#LJ metas

[regulusrules]

I was minding my own goddamn business only to suddenly remember this scene exists

I don't know how to explain it, but it's addressing something so visceral in me.

Like. Did anyone ever expand on how Arthur literally didn't even blink before getting up to save Merlin from the onslaught he would have faced for his outrage? He just got up immediately and took Merlin away, held and handled his anger, and even gave him the respite (visiting Gaius) that he needed.

Wtf. Like boy no you're not supposed to be this fucking in sync with your manservant's reactions. But it's as if he predicted it even, because he saw in Merlin the exact same reaction he wanted to do, but had the tact not to because he grew up with boundaries. So he goes on to save his boy instead.

Sick of how much these two loved each other

[ladystoneboobs]

Lord Tywin did not, in the end, shit gold.

so, let’s talk about the recurring motif of shit concercerning the lions of casterly rock/king’s landing. the tywin connection is perhaps strongest and most obvious, yet the appearence of either literal poop or poop talk comes up with all the other lannisters too, barring only myrcella and tommen.

i counted at least 9 mentions of the joke about tywin pooping precious metals. (8 in the main series plus 1 in the world book) this includes the title joke in his death scene, and then there are over 10 more references to tywin dying in the privy.

we’ve also got:

one of our first descriptions of joffrey’s bad personality is jon snow’s summation of him as “a little shit”. not literal poop in this case, but i thought the choice of insult was interesting. (in fact, i believe this is the only time that term is used this way. no non-lannister could ever be so shitty.)

tyrion’s first job from tywin being putting him in charge of all of the drains in casterly rock, presumably including the ones from the privies.

tyrion asking “why does a bear shit in the woods?” in response to cat’s question of why littlefinger would lie to her

bronn telling tyrion he won’t “m'lord you every time you take a shit” in the same chapter where tyrion tells the vale mountain clansmen that his “father’s smiths shit better steel” than their weaponry.

walder frey deeming tywin and stannis “both bungholes who think they're too noble to shit” (”think” meaning walder knows better, that tywin does shit and it’s probably just as gross and stinky as frey poop)

tyrion listing “magnificient destriers shit everywhere” as a reason his battlefield days were done (or so he thought) 

tyrion telling varys he should wear his rugen disguise to court and that it would make cersei “soil her smallclothes”

tyrion choosing to poison cersei with laxatives so that she’d be too busy shitting to bother him during court business.

tyrion deeming his predecessors, lords arryn and stark, “too honest to live, too noble to shit” (in this case i think he’s using “too noble” in a different sense than walder frey did, implying that shitting is practical and immoral, like any competant lannister would like to be)

the king’s landing riot on the day of myrcella’s departure starting with multiple clods of dung being flung at joffrey.

joffrey’s crown then being “dung-encrusted” as tyrion attacked him after they escaped the riot

tyrion telling varys and bronn that joffrey was not fit to sit a privy, let alone the throne

catelyn comparing jaime’s honor to the contents of the bucket where he’d been forced to piss and shit in his dungeon cell. an implied shit-for-honor metaphor which he returns to several times, twice in that last chapter with her and repeatedly (at least 7 times, the magic number!) in his own pov.

tywin’s horse taking a shit in the throne room right before he made his grand entrance post-blackwater

tyrion being trapped in a room smelling of “blood and shit and burnt flesh”  when he was warehoused with all the other wounded and dead/dying immediately post-blackwater

tyrion saying cersei treated him like a mushroom on his sickbed post-blackwater because she “keeps me in the dark and feeds me shit”

tyrion thinking of the upcoming royal wedding and its pie, believing that doves especially love to shit on him, a sentiment repeated on the wedding day

a king’s landing urchin trying to throw manure at tyrion, and later tyrion telling sansa they must keep the curtains closed on his litter to avoid those fecal projectiles. (the kingslanders seem to be very fond of dung-throwing since tyrion was told they also threw it at his vale clansmen as they were sent home)

jaime recalling that the mad king shit himself in his last moments (meaning jaime’s kingslaying and tyrion’s kinslaying came with the same odor)

jaime noticing the abundance of horseshit in the stables of the outlaws’ inn he and bri and cleos visit

jaime recounting that brienne had to clean him when he soiled himself in the saddle post-mutilation 

on jaime’s first return to harrenhal he notes “Someone had dug a privy trench in the very spot where he'd once knelt before the king to say his vows.” (gotta love all the obvious symbolism in jaime’s pov. “it was that white cloak that soiled me, not the other way around.”)

tyrion wishing the father’s statue would fall and “crush joff like a dung beetle” during the royal wedding ceremony 

jaime explaining the stink of the capital to his northern escort as “Smoke, sweat, and shit. King's Landing, in short.” (kl being a setting associated with the lannisters, perhaps even moreso than never-seen-yet casterly rock.)

jaime correcting a man at the gates of kl who thought tywin shit silver instead of gold

the hound saying sansa “shit on the Imp's head and flew off.” when learning of her escape

jaime seeing a crow shitting on blessed baelor’s statue as he and cersei spoke to mace tyrell at tywin’s funeral

tyrion seeing a pile of horse dung on the old valyrian road and thinking of his father down in some hell

tyrion telling duck and haldon "Pissing is the least of my talents. You ought to see me shit." as his means of introduction

even kevan gets into the poop game telling jaime "I was hanging outlaws and robber knights when you were still shitting in your swaddling clothes”

cersei then tells jaime that kevan will have his hands full at darry “teaching Lancel how to wipe his arse.”

cersei dreaming of keeping tyrion’s severed head in her chamber pot to pee and poop on

tyrion describing the smell of old volantis: “There's fish in it, and flowers, and some elephant dung as well. Something sweet and something earthy and something dead and rotten.”

tyrion thinkling the mud in the poorest part of volantis was the color of “a baby’s nightsoil”

tyrion noticing dung carts pulled by dung-tattooed slaves and almost walking into elephant dung until jorah snatched him aside

jaime meeting shitmouth on his 2nd return to harrenhal

cersei being disgusted by all the sparrows befouling baelor’s plaza “with their pigs and goats and nightsoil” (nightsoil = human poop euphemism)

jaime recalling merrett frey being branded by wenda the white fawn and “the kettles of shit his fellow squires made him eat once he was returned” (presumably in a figurative sense)

genna telling her husband he could wipe his arse with the deed to riverrun for all the good it did while the blackfish still held the castle

edwyn frey’s plan in jaime’s riverrun war council involving shit-smeared arrows 

jaime describing the freys’ messy siege camp with “raw brown mud, mixed with horse dung and torn up by hooves and boots alike” and only “flies, horse dung, and Ser Ryman's gallows, standing forlorn” left after their departure

tyrion thinking the people laughing at his fall in his and penny’s show on the ship would “have laughed hard enough to shit their breeches along with him[tywin]” if they’d seen him kill his father

then tyrion and penny being trapped during the storm with her dog and ever-shitting pig (and the ship’s creak sounding like “a constipated fat man straining to shit”)

tyrion again experiencing the “stink of blood and shit” in the slavers’ camp amid the bloody flux

tyrion thinking the yunkish supreme comander looked “as formidable as a loose stool” 

tyrion and penny having to clean yezzan’s pools of slimy, bloody shit after he contracted the bloody flux 

doing all that in “a miasma of sweat, shit and sickness inside yezzan’s pavilion” 

one of the second sons offering to behead tyrion and toss his corpse in the latrine pit upon his arrival in brown ben’s tent

cersei smelling the essence of kl upon her release from baelor’s sept: “the scents of sour wine, bread baking, rotting fish and nightsoil, smoke and sweat and horse piss. No flower had ever smelled so sweet.” 

cersei later slipping, during her walk of shame, in “something that might have been nightsoil”. which was probably not so sweet

cersei walking on, after she could see the red keep ahead, through mud and dung, bleeding and hobbling

brown ben plumm telling tyrion he’d have to shit into a bucket bc of too many eyes at the latrines

tyrion telling penny “Fight or hide or shit yourself, as you like, but whatever you decide to do, you'll do it clad in steel."

some of these are just turns of phrase or everybody poops situations included for the sake of comprehensiveness, but i do think the sheer amount of lannister-related poop references is meaningful. does it mean anything that tyrion, as tywin “writ small”, (and tywin’s most unfavorite lannister) is the child of tywin with the most shit references (or is just that he also has the most pov chapters?)? or that cersei, tywin’s other heir (and tyrion’s other abuser) ends up trapped in a privy after being dosed with laxatives by tyrion, and then tywin dies in a privy after being shot by tyrion? or that myrcella and tommen, the most innocent lannisters, are not so associated with shit? 

this imagery does have different meanings with each character. for tyrion it’s usually about his father and society at large shitting on him, for jaime it’s mostly about his solied honor and the dishonorable characters he interacts with, for joffrey and cersei it’s about the common people they disdain reacting to them, bringing them down by dirtying their bodies, human waste connecting the lannisters with those they rule, not so different after all. and for tywin, poop regularly ruins his moments of glory whether it’s his entrance to the throne room, his death failing to shit gold, or his very smelly funeral. but for all of them it is a humanizing element, showing they are just as gross and vulnerable as anyone else. jaime is no golden god, he’s a disabled knight at one point too weak to wipe his own butt in the immediate aftermath of his injury. perhaps that is the real lasting legacy of tywin lannister: a load of reeking shit which can be gilded like gold but never truly mistaken for perfection.  

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

thinking about that thing Patrick said about how he's been scoring Pete's life for the past 20 years. and I'm thinking about how the song called "I Am My Own Muse" is probably the most cinematic song on Stardust. and it's also the only song on the record where you can't really hear Pete playing.

[when-worlds-dangers-collide]

Spotlight: Rick Gordon, the Brainiac Virus and Rick's path to his meta human status

This story arc is going to be in the near future.

During a conversation, Rick gets hit with a surge from a computer screen, taking the hit for his cousin Barbara. He ends up getting infected with the Brainiac virus Ming set up to cause problems for the Defenders and the Bat Family.

Even after LJ and April save Rick from being fully transformed by Brainiac, the residual of the virus still resides within him and the heroes realize upon finding out the residuals, Dynak has to be sacrificed to cure Rick from the virus for good, creating a dilemma for the Gordon Family and it doesn't help that Nightwing has also been infected.

Then after the cure, Rick still has to deal with the aftermath of the Hall of Wisdom which could forever alter his life.

[aguacerotropical]

“In SKU this is only hinted at, the most direct way in which the story addresses the idea is the episode Nanami's Egg, a lengthy metaphor of a girl's first menstruation which also addresses girl facing the responsibility of motherhood in the way Nanami deals with the egg, considering both nurturing it with joy and care, and abandoning it when her brother reacts negatively to the possibility of her being a teenage mother. Actually Touga's reactions in Nanami's Egg – besides hysterically hypocritical – very much address the way men seek to control women's sexuality as capacity of reproduction : forbidding Nanami to express a lesbian sexuality that would prevent her from the reproductive role assigned by Patriarchal society; but also forbidding Nanami from reproduction outside the norm of a marriage-alliance decided by the men. The episode also ties the whole event to the idea of reincarnation, which thematically opposes the idea of Eternity, the stasis of the coffin that the Duelist seek to maintain and escape from at the same time and which, in the end, we learn is Anthy's punishment : eternal pain. In the entering the duel arena sequence, also, while the images are of yonic symbols, the lyrics talk mainly of the idea of reproduction, birth and death”.

etrangender on LJ

[gh-0-stcup]

HA! I'm not the only one who's ever been on the Buffy/Oz train! Behold, a ship manifesto from way back in '05.

Happy because I want to say an emphatic yes to all this, sad because this was 18 fucking years ago and I can't join in on the fun 💔

[hydesjackiespuddinpop]

I just love the way this pep talk inspired Leia to put herself out there and make the first move with Jay. And shallow note, but this kiss is so pretty.

insp.

[bitingfaggotry]

:)

[ngtskynebula]

I have created a ff.net acc... in the year of our good lord 2024... fandom life takes me to places not even the devil would go alone... 😫

[evergreen-oflife]

X

[regulusrules]

Guys. Guys only look at Merlin. LOOK.

Look at how he's so in tune with every movement of Arthur's that his eyes immediately trained on what's wrong with Arthur when nobody else noticed there was something amiss.

Look at how he instantly takes the mantle, steadies and strengthens Arthur by literally hauling him up on his shoulder the next scene, carrying him and his pain so willingly.

And you wonder why some fic writers (🙋) are never able to write Angry!Arthur about the magic reveal? Well, because this is what we imagine would've always been on the forefront of his mind. Not Merlin's golden, "traitorous" eyes, but Merlin's loving, healing ones.

Sick, sick, sick of them

[floripire]

"You're a Harman. A Hearth-Woman. That's the most famous family of witches; they're like - they're royalty." / @soulmateprinciple

Piolo Pascual as Raul Dalisay † Chelsea Clark as Floribeth Dalisay Jennifer Morrison as Selena Harman †

Arifin Putra as Draco Saros † Lulu Antariksa as Blaise Harman Blake Lively as Nissa Harman †

Sam Claflin as Daniel Avery † Virginia Gardner as Thea Harman Cariba Heine as Sophia Harman †

[spittingoutthebloodandscreaming]

livejournal era fic is so intriguing to me

[oldschool-lolita-archive]

Hina wears Meta’s crown print babydoll op in white.

Example image via psycho_science’s wardrobe post on LJ

[olderthannetfic]

Re: Dreamwidth.

Recently I've gotten back to it, even if except for a couple of communities I lurk I've yet to find my "circle" of people to interact with. The biggest problem, obviously, is that there doesn't seem to be people on there—but when there are, it feels like all the posts are... post-only? Like comments are unwelcome, at the very least on platform.

Granted, most people I've seen end up using DW as an archive for fan translations and metas, or maybe like a type of personal log to update people of what they've been reading/writing. But when it comes to discussions, it's like they aren't wanted. Even in posts that do raise questions to the reader, if you do comment it feels like intruding, and the comments you receive often confirm it.

I wanted to ask if I've just been unlucky with the people I've come across, or if you think that maybe the culture on DW has changed since it has become an appendage of other websites (like it happens for fan tls, posted on DW for reading comfort but usually discussed on Twitter), or again if maybe the culture has always been like this.

I got into fandom when the LJ era had already been dying, but most importantly I got into fandom through non-English communities so I never got to experience what it was like to use LJ or DW during their "golden age". I'm wondering now if the type of communities back then were more of a "your post inspired my post, but I won't comment"—even if that seems weird to me because I do look through lots of archives and I can see that many posts did have interesting discussions in the comments! So maybe it is really just the current use of Dreamwidth that is making finding a community of people difficult.

--

I think people remember some particularly good and active parts of LJ... but also the blogs of people who did like discussion.

I like discussion. There is no reason that people like that can't continue to be open to it on whatever platform they choose, including DW.

But I have noticed that a lot of people who claim to miss LJ aren't actually all that friendly to randos showing up to comment or can't handle comments that even mildly disagree. The thing they remember liking was either something other people fostered or is something they're no longer able to muster the energy and emotional space for.

That said, the main issue with DW is simply that there aren't enough people there. If you get unlucky now, that person who snapped at you for commenting is a significant part of who's posting. If you got unlucky on LJ, there were shittons of other active people around in every fandom of the day.

[blackbird-brewster]

Meta: Jemily Queerbaiting

With the huge influx of posts saying 'Jemily is gonna be canon', I really appreciated seeing this post because OP was completely correct. I didn't want to write an entire dissertation as a reply, so I'm making my own post with my personal opinion on this. (All sources are noted in footnotes)

Before I began this rant, for anyone who thinks this is anti-Jemily. It is not. I have shipped Jemily for 18 friggin years and that's never going to change. This post is specifically my thoughts about queer baiting.

First off, I need to note that the showrunners (and the cast members who use social media) KNOW what a huge queer following this show has and that's why we got pansexual Tara Lewis in S16 [1]. Which, in itself, was SOOOOOOO important!!! Our first canonically queer main in SIXTEEN seasons was a middle-aged Black woman!!! That's phenomenal. (The fact it was horrible rep, because they instantly ruined her relationships once her queerness served it's plot point is a whole other post entirely)

In my opinion, the 'big Jemily moment' Paget posted about on Twitter [2] (and AJ hinted at during a recent IG live) is simply queerbaiting to get people to watch S17. I know a lot of you are newer to the fandom and I love your enthusiasm, I really do, ship and let ship, but listen, let's be real, Jemily is not going to be made canon. The showrunners aren't going to suddenly say (after 17 seasons) 'Surprise, Jemily is endgame'. This show has never cared about queer rep and now that CBS/Paramount have already ticked their queer rep box with Tara, they won't be in any rush to add any other characters to it.

Please buckle in, I've got a lot of thoughts on this matter --

What is Queerbaiting?

If you aren't aware of what queerbaiting is, here's a good definition:

Historically, queerbaiting has carried two meanings: the first is an act of aggressive heterosexuality to shut down queer subtext on screen while still teasing and catering to the queer audience in advertising, public relations, and fan engagement strategies; the second is an existing homoerotic tension between two characters played up on screen while met with derision by the professionals behind the scenes. [3]

The Medium article quoted here is from 2017, a time when parasocial relationships were really starting to take over social media. In 2024, actors are now only a mention or tag away online, they have direct conversations with fans, and this process has allowed for an even deeper form of queerbaiting.

Oftentimes online, actors are asked directly about certain ships and while some ignore these questions (usually to avoid breaking their contracts or other repercussions), others (looking at you, Paget) choose to instead tease fans about queer ships. She's done this for years upon years and if I've learned anything in the past twenty-years of existing in fandom spaces it's this -- don't hold your breath. In it's original meaning, for something to be deemed as queerbaiting there had to be malicious, or at least, purposeful intent to string queer fans along by teasing them with suggestive content about the ship in question, while knowing this ship will never come to fruition in canon.

The thing to remember is, Paget and AJ aren't the only ones who know about Jemily shippers -- the network and showrunners are well aware of this ship too. When networks/showrunners figure out they have a strong sapphic fanbase, they love to use that to their advantage to get more viewers and higher ratings. Queerbaiting is a goldmine to keep fans watching long running shows, look at Rizzoli and Isles, Supergirl, and OUAT for examples of this.

Jemily and Queerbaiting:

Ever since Emily joined the BAU in S2 (2006), there have always been fans who ship JJ/Emily (shoutout to the old LJ forums!). Way before celebs were just a tweet away from fans, back when all our fics began with disclaimers so we wouldn't get sued by networks, we went to great lengths to keep our fanworks far removed from actors/showrunners attention.

As far as Jemily goes, this reply from Paget in a 2009 interview with TVGuide.com [4] (which has now been deleted from their site unfortunately, but there are quotes on Tumblr still [4.a]) confirmed some fans' worst fear -- the actors had found our fanworks online.

TVGuide.com: Of course, a band of fans want her to hook up with Hotch.

Brewster: I know! I didn't realize that fans make these videos on YouTube? A.J. Cook sent me a hilarious one that made it look like Prentiss and J.J. were having a secret lesbian affair. You know, when Hotch was blown up in the SUV, we shot this scene where he's in the hospital and I'm standing next to him, looking at his bleeding ear. Our director came in and said, "Paget, you're looking at Hotch like you're in love with him. It looks really weird." So now, every day, Thomas [Gibson] and I flutter our eyelids at each other.

This was the first time I recall anyone acknowledging Jemily shippers publicly and at the time (Jan 2009), the show was still in Season Four (just before CBS fired both AJ and Paget [5]). Paget genuinely said it's 'hilarious' that fans shipped JJ/Emily. Even now, I'll see people say 'We know Paget and AJ have seen Jemily fanvids, so they obviously ship it too' -- but those same people rarely acknowledge the full context of the original answer. Paget not only thought JJ/Emily were 'hilarious', but then she doubled down and turned her reply back to how she and Thomas liked to play up the chemistry between Emily/Hotch.

While no one can say for sure which video it was that AJ sent Paget, just knowing they were watching JJ/Emily fanvids sent a bit of a shockwave through the femslash side of the fandom. To some it felt like an invasion of privacy, fanworks are by fans for fans -- knowing the cast were poking around in fandom spaces added an extra layer of worry around what we fans were posting online. Fifteen years ago, it used to be quite taboo for actors to outwardly discuss shipping or other fanon for whatever show they were in, and we fans were usually comfortably removed from the actors altogether.

Of course, now it's the norm for fans and actors/showrunners to co-exist online and interact with one another. This connection has opened new ways for shows to queerbait their fans. Pretty much every show has some form of social media account now and there is no doubt that the people running those accounts keep up with the most popular ships and hashtags. Not to mention that actors are constantly barraged with questions about whether they ship their character with x,y,z, or whether they think a ship should be made canon, etc. These interactions only serve to benefit the shows themselves, because whether the conversation is for or against a certain ship, it's all just free publicity (Why do you think CM now has a TikTok account?)

Every time AJ or Paget say anything about Jemily, the queer side of the fandom loses their minds. But this has been going on for YEARS now and every single time, it turns out to be nothing but social media hype and queerbaiting. Remember this AJ post? [6] Or what about the notorious reply by Paget to a fan, where she talks about how she and AJ held hands under the table 'for the shippers' [7] I've seen this cycle over and over again, so perhaps I am cynical, but I'm not getting my hopes up that Jemily will ever seriously be canon.

It's widely known now, after both Kirsten [8] and Paget [9] have talked about it, that there was an early idea where Prentiss was supposed to be queer, but that was ultimately scraped before it ever made it on screen. For context, please remember, this show has been airing for nearly twenty years. It began in 2005, during the highly conservative Bush administration. Queer people didn't have rights in the US, we couldn't get married, we were rarely protected under discrimination laws, and we could even be fired for simply being queer (in some states). Diverse queer representation on screen was extremely limited to things like 'The L Word' and 'Queer as Folk' (both aired on Showtime, so they were behind a paywall. And as far as tLw goes, that show was extremely male-gaze focused and is horrible in nearly all regards if you try to rewatch it now). As far as prime time shows went, queer rep was even more rare. Which is why Emily wasn't queer from the get-go.

Yes, things have changed since 2006 in terms of queer rep on TV. We have a myriad of queer identities represented in TV and film nowadays, which is why I think it's so easy for newer fans to say 'lf she was supposed to be gay anyway, they should just make Emily queer in canon!' I know this is what fuels most fans' demands for Emily being confirmed queer, and I get it, I DO. I would be all for it! However, I do not, in one hundred years, actually believe that is going to happen after they already canonically queer confirmed Tara in S16. The fact we even got ONE queer character is ground-breaking for this show.

It's also worth noting, that in the time between Paget's departure in 2012 and her return in 2016, she became very active on Twitter. This was when more and more fans began asking her about Jemily and after Kirsten's AfterEllen interview, fans also pushed for Paget to address the possibility of Emily being gay. 'Pushed' is actually an understatement for some of the outright harassment she would receive. (AJ received some of this harassment too, but less so because she doesn't use social media ass often) Back then, neither of them replied to these things directly. Yet, no matter what either woman posted, the replies were full of Jemily stans begging for her acknowledgement. (Did you know 'stan' is literally a term coined for stalker fans?) I remember one time AJ's friend was missing and she posted info on her IG about it, you know what the replies were? People asking her about Jemily. It was genuinely sickening.

Within this context, it was no surprise to fans when Emily came back in S12 , she and JJ's friendship was seemingly erased. The two women were rarely on screen together in the late seasons, plus the writers saw fit to even give Emily not only one (Mark in London, but two, on-screen boyfriends for the first time in the entire series. I personally do not think these changes to Emily's character were coincidence, I saw the hellscape of what people would say to AJ and Paget online and I fully believe that upon Paget's return to the show, the showrunners purposely tried to distance JJ and Emily to dissuade the more abusive side of the fanbase.

Can I prove that, no. But it is the only reason I can think of as to why Emily S12+ seemingly didn't care about JJ anymore, despite their deep and meaningful friendship. I mean, they both CROSSED THE WORLD to go rescue each other in prior canon -- but when Emily comes back, they acted like they barely knew each other. This was even more prevalent in S16, when JJ's main storylines all revolved around Will, and Emily barely looked at JJ in the entirety of ten episodes. (Remember how Prentiss didn't even hug JJ after bomb, but she did go hug Luke?)

So, do Paget and AJ earnestly ship Jemily, or are they continuing the long tradition of queerbaiting us? Who fucking knows, not me. But based on the history of this fandom, I think I can make a safe bet. (Interestingly, if you search all of Paget's twitter for the word 'Jemily' [10] she only has 3 direct tweets mentioning the ship. I don't think it's a coincidence that two are within the past few months since they started filming S17 (the other one was a RT of Kirsten (who tagged something Jemily)

This is all to say --

Just because Paget and AJ have publicly talked about Jemily,, this doesn't mean it's ever going to happen on screen. And you know what, THAT'S OKAY!! There has been this constant outcry (after Tara became queer confirmed) of 'Do Emily next' or 'Why wasn't it Emily with a girlfriend!?' and 'Jemily needs to be canon in S17!' -- as if people believe their ships aren't worth anything unless they are canon.

That couldn't be further from the truth! Fandom is built on headcanons and fan interpretations and rare pairs and all types of shippers. Your ship does NOT need to be canon for you to enjoy it. I will ship Jemily forever, no matter what. I don't think there will be some magical queer plot in S17, at best, we might actually get to see Emily/JJ on screen together again and after the train wreck that was S16 -- I'll take whatever I can get.

And hey -- if I am completely wrong, if Erica Messer pulls a Korrasami out of her hat, I will be ecstatic. I will be happy to be proved wrong, but at the same time, I'm not going to lose sleep over it and I'm DEFINITELY not going to go hound the actors about it on social media.

Sources:

[1] 2022 Digital Spy article about the importance of Tara's coming out

[2] 04/18/24 Paget Tweet

[3] 2017 Queerbaiting article from medium.com

[4] 2009 Broken TVGuide link

[4.a] Tumblr quote from the above TVGuide Interview

[5] 2010 Kirsten interview screenrant.com

[6] 2019 AJ Instagram Post

[7] 2020 Paget video on Twitter (via @karasluthqr)

[8] 2015 Kirsten interview AfterEllen.com

[9] 2016 Paget Interview CriminalMindsFans.com

[10] @PagetPaget search 'Jemily'