONTINUES to refuse to tell ethan the truth post re7 because she wants to move on a live a happy normal life with him and knows something like her being directly associated with the connections would probably cause (more) problems. she refuses to tell ethan that he is mold because again, hard to live a happy marriage with your husband after you tell him hes a bioweapon.

obviously i dont think it was right that she did this, thats what makes her selfish! she did it for herself! she did it for her family! she thought it would work out, she thought that they could move on and be happy together.

the issue is that ethan didnt want to forget. he wanted to know what happened, he wanted to know the part mia played, he wanted answers! which is reasonable! he knows to some extent that mia was partially responsible for his involvement and he was always suspcious that mia was lying to him about her job which is implied when mia says "you were right, i did lie to you"

she doesnt learn, she doesnt stop lying, her lies get bigger and worse and it sucks yeah but it makes her so interesting!!! she keeps doing stupid things under the idea that this is whats best for her and her family, that if she hides this everything will work out and it will be for the better but its not!

just because telling your husband hes dead and a bioweapon is a hard subject to bring up doesnt mean you DONT bring it up. people shouldnt use that as a reason to excuse mia 😭, its a very bad excuse and honestly highlights how horrible their communication skills were. you cant just not tell your husband that he is actually infected with the mold and not tell him for the tree years between post re7 and pre re8.

im not saying these things to put mia down, or try and villanize her. these are all just actual things her character does! she isnt evil, but she isnt a knight in shining armor either. we need to be able to have talks about complex characters without crying everytime someone points out a flaw. characters have flaws! and mia just happens to have a lot of them!

im not mad at her, i dont dislike her because i think this way of her. shes a fictional character! you can like characters that are morally gray, or villains that drink blood and make corpse soldiers. they are fictional! pointing out the flaws of a character does not mean i dont like them.

i wouldnt call her "the real villain of re8" but i wouldnt treat her like a damsel in distress either. she is a competent person, she knows what shes doing, she has her reasons for doing them. she made bad descions with good intentions behind them! they can coexist and we should let them!

i like mithan! its a complex relationship because they both love each other so much but hurt each other in the process

talking about them is just a pain in the butt because talking about mia is a pain in the butt lol

i really hate how she keeps getting sidelined, its super frustrating to see mia get put in a cage in every game 😭

its even more frustrating that mia straight up just disappears???? in the shadows of rose DLC... like she just stops taking care of rose and theres nothing said about it. no reason or explanation. i dont think mia would ever ditch rosemary because she didnt care about her, but we probably will never know because capcom sucks at writing and they probably forgot the mia ever even existed.

all in all, i think the fandom is really just full of misinformation which make people either think mia is some horrible evil person, or its full of people who think that saying mia messed up is the equivalent of comparing her to wesker lol.

i really love mia, shes a incredibly fun and complex character, its just hard to enjoy her sometimes with the people in the fandom haha.

also ive got no idea what u meant by "the backlash against them/mia accusations" so sorry if i didnt answer that!

thank u for the ask! sorry for the long response!

[muffinlance]

Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???

Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:

Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.

"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.

None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.

An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:

I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it

I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.

Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”

TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.

[consistentscreaming]

I'm relistening to The Magnus Archives, and I made a list of Actual Canonical Details we as a fandom forget about

- sasha gets coffee from a specific coffee shop every morning

- Jon has an excellent sense of direction

- canonically in artifact storage there is: a wardrobe light cannot penetrate, a carved rock eye that interferes with the video cameras and therefore is kept in a black velvet bag, and a scalpel ride with disease no matter what they use to sterilize it, kept in a hermetically sealed plastic box

- during halloween week, they have to call in the archives as backup due to the influx of statements. jon canonically gets a good nights sleep after disproving these statements.

- Jon sincerely believes he is far too unlucky for statements to just be a hallucination

- Not-sasha asked not to be recorded multiple times

- when told he benifited from gertrude's death, jons only response was "...I didn't?"

- [daisy became police in ~2002, almost 15 years before the story starts...meaning she is canonically late thirties/early 40s

- even when compared with the paranormal, daisy considers car accidents worse

- mary keay made an eye pun "i know the institute and i haven't always seen eye to eye, as it were"

- jon noticed when ghost hunt uk stopped updating

- sasha is taller than not-sasha

- annabelle dresses like a vintage clothing store exploded on her, has bleach blonde hair and dark skin

- annabelle looked "like the type of person that talked to cleaners as if they were actual people"

- annabelle looms over the cleaner by almost a full foot, meaning she Tall

- "the moment i die will feel just the same as this one" is not just a georgie thing, it's an End thing in general, as proved in ep 70

- not-sasha tends to stay late

- martin worked at the institute in 2009

- micheal has curly sandy blonde hair

-micheal is tall

- melanie and jon are on the same wavelength, and when working together they both came to the same conclusions with the same evidence

- elias does not think daisy is smart

- georgie is observant, and pays attention to peoples behavior

- melanie thought jon killing someone with a pipe was "wildly out of character" for him

- georgie and jon have a mutual friend named Jess who thinks Hungarian food is "too Soviet"

- jon borrowed georgie's coat when he went to meet jude perry

- jon tells jude to kill him as an ultimatum every five minutes

- elias tells tim that when presented with horrors, he finds comfort in beaurocrocy

- jared hopworth is handsome with cheekbones and a jawline to die for

- georgie was canonically willing to cover for jon to the police with no context after an unpleasant breakup and after no contact for almost 5 years

- georgie grew up poor in liverpool, and had a scouse accent until she went to oxford

- basira is a huge nerd and will talk about what she's reading to anyone who will listen

- nikola makes an allusion to not having a face

- martin and melanie got along fantastically

- georgie told jon that he needs anchors

- "if something happened to you, or-or god forbid, The Admiral, I-"

- "Don't be a Stranger." georgie thinks she's funny

- michael had a childhood friend who was taken by something like michael (schizophrenic) and that's what drove him to the magnus institut-he never you over what he saw or didn't see

- Hannah is a black woman who works in the library, had a "Thing With The Milk In The Breakroom" in april 2016. Went on maternal leave to have a baby in June of 2017.

- elias enjoys scheduling

- martin zones out when he has to read a statement, and often takes little notice of his surroundings when doing so/about to do so

- martin was looking for a book called "marvelous spiritualism and the circus in tge 19th century" and a guy named tom said tim had it checked out

- danny and tim didn't talk much, but were still close

- Abigail Ellison-who tim calls abby- is a mutual friend of tim and danny's from "back home"

- tim shipped danny and abby

- out of the two of them, danny was more assertive and tim "had never been able to stand in the way of his confidence"

- tim has a big armchair, a printer, and a couch

- melanie has made everyone in the archives cry

- [basira loved wtg until it "took a weird turn in season 3" when they introduced something she thought was odd

- melanie, basira, and martin used to go out for drinks, and martin and basira were gossip buddies

- Melanie's dad had dementia relatively young, but he always remembered her. He called her "Little Moth", and her mothers life insurance helped pay for him to be put into Ivy Meadows Care Home-where he was killed by the Corruption at the hands of John Amherst before Julia and Trevor burnt it down.

- julia is in her early thirties and wears nondescript hard wearing denim

- jon thought that reading statements could be a classical addiction, but decided that even if it was he had no time to, as he put it, "experiment"

- Peter was surprised that elias killed people kimself-implying elias has people to do murders for him. what other murders did he commission

- martin and basira both noticed something wrong with melanie after the Elias Incidint when her work started to deteriorate-martin said she'd always been "quite conscientious"

- right after being told by basira that standing by with a cup of tea wasnt enough, when melanie entered the room Martin immediately offered her a cup of tea.

- Martin knocked over a stack of papers and defended himself by saying that they shouldn't have been there. the absolute madlad

- after micheal stabbed jon, jon told martin he stabbed himself with a bread knife; and martin then proceeded to A) believe him and B) not trust him with anything sharp after that

- Gerry didn't care abt what happened in the unknowing bc he's a book. jon asked if he was serious. Gerry responded that he was, in fact, dead serious.

- gerry teases jon by saying he doesn't know anything before rescinding that statement avd giving the vaguest hint possible. he's such a dickhead i love him

- gerard didn't trust gertrude-he wanted to, but she reminded him of his mother

- gerard called trevor and julia "the van helsings"

- gerry was jealous of lietner bc his mom paid so much attention to them

- mary haunted gerard for 5 years before gertrude destroyed her, and gerry cried with relief when gertrude gave him back the destroyed book

- before the unknowing, daisy was running around killing mannequins and other Strangers

- tim didn't think they would be able to stope the unknowing

- jon would rather have tim where he could see him-which is why he let tim come (guilt guilt guilt guilt GUILT GUILT GUIL GU

- basiras dad couldn't stand people who passively whined about their problems. he always said "If you don't like something, you accept it and you adapt, or you fight, and you change it. Whining doesn't help."

- Melanie was depressed before the unknowing

- jon rambles about his latest insights and melanie wants to punch him.

- martin: "it felt good, weaving my own little web." "Also, i get to burn some stuff, so that's cool"

- basira was the one to suggest that they not tell Melanie they were doing surgery

-Daisy made jon listen to the Archers. "I hate it. but it feels... good, to hate something that can't hurt me"

[splatoonpolls]

Hello! So I’ve been a part of fandom culture for a long while (and survived 2020 danganronpa tikto). So here comes some really great tips

Block and filter LIBERALLY, I promise you blocking a tag of a ship you don’t like or just blocking an artist because you don’t like that ship they focus on may sound petty. But it does prevent harassment from both sides

Take your time with projects, unless it’s a commission or Art trade. Do not try to pressure yourself if you have stuff like school. (What I mean here is personal projects have no deadlines if you don’t set them, because it’s only one person in charge. Commissions, Art trades, and requests may also have deadlines and should also be taken with a lot of care and time).

Dont let the fandom consume you so much, if you feel like the drama is too much. You’re allowed to stay silent and just go for a walk or crochet

Don’t lie about your age to others, just don’t.

Never prioritize a fandom over yourself. If a social media ever gets too toxic. DELETE IT OFF YOUR DEVICE.

Some people may have worse media literacy than you and some may have better than you, if an argument occurs. Try to make sure you don’t spend too much time on something that will drain you at the end. You can just leave or block. There is no actual penalty for leaving an argument over an anime character.

Do what you want to do, don’t just draw the popular character because they’re popular. Draw them because you like drawing them

[emrysflame]

Talking about Lucemond

So I talked about how judgment with this ship in the fandom is weird bc like it’s honestly not that bad compared to other ships. And the ships that are arguably worse are praised more and hated way less than Lucemond.

But that’s not what I want to discuss when it comes to them. But for a few other arguments thrown at them.

One is about the characters ages. Most people assume that the ship is a pedo ship…and well. Most people ship them from the show. And if you do the timeline as how the show lines events up it only makes sense for Aemond to be 16/17 and Luke 14. So that would mean that no, it’s not a pedo ship. They are both under 18.

And while in the book yes Aemond would be 19, again it’s not nearly as bad as most of the ships in the series. And again most people don’t use the books for the ships.

So that brings us to another reason. The actors ages. Ewan was an adult when filling and Eliot was not. Never mind the fact that most people don’t ship the actors when shipping characters, what about Rhaena and Luke? Phoebe was an adult when filming with Eliot who wasn’t. So should we shame people who ship Rhaena and Luke bc of their actors ages? I have no problems with that ship, I enjoy that ship. But if you want to hold a standard to Luke and Aemond you should with Rhaena and Luke.

And then lastly there is always the argument that “oh he slashed his eye” “oh he hates him and killed him.” Is it toxic? Yes. But so is so many other ASOIAF ships. If you want to judge Luke and Aemond as a ship you have to judge 99% of other ASOIAF ships

[generalsdiary]

listen I might sound crazy but you know how Aventurine would spend all of his money on his family were they alive? like they grew up poor- worse than poor, and he is always gambling yes- but he is also insanely rich. you just know he'd shower them in money and buy everything for them and that credits today have little to no meaning to him because he has gotten them too late. it wasn't "fast enough" to save them, to ease their lives. and you just know he regrets it, but still hoards more credits, gambling, earning, wasting, etc.

now allow me to draw a parallel to a character in gi most of the fandom doesn't like. dori. LET ME SPEAK- dori's sister died (in her arms) from an illness because her family didn't have enough money to buy the herbs prescribed for her sister's treatment and that is why Dori ends up cherishing every mora/money, turns in a mora hungry capitalist powerhouse and makes everything about her; just money. because she couldn't help her sibling when it mattered. also the "limitless mora" for her comes from receiving a bunch of items from Alice (Klee's mom) - they made a business deal, etc, just a detail.

and it is interesting how most of the fandom dislikes dori so much (meta wise I get it, and also some other povs), when the parallel to aventurine is a straight line and he is loved and liked by so many (granted, I love riney). no amount of mora/credits can bring their family member(s) back or fix what happened, yet they stay in it, hoarding more, be it due to our boy's luck, or Dori's deal and persistence. I know many ppl draw his line to Kaveh, but from this pov it is screaming Dori.

and yh his story is more tragic- but we are talking money rn ppl- stay focused;

here is where their characters differ in the money area. with how little regard he has towards the money, Aventurine, our Kakavasha is so kind, so so kind. he gives out freely, he doesn't give two shits while sending money to the TB (it is worth mentioning that he thinks he also HAS to do it, and that gifts and things of high material value are most appreciated, ex. the gifts the TB receives after become the captain of the ship in penacony. he sadly has a view of it that everyone needs to be given something in return, truly struggling with forming real friendships/relationships except with the TB and Ratio- which I'd love to go more into on another analysis), he openly shares his money to whomever- and in his contrast, dori would probably rather jump off a cliff than give a single gold mora coin to... well, anyone.

both have been through such tragedy and turned rich later on through various means- when it technically no longer matters to them as much as it could've mattered before- and to see one be indifferent towards it/see it as a means to an end & what ppl respond well to vs. the other be stingy to the point she is hurting people while doing it and purposefully putting them in debt (I hate you for what you did to Kaveh TWICE, dori.), makes a really interesting parallel made by hoyo ngl. thoughts?

[usercelestial]

tbh i think a lot of the people saying "well both sides are wrong"/"bt stans are just as toxic" are just not exposed to other perspectives in this fandom. as a buddie fan who's been watching this show since s1, i can safely say that buddie fans have always been toxic. like as fact. to me, to say that bucktommy fans are just as harmful or just as annoying or just as bad as buddies consistently are is just. delusional. indicative of at worst a biased opinion and at best an uninformed one. buddie has been here since s2 and fans have ruthless ever since. bucktommy has been here for 3/4 of a season and for the most part, stay in their lane. i'm sure there are bucktommy fans who suck, like that's just being on the internet, but you have to be blind to ignore how insane buddie fans are and genuinely how much worse they are in comparison.

i don't want to generalize and i think constantly adding that disclaimer is annoying as hell bc obviously i'm not talking about everyone but because buddie has been here for so long and taken up so much mental space of very die-hard, passionate fans, you're going to see much more intensity on that side. after season 5, i had to step away from the fandom and the show because of how frustrating it got. it was annoying to see people swear up and down buddie will be canon by the end of s3-no wait s4-no wait s5-no wait- and ultimately it sucked my enjoyment out of a show i otherwise enjoyed because i got swept up in the Buddie Of It All and forget about why i watch the show to begin with. we've been left to stew in our theories and now we can't tell what canon and what's fanon anymore, and when the show reminds us, the disappointment and frustration kills our hopes.

i was also active in the dan and phil fandom and supernatural fandom, like ik why people think we're annoying and it's because we are. we make everything about the one thing we like, we comment on every post begging for it to become canon, we're violently disappointed when the show doesn't play into our fan theories because we've convinced ourselves buddie is going to happen by the end of the next episode or actually the end of this season or actually maybe the end of the next season. we've torn a part every female love interest, either making them boring or making them unlikeable in our fanon. all that to say is that when people call us annoying, they're telling the truth and when bucktommy fans say buddie fans are toxic, they're coming from a sincere place. i mean we can't even enjoy our own ship because we're so quick to get our hopes up and be let down about something as stupid it becoming canon. who cares if it becomes canon, just like it to like it.

and it makes sense why there's perceived "toxicity" on the bucktommy side. our energy is being matched; the obsession, the passion, the surge in fandom. if you don't like it or even just find it annoying, i suggest you guys look back on your own posts and comments and behaviors towards other people in the fandom and other characters and unbiasedly compare it to the Toxic Bucktommy Shippers you're claiming you hate. if bucktommy fans are obsessive, it's because we've set the stage for that. if bucktommy fans are getting aggro and defensive, it's because buddie fans have been on the opposition and don't know how to turn it off. we've gone from underdog to bully somewhere in the last 6 seasons.

[theminecraftbee]

Just out of curiosity, do you know any alternative ways of showing types of relationships that could be used on ao3? I find the & and / method to be very constraining, especially with ambiguous or multi-dimensional relationships. & for platonic and / for romantic does not allow for a proper representation of nonstandard relationships, for example an enemy/loathing or polyamorous relationship. (Homestuck quadrants are their own thing and are not what I am asking for/about.)

answer that answers your question:

yes and no. if you just want another category of markers to exist, i know you said no homestuck quadrants, but those are probably most commonly used, although they're all synned to the / tag. i've seen some exchanges that want to differentiate use /& together, i've seen ? be used, and i've seen some invent their own tag (largely exchanges use these for matching purposes and it's rare but i HAVE seen it). however, there's no unifying convention, and ao3 will eventually syn all of these to either the / or & tag (usually the / unless the wranglers have a very good reason to think it's the & tbh). so know that even if you use your own symbol, it will show up in the relationship tag it ends up synned to.

one of the most common solutions to this is to use the symbol closest to what you want--personally i tend to just use the & unless there's fic content i think gen fans would really hate, since & is the tag that covers the much wider spectrum of relationships in my head, although some people will differ--and use freeform tags to disambiguate. for example, last days has the & tag for joe and cleo, along with a "queerplatonic relationships" tag! i believe "ambiguous relationships" is also a canonical tag, and you don't have to use canonicals if you can't find the one you like! the world is your oyster.

(here i'll also note: the & doesn't require them be like... friends. it just requires the fic be about their relationship in some way, and for this relationship to not be romantic or sexual. enemies is absolutely covered here, as is like, weird coworkers, or even tags like "hero & the public".)

(similarly, the / tag doesn't require they like each other, it just requires it to be a "ship"; enemies who have a ton of sexual tension goes under this, as do things like abusive romantic or sexual relationships; just make sure you're using your warnings and additional tags appropriately!)

the other most common solution is to tag both the / and & tag and use a tag like the "ambiguous relationships" or "this can be read as either" or "queerplatonic relationships" or whatever other disambiguating tag you think it needs. this is less common in the mcyt fandom because of the mcyt fandom's history of being SUPER WEIRD about shipping, but it's often the most common solution in fandoms that aren't this one.

"i want ao3 to have a ship tag that is neither & nor /, and is not considered synonymous with either" unfortunately this doesn't exist and isn't going to. like i'd love to say there's a way to make it exist but it Won't because of how ao3 was designed to work on a backend level and also ao3 does NOT change quickly, for better or for worse. you're going to have to pick between "make up a symbol and it will probably be synned to /", "use the tag you think you like best", or "use both". i wish there was another option too, if it helps, but the additional tags are really useful here!

"use no relationship tag" is also always an option; the relationship tag is not a required tag!

answer that answers your two examples, neither of which really fit the question as i understand it, hence me separating them out:

a fic about the relationship between two enemies is either the & tag if you just want the one that is actually meant to be used or the / tag if you mean for it to be like, the kind of enemies that have sexual tension. use additional tags to additionally disambiguate (example: just put in the tags the canonical tag "enemies" and you're good to go). the & tag is for ANY kind of platonic relationship, it does not require the two characters like each other, only that the fic is about their relationship! you can use the homestuck <3< if you REALLY wanna make it clear but that's synned to /, so like, up to you. if you're super worried someone will misunderstand the & tag you can also just not tag a relationship, relationships aren't mandatory tags.

i have no idea why you're asking about polyamory because that has a solution that's entirely unrelated to the problem you propose: you just tag the ship. ship tags with more than two names in them are legal tags, as long as it doesn't go over ao3's tag character limit you're good. if you do hit the limit, just use more than one tag! this is totally fine and follows ao3 conventions, don't worry. if it's the kind of polyamorous relationship with metamours, where not everyone is dating everyone, this is where more than one overlapping relationship tag REALLY helps. plus: you can mix / and & tags! not all of them will be canonical yet, but that's true of ANY ship tag you're originating! i have seen the form of "character/character & character" in many fandoms before, it's totally valid and will disambiguate! (also, the ensemble tags may help you here if you're doing like, a polyhermits thing; "hermitcraft ensemble/hermitcraft ensemble" is a legal tag and i think what polyhermits is probably synned to.)

so yeah, hopefully this helps some! good luck out there!