#but canon 100% supports a queerplatonic read

[curry-and-gunpowder]

I am not an Odazai truther. I'm an Odazai realist.

Meaning I simply look at the text and apply basic reading comprehension.

[starberry-cupcake]

@shyhinata​ replied to your photoset “Bonus:  tenimyu is QUAKING with the level of golden pair content on...”

I think the part where Jiale clings to Dayong is in my top 10 fave moments. I always loved the Golden Pair, and this adaptation has really hit it out of the park.

I hope you don’t mind I reply on a separate post because I have so many feelings about this I can’t fit a fair amount of them in regular replies. 

My best friend and I are watching the drama one episode a week, so we’re taking longer than it should to go through it, but we want to enjoy it because it’s so so good. 

One of the things I feel works so well for this adaptation is that not only the characters are older, some of the conflicts and personal troubles they have are also more developed because they’re older. This drama understood that it’s not just about which team wins which game, it understood that a key part to Prince of Tennis working is in the character dynamics and their personalities combining together. But they even amphed it up because a drama series and an anime or a manga sometimes have different needs of personal development and how to handle drama. 

A big example of that to me is how they’re dealing with the Golden Pair. 

I am in absolute awe of the fact that they took a small-ish conflict the series had and made it a characterizarion standpoint and included important things to discuss. 

In the series, if I remember correctly, Eiji and Oishi have a fight and then in the match against Hyotei (which here it seems it may be placed in a different order?) Oisihi had an accident (helping a pregnant lady) and Momoshiro had to step in and play with Eiji. 

Here, they’re developing the conflict between Jiale and Dayong by introducing Jiale’s (very Eiji-like and in-character) frustration at lacking in some particular ability, and Dayong is introduced as having anxiety and anxiety-driven medical issues. 

It’s 100% in character for Dayong/Oishi to develop anxiety issues, considering his empathic nature, the fact that he is the vice captain, the fact that he is responsible to a fault and that his captain and good friend is having a lot of medical issues with his arm, which leads him to not only be absent a lot but also not be able to play as frequently as he’d want. 

As someone with anxiety, anxiety-driven medical complications and ocd, but most importantly someone with all that who grew up watching Prince of Tennis, the fact that they chose to include this and address this, especially in how it also impacts competitive sports, is massive to me. 

But, aside from that, all this happens with the core relationship of these two, which has always been one of the most, let’s say, canonically supported to whatever extent. 

Because Prince of Tennis has enough fanon ships to establish an armada, but there are some relationships that in canon transcend the frame of friendship and can be read as something different. Whether that is good friends, queerplatonic partners or romantic partners depends on the beholder, but what I mean is that there are some of these pairings that stand as a couple more so than as individuals because of how important their relationship is to the story, whichever that is. 

The Golden Pair is the prime example of these. And the drama took that and soared with it. And considering it’s an adaptation released in China (with all the censorship issues that have been escalating), I am impressed with how thorough they are being with small details that just show how close they are and how important they are to each other. 

They lean on each other for support physically, they hold hands, they touch each other when they talk, they look at each other in the eyes frequently, they hug each other normally, without reason. And when there is conflict between them that body language also speaks, with Jiale recoiling from Dayong’s touch or Dayong avoiding Jiale’s eyes when he talks, or remaining a few feet away from each other when arguing. 

The level of commitment they’ve put in developing the Golden Pair as a relationship is insane. I will probably post about it more whenever I finish the series, but yeah, I am impressed. 

I can’t wait to see how this situation with Dayong’s anxiety develops, I’m like emotionally moved by how this adaptation is handling this, alongside many other things that are taking a lot of depth in the adaptation, more than in many other prior adaptations that just focused on the sport. 

Anyway, sorry that I took your reply and went with it for a long response but ugh

[arabellaflynn]

Fandom frightens me sometimes. Often, if we're honest.

I've been digging around for the Sherlock Holmes project I mentioned before, and one of the things I ran into is The Johnlock Conspiracy. For those who don't know, this was a movement among fans of the BBC's 2010 series Sherlock who contended that the series was building up to a Big Damn Gay Kiss between the leads at the end, which was theoretically the conclusion of series 4. Lots of people contributed, but this particular lady seems to have been the biggest and most thorough, having contributed a 40-some-odd episode analysis of the show, via YouTube.

Shit like this terrifies me.

There's nothing wrong with her character analysis. Her take on the significance and motivation behind what the characters say and do on screen is completely valid. I think she's 100% right in some areas, particularly Moriarty. Jim Moriarty's obsession with Sherlock is both disturbingly sexual in tone, and disturbingly indicative of someone who sees sex not as a social interaction, but as the apotheosis of control over another human being.

There's also nothing wrong with hoping the series is building to a gay romance. "Queering the canon" of Holmes stories has been a thing for a long, long time. It tends to happen in any work where two same-sex leads have a deep and devoted relationship, and because homosexual leanings were so hidden and coded for such a long time, there's much more history of having to "read into" things than with heterosexual pairings. If that had indeed been where the writing in Sherlock went, I would have considered the relationship more than adequately set up in the earlier series. AFAIK the leads wouldn't particularly have balked; I don't know all that much about Freeman's career but as a human he seems pretty no-nonsense, and Cumberbatch has a history of doing very well as queer and neuroatypical characters, under the general philosophy of 'I'm an actor, I act like other people, these other people are interesting'. With respect to the creators, Gatiss himself is gay and Moffatt has written at least one pair of lesbian Holmes/Watson analogues, Madame Vastra and Jenny, into Doctor Who.

What bothers me is the rampant apophenia among the Johnlock Conspiracy fans, typified in this lady's analysis. I'm not saying that the Sherlock crew wasn't admirably detail-oriented. They were making a show about a character whose entire schtick was noticing tiny things in his surroundings, and the main viewing audience had been fans of these tales literally their entire literate lives. Continuity had to be on the ball at all times or else. There were, in fact, plenty of passing references, allusions, background gags, and Easter eggs that were just there to say, "We read all the stories! You will find this amusing if you did, too." There's plenty of material available if you want to compare and contrast to the original canon, and discuss how the implications of various things would have changed from Victorian times to the modern-day setting of Sherlock.

When you get to the point where you are interpreting literally every detail of every line of every story as support for your one pet theory, you have a problem. No piece of writing is that focused. Her TJLC videos spiral into such a terrible black hole that every side character, every suspect, is interpreted as a "mirror" of one of the main characters, and moreover their actions are used in support of the One True Theory. Random set and costume details are interpreted as "communication" from the production crew that the theory is right. And, the very hallmark of a tinfoil-hat conspiracy, denials from both the characters on screen and the creators off are interpreted as yet more evidence in favor of the theory, because everyone knows that lying liars who lie are just trying to throw you off the scent.

And the sheer entitlement. Dear God. When no Big Damn Gay Kiss happened at the end of series four, the wave of anger from TJLC people was unbelievable. The writers were doing it wrong. The fans deserved to have their theory validated. How dare they write the thing they said they were writing the whole time.

The accusations of queerbaiting, I feel, are unsupported. The people slinging them have a very narrow view of what constitutes a queer relationship. It is true that Sherlock and John did not end series 4 in a homosexual romantic relationship acknowledged both in and out of universe. On the other hand, Sherlock's "married to the job" speech in the first fucking episode pretty solidly establishes that he identifies as aroace, even if he doesn't have the vocabulary to say it in exactly that way. I don't know when "I'm not interested in anyone like that" started to translate to "you can ignore everything I say about myself", but it's just as rude and invalidating to do it to representational characters as it is to real humans, so. Sherlock followed all that up by repeatedly, vehemently -- and given everyone else's reaction, uncharacteristically -- inviting John into his work, which he characterizes as his greatest if not only passion in life, so he's clearly starting something he sees as significant. 

The amount of emotional and domestic entanglement that Sherlock wants out of John is huge and would seem to qualify for what the tumblkids call "queerplatonic". This relationship does progress over the course of the series, is explicitly acknowledged and discussed in-universe, is consistently reciprocated by John Watson, and IMNSHO, more than qualifies as what the creators have said since day one is going to be a "love story". There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, etc etc etc. Not everything has to end with people tumbling into bed.

I would frankly consider it a more narratively interesting option than a romance, as it is far less common. Sherlock's central conflict is the same either way ("Oh god feelings WHAT DO"), but it changes John's somewhat. Rather than a relatively straightforward story about a man coming to terms with his sexuality, John instead has to wrestle with the idea that he might have found a life partner in this sort of relationship, rather than the traditional marriage-and-children context he was clearly anticipating. If concluding that yes, that is what he wants (and even marrying a woman who accepts the relationship, quite likes her husband's Most Significant Friend, and pushes both John and Sherlock to keep the connection alive) doesn't count as a happy ending, I have no idea what does.

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[incarnateirony]

Thoughts.

So I finally watched Good Omens. First of all I know some people were waiting for me to like, do breakdowns on the use of lore, sigils and whatnot -- I’m sure I’ll poke at it eventually, but so much of it reads of typicality, alongside strong artistic liberty, that when it comes to actual sigils there’s very few and I’ll need a good screen of them.

But that isn’t about that. This is actually about Good Omens and the audience response to queer content and queer coded content. I’m going to warn you, some of this shit is going to incense the fuck out of woke tumblr. It’s going to be a lot of hard pills to swallow, mostly in regards to parts of the LGBT community -- of which I’m a part -- moving around our own goal posts, inconsistencies in the placements of our goalposts, and the impacts of het culture. If you come into my mentions screaming away at me expect an ignore or a block.

No, this isn’t anti-Azri/Crow. It’s very pro Azri/Crow. And yes, I’m going to drag other fandoms I’m in, into it. But I’m also gonna drag general discussion into it.

First I’m going to source a link to a recent set of tweets someone made that I consider very insightful (x) and then highlight a bulk of it.

“When we call something queerbaiting, we're essentially saying: "source material X doesn't count as real or valid queer representation." Here is a thread on why we need to be cognizant about which real-life queer people & stories we're erasing when we expand our use of that term. First: actual queerbaiting, in which art-creators hint at queer representation in order to attract viewers and then insist their art was 100% hetero all along, sucks a lot. I am not advocating getting rid of the term. Nor am I saying it's not valid to feel jerked around when a show uses the promise of a specific queer relationship on their publicity circuit, and then doesn't follow through on it in the actual source. (Or follows through only to write out a character, a la #TheMagicians) However: when we narrow our definition of "real and valid queer representation" until the ONLY thing that counts as queer rep is on-screen queer *romance* or on-screen queer *sex*, we are telling a significant portion of the real-life queer community that they don't count. When we use the "queerbaiting" label to describe a millennia-long, loving asexual same-gender relationship (aka #GoodOmens) we are telling asexuals in loving life-long relationships that they don't count as queer. We are also telling sexual queers whose primary, life-organizing relationships are queerplatonic (me, this is me) that their queerness is defined only by who they fuck, not by who they choose to build a life with. I want a space where ALL kinds of queer stories get told: romances yes, but also stories of queer friendship; queer mentorship; queer animosity; queer competition and cooperation; queer found family; queer provocation and queer mistakes. None of that happens if we tell everyone whose queer content doesn't fit into the narrow box "Lead A & Lead B kiss and/or fuck onscreen" (even if A&B make a life together; even if A&B kiss & fuck other same-sex people) that their art is exploitative & doesn't count as queer rep. “ 

Why am I choosing to highlight this while implicatively mentioning my adjacent fandoms? Well, because blogs I follow that either haphazardly dismiss, say, Destiel as valid until (personally met goalpost, generally when arguing with the hetnorm or anti community wanting a kiss) are all on the Azriphale-Crowley bandwagon.

And let me say, I adore the Azriphale-Crowley bandwagon. I’m ON that bandwagon. Holy shit am I on that wagon, but we need to inspect our dialogue for people who are on one but not the other.

We can say, for example, “Well, Neil Gaiman and the actors have been supportive! So THAT’S why it’s fine!” I mean -- aren’t people always banging on about post-affirmation not being enough, or just vague support being enough, or this-or-that not being enough? Like people don’t flame Rowling over that? I mean, even if we handwave away that Neil Gaiman had literally uncontested authorship instead of 203492 hands in the author and ownership pot top-to-bottom which the average show doesn’t have -- which gives the liberty to say whatever the fuck he wants because it is wholly his product and under his contract and design -- do you notice that it’s actually a very, very small audience crowing about that? And rarely if ever the same ones that do about other pairings that could be considered similar? Like we haven’t gotten those moments from authors in other shows (Robbie Thompson “Destiel isn’t canon?” comes to mind) that we yell queerbait at then and decide isn’t enough. Because someone else moved a goalpost out.

Ah-- but they’re... confirmed asexual and agender and immortal! Okay... and... so is, for example, if we’re going to tilt this way, Castiel. And ace people can have queer relationships with bi or yes, even straight people. Mindblowing, I know, but that’s it, that’s reality.

So why on gods green earth am I seeing this disparity between blogs about the same content, banging on at different volumes of what we expect?

It’s something I’ve written about before, the loudest example being my Problem With DreamHunter post. Before any DreamHunter fans pick up the pitchforks, don’t worry. It, also, is in support of DreamHunter, but simply addresses the cultural problem in there not being a problem with DreamHunter. The blend of intersectional issue disparity between MLM and WLW, and also the simple fact that the fandom wasn’t positioned to have antis or rival ships screaming at it: het culture and shipping culture.

I’ve banged on about this before: in our race for representation, we often trample over content that’s perfectly good and valid and great in many ways, because we want to be able to win an argument against an asshole, we want to be able to bludgeon the gay so inarguably into somebody’s brain that they yield to the might of it, or at least, we imagine it reaches that point. Anti-shipping culture can be so loud that even slow burn het pairings that kiss will have antis explaining their way around it (eg, Mulder and Scully, off the top of my head). Anti queer culture will talk down men or women even making out on screen as experimentation. This cycle will continue.

So again, let me state: Good Omens is a masterpiece. I am utterly enthralled by it, but it does leave me sitting flummoxed about the uneven bars we put out there as marker posts based on trying to race to the finish of arguments.

I’m sure some hack job that doesn’t know how to rub brain cells together beyond “it’s straight” and, beneath the surface, “I don’t like it so I’m going to piss and moan about more expansive methods of thought than hard niching the complexity of human relations” is going to roll in here, thinking yelling “Jensen Ackles thinks it’s straight!” in supreme reductionism of things like authorship, be it intent OR death of the author, or whatever else is out there in this medium -- I’m sure they’ll show up, make the same repetitive ass of themselves as always, and roll on, completely missing the point that I’m not obligated to your arbitrary bullshit, and that nobody is. 

I don’t HAVE to point out every single time a dickhat on a loop yells that, that Jensen Ackles himself spoke of the intangibility of the deepness of their connection with Castiel as an angel, and that a cishet dude from texas probably doesn’t understand the finest details of LGBT identity complexity despite being an ally while fumbling over talking about the difficulty of putting a label on it. I don’t have to explain that the actor doesn’t actually get to determine that. Viewership or author, take your pick. I don’t have to explain the “it’s never happening and wasn’t intended” never came from the authors every time some bumblefuck says it -- that it came from one account with a blurb that said he doesn’t speak for that writing room whatsoever. I don’t have to review the times that Jensen Ackles has almost verbatim mirrored the Good Omens creatives about the beauty of it being you being able to make your own interpretation even if it wasn’t his, and encouraging that. I don’t fucking have to, you entitled sniveling shits.

And no, it’s by no means about, say, Dean and Cas. It’s just about the dialogues I’m tired of seeing tilt unevenly even between typically well grounded and centered people. 

So anyway Azriphale and Crowley are EternityMates and that’s the fucking tea. Call it queerplat or call it queerromantic I can see either, even if I do tilt towards the former. Destiel is queerromantic and you can fight me. Come at me. Except nobody really will over Good Omens, just Supernatural, because like magic, Good Omens isn’t geared for a fuckton of other bloated ships or antis who hate either of them by structure alone. And that, itself, is a point to be made, too.

And before some doodlefuck trolls along, no, there’s no such thing as incestromantic. Spare us the time and block me now if your knee jerk counter-troll is going to be subtextually along those lines, because I promise you’ll just get blocked when you try to roll into town with it. Since the Supernatural fandom seems to house corners of douchebags that don’t know how to control their primitive douchebag impulses and they do come into address in this post.

Moral of the story: Stop listening to homophobes, antis, or people with agendas. Listen to the content and what has actually been said. On all sides. 

If you consider, for example, 

the Ineffible Husbands canon with no admission of anything beyond friendship, with the hets loudly banging one scene over with “well the others are ace or whatever” as your reason (fair), a few lunches, basic dedication and a few well placed songs, and a few supportive notes from the general creatives,

But the Hunter Husbands not canon with talked-around love yous and need yous, intentional deletion of Castiel’s agender ace aspects, in spite of there being no evident banging or kissing in the show that hasn’t been a highlight of a problem since like season what six?; talk arounds of their meals together, infinite longer and classic romantic crafted dedication, innumerable well placed songs and yes, a few supportive notes from the creatives that are buried by yourself or others beneath intentionally obfuscated arguments and spun context,

You are, whether you want to gullet it or not, part of the moving goalpost problem. Whether it’s you running to meet a phobe or an anti, or just being coded into it by the screaming around you, there is no world in which one is representation and the other is not. It’s just fuckin’ not. 

It’s not.

I don’t care what you yell and scream because it’s popular in your circles. It’s fuckin’ not. 

It’s not.

Either both are rep or neither are rep. Personally, I adore both of them, and anyone that has a problem with that can eat me.

Good Omens is not a goddamn motherfucking breakthrough in representation. It’s the same very valid very real form of queer coding half this site screams at because someone got loud enough to scream about it early on, generally inspired by antis riding their ass, just it’s the first and second lead instead of second and third lead, and there’s no ‘rival’ in first and second leads as being intentionally dragged into vaguery. It’s. Fucking. Not. It’s literally. The same. Fucking. Level.

Now, I HAVE been banging on that it’s the level our content SHOULD be acceptable at (well, almost; frankly I’d consider Destiel better, as the show’s overall intimacy threshold is far lower while Good Omens has parallel overtness to the coupling in the actual canon, meaning Good Omens’ playing field, for fair treatment, would be indebted to matching volume -- not saying sex since ace but louder admissions and engagements that are just as clear.)

Unpopular? Good, I don’t care. I’m tired of people screaming about completely conflicting crap.

It’s where we SHOULD be taking ownership of our content. So if there’s any breakthrough, it’s the LGBT community themselves having some sort of spark of awareness that they can and should be able to own content at that volume, largely because the fandom isn’t swamped by asshats on the other side all yelling for their own crappy agendas clogging up your heads. There’s a few queerbait shouters. And you laugh them off, by and large, and accept it as canon and rep. Funny how that works without antis up your ass.

Sincerely,

A tired queer and newborn Crowley stan.

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

i dont have a problem with your ace/aro post per se, but saying that a spock/kirk queerplatonic relationship is the "only 100% canon" interpretation is...........fun

Howdy! For reference, here's exactly what I said:

Can I have Jim and Spock in a QPR (which is legit canon!) but have it called as such, without necessity for romantic or sexual undertones? (Before I incur hellfire on my head, interpreting their relationship as something romantic and/or sexual is valid but I'm referencing the only thing we can 100% sure say from canon material, not implied, is that they're in what is essentially a QPR)

I tried to make it really clear in here but I think my tone may have been muddled a bit, so I'll reiterate what I was going for: it is super valid to interpret their relationship however you want. Yet, the only interpretation we are outright shown on screen is a very precious friendship, which functions much as a QPR would. I'm certainly not trying to say that there is no basis for other interpretations of their relationship--the Spirk ship got so big precisely because there is a lot of material that can be drawn on to support a romantic (and/or sexual) interpretation. My point was only intended to be that we never are explicitly shown confirmation of that on screen (i.e. a kiss, etc.), and that I would like to see more fan interpretations of their relationship in a platonic vein to mimic more of what we are shown. Sorry for any confusion!

Also, I tried to make this clear too, but I'm not trying to start a fight or claim that a Spirk QPR is canon and nothing else is valid. And, as you read the end of the quote above, I hope I managed to express that I'm not even asserting that the QPR itself is canon (as it is not explicitly called such). Rather, their relationship is something that functions much as a QPR would. This addendum is meant to clarify the statement from earlier in the quote in which I say a QPR is canon; I realize that is not 100% accurate, so even in the same post I was trying to offer a little clarification into what I meant.

Hope this helps!

[cyanmnemosyne]

Yuletide Letter (2017)

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First of all, thank you for taking the time to write me a fic!  This is my third year participating in Yuletide, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with. :D

If you have matched with me on one of these small fandoms, I figure chances are pretty good that we share some tastes as well. :D So while I’ve tried to provide at least a bit of commentary for each one, please feel free to ignore all my meandering suggestions if your inspiration takes you in a different direction.  :)  I feel certain I’ll love whatever you write, either way. <3

I also have no preferences as regards length, tense, or POV -- feel free to write the story however it works best. :)

AO3 name: darkcyan

Requested fandoms:

Shirobako

Mouretsu Pirates | Bodacious Space Pirates

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee  

[ hiding the rest under the cut, because as usual, it got long. :) ]

General Preferences:

Yes, Please:

fluff, found family, deep friendships, established relationships, brand new relationships where everyone’s trying to feel their way through, drama if it’s not gratuitous or inspired only by misunderstandings, hopeless pining, hopeless pining that turns out to be reciprocated.  People already trusting each other, people coming to slowly trust each other.

basically if it’s emotionally warm, I will probably love it

and if it hurts but resolves in an emotionally warm place, I will love it while crying

AUs.  canon-fork or otherwise.  I like it best when the characters still feel “true” to their canon personalities, as filtered and changed through the different lens of how the AU differs from canon.  For AUs that involve significant worldbuilding (e.g. sci fi AU), feel free to spend as much time as you want on the worldbuilding in addition to the characters.

Actually worldbuilding in general is great if that’s your thing.

Missing scene / other POV / canon continuation fic are also great. (I think what I’m trying to say is I like basically all kinds of fic?)

time travel. is a guilty pleasure of mine.  Primarily when used as an excuse to abuse one’s future knowledge to help put the past on a better track (though of course, it wouldn’t be as fun if the changes didn’t start piling up eventually. ;) ) Time travel paradoxes are an interesting thought experiment, but in my fic-reading I’ve got a strong preference for the “eh, changing the past forks the future, don’t worry about it too much” mode of time travel.

Female characters being their awesome selves.

Happy endings.  (Bittersweet is fine too :) )

Shipping is great, queerplatonic relationships are great, deep friendship is great.  Relationships are great! (I’ve called out my preferences or lack thereof on a fandom-by-fandom basis below in case it helps.  Anywhere I say “relationship”, feel free to assume that I’d be just as thrilled by anywhere in the spectrum from “really good friends” through “queerplatonic” to “romantic”)

Humor is good too! I’m usually not terribly interested in true crackfic, but the occasional lighthearted fic – or a dash of humor in something otherwise dramatic to lighten the mood – is great.

I feel certain I’m missing a lot, so let’s just say that anything that’s not otherwise called out in my maybe/no lists is fair game :D

Maybe:

issuefic (which seems to include things like alternate sexuality / gender headcanons? not 100% sure on the preferred terminology here?) I like my issues to feel organically part of the story rather than being a transparent soapbox, but other than that, I think that sort of story can be really interesting :D  This is in the ‘maybe’ category mostly because I guess there’s a risk that we might not happen to agree on said issue?? But if it’s the sort of fic you love to write, go for it! :)

Kidfic.  Haven’t really encountered much that interested me, but if you want to, go for it. :)

Please, no:

Onscreen sex. Fade to black or references are fine if you feel it’s critical to the characterization / plot, but if we’ve gotten to the point where we’re talking about limb positions, my reaction is almost certain to be somewhere between bored and extremely uncomfortable.  

(but honestly I’d prefer no sex at all. comes of being both asexual and a prude *shrug*)

Even if it’s not explicit or onscreen, please no rape / noncon / dubcon. *eyes list* Do I need to call out “no incest”? I don’t think so? But just in case: no incest either please. :)

Not a huge fan of drug / addiction plots either

Relationships, romantic or otherwise, where there’s a significant power imbalance (especially if it’s abused) really bother me, especially if it’s played as acceptable.[1]  (If the story shows it as deeply problematic and works through the implications, I’ve been known to have an intellectual appreciation for it, but it’s still not something I really want to read about.)

Most significant age difference fic falls into this bucket for me.  

I also feel pretty strongly about free will and freedom to choose, so “I’m taking away your choices by hiding things from you / doing things behind your back For Your Own Good” narratives mostly just make me want to punch things, no matter how good the supposed justification is on the part of the person doing it. So. I’d recommend avoidance. :)

… Emotional manipulation in general, to be honest.  Especially, again, if it’s played as acceptable.

Cheating and other forms of deliberate, sustained dishonesty within a relationship.  If the characters are lying to each other, they’d better have a really good reason, and chances are I still won’t like them quite as much after.  [2]

Gratuitous drama.  If the drama could be resolved by the characters just sitting down for five minutes and talking to each other, and the only reason they don’t is ~*~reasons~*~, then I start getting really annoyed, really quickly

Plots revolving around jealousy.  It’s a human emotion, but I hate it when characters let it eliminate their capacity for rational thought

Anything that uses “they couldn’t help themselves” as an excuse for making bad decisions. Like. I’m sure there are exceptions.  (Actual mind-control?) But in general my response to that excuse is “You’re an adult.  Act like it.“

Character bashing. Even the characters I hate are the heroes of their own stories.  

Not a huge fan of relentless grimness / Crapsack Worlds.  I enjoy some grim sometimes, but I prefer at least an occasional dose of hope with my grimness. I need to have some faith that the ending will be a happy one, or at least cathartically bittersweet.

Related: If I wanted to hear about awful people being awful all the time and how awful everything is as a result, I’d go watch the news. (... Someday I would like this statement to be less true than it was the previous year, instead of more. ;___;) There can be awful people, they can do awful things, but I’d really prefer they not be either the majority or the focus of the story.

[1] BDSM in which said power relationship has been consensually agreed on ahead of time is entirely different, of course. :)

… But it’s also not generally really my thing. :P

[2] For the record, I do not count poly relationships in this bucket at all.  All I ask is that everyone who’s involved is aware of and reasonably happy with what’s going on.

Fandoms:

Shirobako

Crunchyroll

Requested character(s): Miyamori Aoi, Yano Erika

Spoiler notes: I’ve watched the show and read the first several chapters of the prequel manga

Preferred pairing(s): gen or Erika/Aoi (side relationships between whatever set of the characters that suits your fancy are fine too - aside from my soft spot for Erika/Aoi I don’t have any strong ship feelings.)

THIS SHOW.  I love it to pieces. When I first started watching it, I was in the middle of a bit of a professional crisis of my own (trying to decide whether to change jobs), so this show hit basically all my “I love this” buttons, from laughing and crying about how well it depicted how hard it is to get a lot of creative people to work together (I’m a programmer, not an animator, but the similarities are pretty scary), to laughing and crying at its depiction of writer’s block, to adoring all the little in-jokes it slipped in about anime as a whole (I wish I could remember the name of that harem show …), to loving all the insights into how making an anime actually works, to empathizing like no one’s business with Aoi’s insecurity about whether she was “enough” for the job and whether it was okay to not have everything figure out yet, to Ema’s struggles with imposter syndrome, to Misa’s angst about whether she should stick with a stable job she knows or try for something more like what she really wanted, to …

just.

THIS SHOW.

I re-watched it last year and was struck all over again by how much I love Erika’s casual mentorship of Aoi; she’s one of my favorite characters, and I’m always sorry to see her disappear and I always cheer when she comes back.  

So what I’d really like to see this time is a story that focuses on their relationship.  A scenario where Erika helps point Aoi in the right direction?  When Aoi realizes Erika needs some support?

During that long gap when Erika is away caring for her father, do she and Aoi still stay in contact?  Does Aoi ever come visit?  

I’d just love to see more of these characters and their friendship.  

(Note: I do low-key ship Erika/Aoi, but I also am pretty iffy about workplace romance, especially in such a small workplace, and Erika especially seems like the sort to be level-headed about that sort of thing.  

So if you want to take things in a shippy direction, I’d like to request that it either stays at mutual pining or -- if they decide to make a go of an actual relationship -- actually addresses the workplace romance issue. One of them moves to a different company? idk.

But I’d also be 100% happy to see a fic that is completely gen, if that’s what you’d prefer. :) )

(And one final note: Hiraoka. I’m not sure I like him, exactly, but I’ve been uncomfortably close to where he is emotionally, so he gives me lots of complicated feelings.  So, if you choose to include him, please be kind?

And if you, too, have dealt with burnout - Erika and Hiraoka had a very interesting conversation at one point that made me think that Erika’s also uncomfortably familiar with it, but has just stabilized in a healthier place. If you wrote a story centered on that I’d probably love you forever, but I’m not sure it’s one even I’d be willing to attempt …)

Mouretsu Pirates | Bodacious Space Pirates

Requested character(s): Lynn Lambretta, Jenny Dolittle

Spoiler notes: I’ve watched the show and the movie.

Preferred pairings: Lynn/Jenny

… Yeah, no, I’m not even going to pretend that I’d be happy with gen when this is an actual canon relationship that is one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen.

(… Like, my high-pitched yelling about this pairing almost reaches the level of Uranus/Neptune back in my peak Sailor Moon fan years.  … … And that’s a lot. XD)

I meannnnn you can do gen if you reallllllly want to. :D I’m sure I’ll still enjoy it.  <3

But yeah, insofar as I have OTPs anymore, these two are definitely one of them. XD (And I’m hoping that if you’re offering these two characters, it’s because you ship them too. XD)

Ahem. Where was I?  

I really enjoy this show in general - it’s just so refreshingly, unabashedly fun; a lovely warm show about a bunch of ridiculous, adorable, and really damn competent girls being their awesome selves. (With a handful of fond, long-suffering adults on the side.) (And also piracy.)

And I love Jenny and Lynn in particular because even though they’re secondary characters, they exemplify this - every interaction Marika has with them, they’re being their competent, awesome selves, and it’s a true treat to watch.  

So please give me these two characters being being their badass competent selves.  Or give me something adorably fluffy with the two of them doing nothing in particular.  Give me them working together and sometimes having to remind each other to take a break and eat or sleep - or give me that year they spent separate, and their wistful pining, wishing they could reach each other through their holographic displays.  

(Okay, ngl, I have a special category of high-pitched yelling reserved for that phone conversation!! When Jenny is giving Lynn advice on being president!! And Lynn’s wistful-but-fond smile as she hangs up!!!)

In summary, please give me more of these adorable canon lesbians. <3

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Requested character(s): Nel Zelpher, Clair Lasbard

Spoiler notes: I’ve played the game and am ~ halfway through the manga and seriously wtf did you do to my favorite character less blushing more badassery for Apris’ sake!

Preferred pairings: Nel/Clair

Speaking of high-pitched yelling on the scale of Uranus/Neptune, I am fairly certain that Nel was my official first ever video game crush. This was a bit difficult for me to explain to myself, as I was convinced I was ~straight at the time, but she was so cool that I didn't bother to think about it in too much detail.

And when we are introduced to Clair as her partner, and every single scene in which the two appear makes it clear how strong their bond is -- it was a foregone conclusion that I would start to ship them as well. And Adray's obnoxious insistence on trying to find a husband for Clair just made me even more determined to headcanon them as lovers (or at the very least secretly pining for each other) in addition to partners.

As I said above with Lynn/Jenny -- if you don't ship them romantically, but just think they're great platonic partners, I'm sure I'll still enjoy it whatever you come up with. But in case there’s any doubt, I also very much ship them. :D <3

And either way, I just love their dynamic -- these two strong-willed, intelligent, fiercely competent women, working towards a shared goal that they both believe is more important than themselves. How deep and unshakeable their trust is -- and how even though it clearly tears Clair apart to send Nel out into a situation that they both know may not be survivable, she'll do it anyway. And Nel will go.

I don't have any specific prompts in mind -- if you want to write about a mission Clair has to send Nel off on, and the tension between their fear for and their trust in each other (and the knowledge hanging over both of them that they're doing something that they see as more important than them both), great! Want to just do fluffy interactions during a brief break from the action (do they get vacation? How many people do they have to bribe to get vacation at the same time?), or after the war is done and things are a bit more settled, go for it. In the narrative path where Nel goes with the party into space, does she think of Clair and all the stories she's going to tell once she gets back (if she gets back)?  What does Clair think, being left so much farther behind this time than any other time before?  What stories does Nel tell when they're reunited?

Got an idea that's burning in your mind and has nothing to do with any of these? I'm sure I'll enjoy whatever you come up with. :)

Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee 

Requested character(s): Kel Cheris, Shuos Alaia

Spoiler notes: I’ve read both Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem, and a decent number of the other vignettes/short stories in the world.  If you want to check whether I’ve read a specific story, feel free to shoot me an anon ask. :)

Preferred pairings: Cheris/Alaia

Ah, these books. Ninefox Gambit is one of my favorite books I've read this year, and its sequel, Raven Stratagem, was an entirely worthy follow-up. I'm really looking forwards to how the trilogy concludes in Revenant Gun, but in the meantime: fanfic! :D

I debated what I wanted to request, since there's a lot about this series that I like -- the fact that pretty much all of the characters are competent and Done With Your Shit, the way it sets up a horribly broken system and then doesn't flinch away from both how broken it is, and how the vast majority of people have just ... accustomed themselves to the situation, and make do while tolerating the horrible. It makes the system feel sustainable enough to have lasted this long, while still making it very clear why multiple someones would have gone to so much effort to try and tear it down. And yet, it also doesn't flinch from the consequences of the actions that the various characters take to try and tear it down, either. (One of the many reasons I'm looking forward to Revenant Gun -- I'm very curious to see what the consequences arise from the events in Raven Strategem.)

I really enjoy how many characters are queer (including trans!!), and how casually the narrative treats this fact. And the way that many characters' families are factored into their thoughts, even if they're not on the page, in a way that felt very true, but that I feel like doesn't often come up in other novels that aren't explicitly about something family-related.

The casual inclusion of dyscalculia and ADHD is also pretty great -- how it’s clearly an aspect of the characters that have shaped them, while even more clearly not being all their character is.

... So what do I decide to request this year?

Cheris and that one ex-girlfriend of hers who shows up for, like, a paragraph of flashback in Ninefox Gambit. XD

I just ... really liked that little bit of insight we got into Cheris’ history, and would love to see more.  How did they meet? Why did they break up?  What was the actual most ridiculous drama they watched, and how late did they stay up making fun of it?

Feel free to go in a more serious direction as well (what sort of training incident gave Alaia her nervous tic? what is being Shuos like to someone who didn’t go the flashy assassin route? How did being Kel and Shuos inform their interactions with each other, and the world around them).

And, as always, feel free to ignore my prompts entirely if there’s something you’d rather do instead. :D

[violetemerald]

For the shipping one, 30, 26, and 10. :)

Lol this is some reverse order kinda thing... I see what you’re doing...

OK. http://luvtheheaven.tumblr.com/post/157356117182/40-questions-meme-for-shippers

30. Name a couple of fandoms in which you have no ships. 

Well then we have to define “fandom” and “having a ship” so I can know just how to answer. Southland is a show I adored and had no ships in, from what I can remember, but while I watched it loyally and adored it I didn’t feel like it was a fandom I was engaging with. White Collar is a show where I support multiple canon romances somewhat but don’t feel major shipping feelings? Some people would say if you like Elizabeth/Peter’s marriage you ship them but idk if everyone would. I did support Neal/Alex probably the most of his canon romances and could rank each of Neal’s romances, and I felt a lot of feelings about Neal&Peter and vidded them in a platonic way and read “Gen” fics about them and stuff but like, to me that’s not shipping, when it’s not rooting for them to be anything other than the platonic loving bond that is basically already canon... I also don’t ship but really love the idea of Mozzie&Neal actually being the real committed queerplatonic partners throughout the show’s run... I could talk on that some more.

Ok fandoms in which I have no ships... thinking harder... A Series of Unfortunate Events, Heroes probably could count in this category, Criminal Minds when you squint right? Because ultimately I support all the ships in a platonic way? I don’t think BBC Sherlock counts here, because I do basically feel like I ship Johnlock even though it’s queerplatonic in my mind. I don’t know. But I don’t ship anyone in any romantic way on Sherlock either. Oh The Fosters is a huge one for me in this category, I really try to like the ships more sometimes so I can be more in the fandom but its hard, I adore the show and the characters and the family relationships and yet I have like no shipping feelings. I might’ve shipped Wyatt/Callie fairly hard but it was probably in large part because they’re just better than the main alternative ship who I consider a rare NOTP... like idk I can rank some ships as better than others but I don’t really have ships when it comes to The Fosters. Breaking Bad I have no ships. And then there are shows like Arrow or DC’s Legends of Tomorrow or The 100 where I mainly have completely AU ships and/or my only ship was killed off, so for long stretches I kinda feel like I don’t really ship on those shows.

Harry Potter is definitely a fandom where I have no ships, so I lean toward canon ones.

26. Have you noticed a pattern in your shipping? Is there a romantic dynamic you’re more drawn to? 

I’ve noticed a few patterns I think. My ships don’t all just follow the same single pattern, I have too many varied ships for that, but yeah I’ve thought about these things.

First of all there’s the cerebral/friendship leads to romance/it’s not explicitly about sexual attraction or aesthetic attraction at all ships, the kind of really chaste, slow burn, easy to fall for ships that you can explain why they are good together in terms of like, detailed explanations of which ways they complement each other, how they both are good for each other, etc. Ships that have been appealing to me as an asexual person since long before I even knew I was ace or that asexuality itself was an option. Maybe the guy clearly finds the girl beautiful but he doesn’t actually talk about wanting to date her or kiss her, doesn’t claim he’s in love until after he knows her well, he just wants to talk to her at first or something, and usually in these ships the girl is oblivious that dating could be on the horizon, or she’s completely focused on something else like an important mission, she’s in another relationship, that kind of thing while all this slow development of a friendship and slowly falling in love happens.

I’ve noticed for the vast majority of my favorite ships, I care deeply about both characters, both are main characters or you get to know a lot about both of them, you see them on their own outside of the ship, it makes the ship easier to root for and fuller and I fall harder faster if I’ve become completely invested in both characters in and of themselves.

There’s, on television and film fandoms, some degree of chemistry or how they act around each other that MATTERS. If whenever they kiss or have a sexual scene they pause for breath with enormous, uncontrollable grins on their faces, that can go a long way. If they are cute with shy smirks and they touch each other in ways that seem intimate and probably not platonic, if the way eye contact happens or something just makes me believe they really want to be together, that goes such a long way. I don’t think ships have to have eye contact, I’ve shipped blind characters like Auggie/Annie on Covert Affairs and it’s just, everything in the way Auggie expresses emotion does it just as well of course... But like... idk there can be a big component of do I believe that the characters feel truly happier in each other’s presence, etc. And usually the difference between like shipping levels of happier in each other’s presence vs platonic they’re better as friends level of happier is about the like, kind of happiness, is it too giddy or is it steady and safe? Is it connected to anything sexual or close to kissing or is it mostly connected to things that could be platonic?

There’s not a clear formula really but I think all of this is part of it, for me.

10. Do you ship any characters that have never met?

Tommy & Sara on Arrow, maybe, not super hard but I like the idea of what their interaction might be? I certainly ship Tommy with her sister Laurel, but Sara and Laurel have had the same taste in men before... (*cough*Oliver*cough*) and with Sara “dying” (or so he thought) before season 1, and then Tommy dying in the season 1 finale, and then Sara returning in season 2, we never got a chance to see what it could’ve been like. I’d like to see how Tommy handled Sara being bisexual. I assume Tommy has met her in my headcanon, before the gambit, and they have potential to still meet because of Sara being on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and traveling through time on a regular basis. But this is one ship I’ve thought a fair amount about and kind of “ship” despite them never having met. To be fair my main motivation for this particular shipping combination is just that Tommy was my favorite character and they killed him off. And then Sara entered the show and became my new favorite character. I like it when my favorite characters interact? XD

Kara (Supergirl) and Iris from The Flash have now met but barely, and I started shipping them when they hadn’t. This femslash ship is a pretty huge one for me on my mind for the past like, over a year... I really like the idea of them for a lot of reasons, especially since Iris is a reporter and so is James (albeit a photojournalist in this case), and Kara was canonically hugely crushing on James, meanwhile Iris canonically was captivated and supporting The Flash before she knew he was Barry, and eventually does love Barry, and Kara is also a superhero with a similar personality to Barry? And idk I just really love the idea of exploring them as a femslash ship.

Chloe (Smallville)/Peter (Heroes) was a ship that a few people besides me actually had. They got better and better as more seasons of each show aired. Total crazy crossover, characters never met, but Chloe loves the Superman/Clark Kent personality that Peter Petrelli in so many ways has, and Peter is an empath and would be so caring to the emotional Chloe, and the actors had good chemistry together in the show canceled after 8 episodes back in the year 2000, Opposite Sex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzjFTLGCJMs

So like I’ve actually made 2 Peter/Chloe fanvideos... let me know if anyone wants to see them lol.

In Harry Potter I kinda ship some weird combinations if I think on the hard enough, with so many characters and even generations there are some characters who have never met that might be fun to ship but no, I don’t really ship them hard or anything.

I think that’s probably it? I don’t really ship too many characters who have never met...