#but the two of them and their relationship never really had any development / arc. m./b. wound up getting a better buildup in 15 minutes

[sol-flo]

what annoys me is that i just know neil gaiman thinks he's sooo cute

[sakebytheriver]

This fandom had no problems shipping Willow with her lifelong bully Boscha, but the moment Willow is shipped with someone who respects and is clearly interested in her suddenly everyone and their mom are clutching their pearls crying about age gaps and trauma (nothing against bosch//low but all this discourse is really grinding my nerves)

Oh God, don't even get me started on B*schlow, remember those Notps I talked about?🤮 (tbh i could prolly write a pretty long rant post about that ship and my points would have a lot more logic in them than any of the antis in the Huntlow tag, but guess how many posts in the B*schlow tag you'll find written by me)

Tbh I think a lot of people see a gay ship and think that that automatically makes it somehow better and healthier than a m/f ship without even thinking about the dynamics or how the characters fit together. Like no doubt people have been making posts about how Huntlow isn't as good or subversive as B*shlow or H*ntric because it's an m/f ship instead of being gay without taking into account the fact that it's an interracial ship with a fat woc.

But also shipping and the romantic relationships the show makes canon are not about how many boxes you can check off to get diversity points. Huntlow is a ship that was clearly meant to have some more kind of depth and development to it from the little we can see from the show so far, like the parallels of them both being considered "Half-a-witch", the way their character developments basically start and end in the opposite directions, how they both came from a place where people put them down and belittled them for their shortcomings but they've both found people who help them find their greatest potential, the mutual respect and admiration they have for each other, it is clear to me that the writers are trying to speed up a ship timeline that was supposed to be a lot longer than the timeframe they're forced to work within, with the multitude of different ship dynamics they have clearly tried to inject into this couple with what little time they have left. There's a reason why B*schlow was never going to canon, the characters don't fit together the same way, the dynamic is one that was always meant to be one dimensional bully that serves more as a plot device for Willow's character development than the Lumity dynamic the fandom tried to push it towards, not to mention that if the ship was to become canon then Willow would be acting as Bosha's teacher and redeemer which she basically already had to do with Amity, but with Huntlow they're both meant to be fully fleshed out main characters that come together in a dynamic that strengthens their characters in a mutually beneficial way that serves both of them individually as well as a couple, they meet each other near the end of their original character developments meaning they meet at the right time to walk together towards their next character developments, because the two of them went through entire arcs individually learning to stand on their own, the next obvious step for their characters is them learning how to be their new selves while with another person

Tbh I just really don't get what the issue with Huntlow is here, like why is this the ship that broke the fandom? I mean, the obvious reasons are there, of course, the racism, the fatphobia, the general uproar that comes when the fandoms favorite white boy falls for a woc instead of the other pretty white boy or girl they wanted him to fall for, but like God I was not expecting to have to fight this hard for this ship when we've only got 3 more episodes left before this show ends for good. Like are there not more pressing things we could worry about other than a very cute, very nice, very healthy ship between two traumatized kids who have never been seen as anything worth looking at twice until the other person saw them

[army-of-mai-lovers]

in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough. 

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.” 

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!” 

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role. 

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all. 

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.” 

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.” 

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka  repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--   

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~” 

y’all WHAT. 

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back. 

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai. 

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too. 

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!” 

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse. 

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.) 

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal  adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out. 

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)  

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”  

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show. 

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.” 

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process. 

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring. 

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what? 

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her. 

Conclusion    

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked. 

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here. 

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice. 

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us. 

[ljf613]

I saw your Makorra, Masami and Korrasami post, not sure if you're still doing the ship ratings or not, but your comment on Asami made me wonder because I thought you shipped Irohsami (ignore this if I'm wrong) but out of curiosity why, if you don't really like her? Also, if you are still doing the rating thing can I ask about your opinion on Iroh II x Krew ships (Irohsami, Korroh, Makroh and Broh)? If not, it's fine, just wondering and only just saw these now.

I'm sorry if that Irohsami ask came off as rude, I am very tired and have apparently been upsetting people all day without meaning to. I realized after I hit send that dislike wasn't the word you used but rather not care for but my curiosity is still there, if you're willing to answer. Again, sorry if that seemed rude. I wasn't meaning to question you, just wanted your opinion on it. (2/2) 

Don’t worry, you’re fine, I wasn’t the slightest bit offended. I’m always happy to share my opinions on fandom, as long as it can be done in a mature way and nobody tries to take it as a personal attack. 

(Anon, btw, is refering to this post, where I just kind of tore into the Makorra/Masami/Korrasami love triangle.) 

The thing is, I don’t hate Asami. I think she had the potential to be a fantastic character, but any and all of her development got shelved in favor of making her a generically “perfect” Love Rival/Love Interest. I would have loved to see more of her independently of Mako & Korra, to see her really fleshed out as her own unique, individual person. 

But we didn’t get that. (Even her relationship with her father, and how she coped with his betrayal-- something that should have been such a crucial part of her character-- got shelved for two and a half seasons until the writers decided to bring him Back for the Dead.) 

There were a lot of ways that LOK failed to live up to what it could have been, and Asami’s character arc is one of them. 

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to shipping. 

Irosami: B+ 

This is actually one of my favorite LOK rarepairs. 

(Iroh II, by the way is another character who was done such a disservice by the narrative. He was such a great character, clearly meant to be one of the major supporting players.... and the story just didn’t seem to know what to do with him, so he got shoved onto the sidelines into what basically amounted to a cameo role, generally as more of a hindrance than a help. This is a travesty.) 

I feel like Iroh and Asami would make such a good couple. They have a lot in common-- they’re both talented intellectuals in roles with significant power who take those responsibilities seriously. They’re both good listeners who try their best to see things from other people’s perspectives, which is a great foundation for a relationship. They’re also different enough to make up for each other’s weaknesses, and I feel like they’d really complement each other well. 

(I heard somewhere he was originally written to be Asami’s love interest, and while I don’t know if this is actually true, it makes a lot of sense.) 

My biggest complaint about this ship is that most of the (admittedly few) fanfics focussing on them appear to be rated M or E-- I’d love to see more sweet/fluffy/clean content with these two. 

Korroh: E+ or N/A 

I’ve never really thought about these two in a shipping context? Ever? 

My knee-jerk reaction would be no. They don’t seem compatible at all, on a variety of issues. (At a bare minium, Korra does not do well with figures of authority, and I think Iroh’s a little too straight-laced for her tastes.) I think they could have been good friends, though (if the story hadn’t butchered him). 

Makroh: E 

I have seen this one before, and I’ve got to say I just.... don’t see the appeal? They seem a little too similar. I’m not sure how to put it exactly, except that, again, I don’t really see either of them making the other one happy. (As always, this is my personal feeling, and you’re entitled to disagree.) 

Broh: E or N/A 

This is another one I’ve never once thought about. I can’t even think of a single time these two actually talk to each other, let alone interact one on one. It literally feels like pointing at two random people on the street and going “now kiss!” 

It’s just not my cup of tea.

[gronjon44]

SO I WATCHED THE STEVEN UNIVERSW FINALE

And since it's over, I'd like to give my final thoughts on most of the series, even Jasper now that I've seen how they ended her "arc".

I'm gonna list this in order of main characters, so this is concise.

Jasper-

I'm gonna get this out of the way now. Jasper was treated like actual shit and even I can see it. She got some redemption at the end I liked how they turned her into this trainer to help Steven deal with his anger. BUT I was hoping it would evolve and help Steven get through to her and make her open up. But instead she was shattered, turned into a Diamonds herald again, and then dismisses right at the end. I will respect Rebrccas decisions, but Jasper deserved much more then to be an emotional pin cushion for her poke into and never fix.

Garnet-

Garnet went though significant changes. She was very guarded in the begining, showing trust only between the gems really. But when she was split by Jasper she was forced to open up when Steven realized who she was. This opened the door to have her be more vulnerable, and strengthen her bond with Steven. And this went on throughout the series and I like how she was the first to initiate the hug that fixed Steven-Zilla (that's what I call him)

Amythest/Pearl-

I'm gonna lump these two together cause they kinda parallel each other, and you could fit Garnet with them you wanted to. Both Pearl and Amethyst were still caught up in the idea of Rose, and Amethyst never really knew Rose before so she always associated Rose as she was when she was born, Crystal Gem and a friend. She was also extremely immature, and I think that fed into Steven's immaturity, so she had to progressively get more adult and accept things were changing.

And Pearl was honestly a parallel of that, while also being an opposite. She did not relax, she was strict, she was secretive, and she had known Rose longest, as well as when she was still Pink. So she was caught up the most in the Gem Wars History. She had to open up the most and to learn to "live and let die" essentially. Or at least that's how I see it.

Peridot-

Peridot went through some of the most drastic changes. She was basically Spock from Star Trek, all logic and science, but more evil sociopath. But when Jasper was defeated, Peridot was left to her own devices and became a sort of Skeletor, plotting what she could do to defeat Steven and please Yellow. And it took her losing the status she wss given to figure out herself and be her own person (in her case litterally when her arms and legs were destroyed) She was able to separate herself from homeworld, and it took a long while for her to really become her own person.

Bismuth-

Bismuth wss someone I originally didnt care for at first glance. I understood her importance and wss ok with it. But when she first showed up I was fine with it. But when she was revealed to basically be a radical gem and Rose had to bubble her, I was hooked. And while her acceptance of Steven not only being Rose but also being Pink just seemed to quickly solved for me, I'll let it be.

Lapis-

Lapis is an anti hero who should not have just been accepted as fast as she was. I used to love Lapis and Lapidot, still kinda do.l, but looking at it now and what they did to Jasper as part of that, I cant ignore it. Yeah she grew as a person but it wasnt done properly. She almost killed Steven 3 times, broke Jasper emotionally with being a fusion for so long, and she never actually owned up to her faults I think. And her sudden reintroduction in the final battle of Homeworld and how she just, magically decided to be a better person felt forced. Just my own thoughts.

Diamonds-

Yellow remind me of the Dictator from the actual film Dictator , wanting to be better but treating it as face value. She is doing good but at litteral face value with changing a gems physical form. Blue to me is the same way, only trying to fix their in the moment emotional state. Honestly I think White was doing the most she could to help fix everything, since she was most at fault. She was letting herself become vulnerable to other gems to help them go through their problems and see themselves as they are, hopefully becoming better people. White in such a short time was doing more to help other gems then Yellow or blue.

Spinel-

Spinel got done dirty frankly. I love her inclusion in the end and I love her character, flaws and all, but they felt abandoned in the end. I'm assuming that Steven Universe Future takes place some months after the events of the film. MONTHS. The type of trauma and abandonment issues Spinel dealt with dont go away in sheer months, especially when it comes to 600 years worth of abandonment. And when she was with the diamonds she just seemed fine, devoid of any issues. She was hesitant to go with the Diamonds hell she openly denied Steven's immediate friendship offer and said "I need time to figure this out, and I cant do it here." I can't just accept that Spinel got through that as fast as she did, not without some underlying issues left over from her past. You cant change my mind on that sorry.

Greg-

Omg Greg my boi, I wanna give him a hug and hot chocolate. The idea he had a ruff childhood and felt he needed to leave how he did, and how his parents never actually responded to his letters, its heartbreaking and it shows why he raised Steven how he did. He had too many lmits and he wanted Steven to have none of those limits. And him being half Gem complicated it, making Greg unsure about hospitals, about traditional schools, it's why he just let the Gems take over as his "mother(s)" because he knew they could help. Of course that caused issues that cant be ignored. But it just shows you why he is the way he is. And it hurts it really does.

Everyone else-

No real comment on anyone else, Lars and Ssdie are both league's ahead of who they started as. The Off Colors are still a delight I wouldve loved more inclusion of them though, Onion and his family eh never cared much for them accept the mom cause she was awesome, no real thoughts.

Connie-

Connie is, a whole new person from who she once was. I think she, without Steven, wouldve become what Greg could've been. But Steven helped her, out of everyone, become something even better then who she was. And it even helped her parents become more open to both Steven as a person, and Connie as a growing person. I have no beef with her character development, she was done amazingly well.

And finally,

Steven -

Steven is... how should I put this, a mixed bag for me. While he most certainly grew as a person, mastered his powers and most of his responsibilities, I cannot say I like how he was treated this final season. Yes Steven Universe: Future was focused him moving on from the past, inevitable change, and learning things he never knew about before. Things felt too fast for him in that season, even if time was passing longer for him, it felt too short. His downfall from grace felt to sudden, his progression to becoming a sort of "Surogate Pink" was too jarring (still fun to watch I love the idea of it)

His training with Jasper even, yeah they played it out like he changed so fast, but THREE DAYS? In one episode? No I wouldve preferred he spend a month or so with Jasper, they show they're relationship, Jasper gets actual time to develop and become a character that we wanted her to become. Hell you could've still shattered her, and it wouldve made her becoming a diamonds herald again more heart breaking, and they could've spent time on helping her get over that mindset.

All in all, Steven's character development was fun, but left much to be desired.

All in all, while the series as a whole was enjoyable, it was by no means perfect. It had many ups, plenty of downs, and I think it's a good example what to do and what not to do when writing an growing narrative. Rebecca Sugar rushed Steven Universe: Future too fast, she left many ends open ended and unanswered, and I give the final season a 6 out of 10.

This is all personal preference so hey let me know if you disagree.

[land-of-brains-and-chocolate]

god it WILL NOT stop bothering me until i talk about it. the way we got here. it’s not just about the book anymore, not at all, and it’s certainly never been about “shipping”, at this point it’s how helpless the tactics of the guy make me feel.

step one: refer to people who have read previous venom books and noticed the trend throughout the nineties to portray eddie and the symbiote as a man and an agender alien in an ambiguously or not-so-ambiguously romantic relationship, which was picked up on and completely unambiguously canonised in the very last run, consistently refer to these people as “shippers”, lovingly condescend to them, do not ever treat “the ship” as existing beyond their imagination

[I LOVE THAT YOU GUYS EXIST]

result: make people forget that this is a complete misrepresentation and he has received no criticism whatsoever for “not making a ship canon” because that is not what he did, he decanonised it and then denied doing so and painted everyone it ever meant something to as essentially deluded - and, considering that that’s all they are, he’s being awfully kind and accommodating, isn’t he?

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step two: actively seek out these no-good shippers on tumblr! tell them that you’re watching them! read their detailed posts in which they express their grievances about your comic book to their friends and misrepresent their points on your twitter so your bajillion followers can affirm that Those People are categorically wrong about everything!

[EDDIE IS CODEPENDENT]

people are mad at him because he said eddie was codependent! not because he’s reframing the extremely rare story of a troubled queer relationship that was ultimately still a redemptive force in these characters’ lives as an unhealthy compulsion that corrupts, hm, what a fresh and unfamiliar take, no reason why this would strike a nerve - and, recently, of course, as something inherently abusive, every bit of hope and change for the better vile and fake.

literally just start vaguing about people’s personal tumblr blogs on your professional twitter account with the little, little blue checkmark and everything, use that to make passive-aggressive references to people’s posts! why not!

[LOVE EACH OTHER]

people talk about how they like a symbiote and its host getting along (and they did, that very night, talk quite a lot about ngozi)? that is so dumb and lame.

[EVERYTHING IS AWESOME]

people get sick of edgy shock factor writing that throws one dark theme after another at them without treating any of them with the consideration they deserve? people expect some moments of levity in a venom book?

they’re asking for stories with no conflict where nothing bad ever happens! but it’s okay, he knows better, he knows you just don’t know what you want! it’s not like endless sadness is just as likely to be dreadfully boring or unintentionally hilarious as endless happiness!

result: o w n e d god he sure is shutting down every point no one has ever made

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step three: literally get so mad at people on tumblr talking about your comic that you not only boil their opinions down to THE SHIIIIP but literally say that their opinions don’t matter because they literally would never say it “to your face” literally because it’s “easy to be brave on tumblr”

literally

say these words

[IT’S EASY TO BE BRAVE ON TUMBLR]

call people chicken shits for NOT talking to you directly! and then! BLOCK everybody who talks to you directly! or quote retweet them so your followers can descend like vultures! actually acknowledge that it takes bravery to interact with you if you’re in the Tumblr Demographic, you know, one of Those People, and frame yourself as in the right for it???

am i losing my mind???

[SIX PEOPLE ON TUMBLR]

get so mad at people on tumblr talking about your comic that you not only claim they’re the only people ever to talk badly of it but imply that you’re one step away from namedropping the specific perpetrators. that’s not ominous at all!

it’s an age-old question: how many times does one of marvel’s top writers with legions of fans have to imply his antagonistic awareness of your specific existence before you’re on a first name basis? and also paranoid?

result: stir shit. be a shit stirrer. faint when your shit stirring does in fact stir shit. you can’t go “you would never” and be surprised when people do, you... can’t...

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step four: whip out your ally card... to whip the people you’re supposed to be allied to with it. try to use your knowledge of queer issues to shut down actual queer people.

[I DON’T THINK IT’S APPROPRIATE TO ASSUME GENDER]

either that, or straight-up make a “did you just assume my gender” joke. i can’t find the original tweet anymore, so it’s possible it was that and he deleted it because it was too blatant, lol.

result: MAYBE YOU GUYS WERE THE PROBLEMATIC ONES ALL ALONG

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step five: remember that interview where he outright stated that he just wants to, just to be the definite venom run? just to put the biggest dent in canon he can? just to break everybody’s toys and emerge victorious as the one person with the valid take on venom?

yeah, those things become more noticeable in the actual book, over time, and acceptance of that is, uh, not universal? not everybody’s up for him spending several issues in a row on e s t a b l i s h i n g  d o m i n a n c e by having eddie sit around as other characters tell him that a ton of stuff other writers from michelinie to thompson to costa to kaminski to slott to jenkins have done actually sucked and was wrong and fake and never happened? through retcons that make no sense, like, factually don’t fit?

people don’t like you walking back character and relationship development to further your end goal of recasting the symbiote as the personification of addiction and abuse instead of itself a survivor of extreme abuse who has been constantly denied personhood in a way that is frighteningly resonant and who has been going through a genuine redemption arc for years now?

people don’t like you acting like eddie never had a reason for being who he is before and you had to make one up? one that doesn’t fit the character at all, which you didn’t realise because you apparently thought the character had no characterisation before you came along?

you can imagine how these things might spark nerd rage?

and you can probably imagine who this nerd rage was blamed on, yeah?

these criticisms inherently require knowledge of venom canon, because they’re largely about disrespect for it, these criticisms are not related to shipping of any kind - but of course the only thing people could possibly be mad about is the "ship", the only ones making a fuss are those “shippers”, those casuals, Those People who only care about One Thing and don’t understand the real gritty reality of the, god you get it i’m making fun

[I KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT]

you’re the only one, don. it’s true.

and i know, i know for a fact, that he’s been aware of criticism from other groups all along, that he was, for example, witness to this livestream that spends like a solid hour a month mercilessly dragging him through the dirt, and you know what the extent of his response was?

thanks for checking the book out.

that’s it. that’s all. this guy hasn’t gotten any less loud about criticising him, either. wishing for his book’s cancellation and retconning. but nothing more. he gets to keep to himself. he is #valid.

people have been taking the piss out of him on youtube, on reddit. only tumblr ever earned his ire. only tumblr gets namedropped at convention panels.

and now, now more than ever? you better believe your regular run-of-the-mill nerds, straight, male, utterly uninterested in the icky stuff, everything, are mad. almost everyone who’s truly tits deep in venom lore is mad.

and so he’s said he’s received threats. and i’m sure he has. i’ve received threats. you’ve received threats. it’s never okay. it sure as shit never helps to send them.

he’s gotten a lot of fucking inappropriate personal vitriol! lots of it actually “ship”-related! i’m categorically against contacting the guy for any reason!

but who is to blame? who do people accept as being to blame? who do news outlets report on as being to blame? when, i presume, not every single one of them actually went “i’m doing this specifically because i’m a (thunder clap) shipper”? when large-scale retcons are literally always met with nerd rage? when a shipper-less fandom probably still would’ve had threats?

[THIS IS INSANE]

[IT’S THE SHIPPERS]

result: if all criticism = “shippers”, and “shippers” = harassment, then everyone who has no actual idea of what’s going on but who doesn’t like “shippers” is automatically on his side and nobody who isn’t a “shipper” wants to risk the association by criticising him.

get this stuff out to his followers, to news outlets, to people completely uninvolved and contextless, and watch the bile run over everywhere because lots of people are ready to accept this narrative in comic book spaces.

have people in the replies and comments eagerly discussing how this is more proof that c+o+m+i+c+s+gate was right and they’re the only reasonable ones. how disgusting and crazy "shippers” are. how donny should keep doing his best to trigger the gays. there’s no pushback against these ideas.

and i’m so fucking stuck between wanting to defend the man, wring my hands and apologise on behalf of the other These People, because i don’t see anything justifiable in their actions, and in being... just... just so frustrated... with everything... with throwing everyone out to the dogs... and claiming that he doesn’t mean to... when he has this whole history of belittling "shippers” specifically... of making sure their public image is that of people who just don’t know what they’re talking about and are in no way worth empathising with... of only drawing attention to the aggressive ones and blocking the reasonable ones

when he literally only stands to benefit from doing all this. 

this is massive amounts of free positive pr.

this makes him essentially immune to criticism of any kind.

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes! 

i forgot! somewhere along the line, he did do something very good and disavowed association with co/mics/ga/te!

[C0M1C5G8]

why the fuck am i censoring? tumblr search stopped working decades ago.

anyway, it should come as no particular surprise why these people assumed he would side with them. not that any high profile writer who values his standing would, really. are there any? maybe there are, i’m not up to date on this drama.

i just think it’s funny - genuinely not his fault, but hilarious - that this was apparently enough to inspire a “boycott”? and it was a fart in the wind?

which is the least surprising thing ever because there is actually nothing whatsoever to hold these people’s ire to be found in venom? excluding aliens, there has been one real and present character who isn’t a white guy in 11 issues? it is actively less queer than it was before? donny has never caved to the essjaywoo pressure in any way, shape or form? what were they... thinking? it’s almost like these people are dumb?

all they've done is ensure that, without it actually doing anything, venom gets the commendation for being A Comic The Gators Don't Like?

anyway.

what do we do moving forward? i don’t know. nothing. not harassing anyone. keep being salty on tumblr. do not engage him. i think i’m more about stalling the chain reaction he’s caused than the man himself. if you’re not a “shipper”, of course, keep posting your criticism, maybe stand up for “shippers” who are being dogpiled over genuine criticism, don’t let people say This Is All Proof Of How You Can’t Have Queer Content Because Queers Are Crazy.

and be nice to mike costa.

[seasaltmemories]

Devil’s Line Review/Analysis

This is gonna be a different beast to tackle for a few reasons A) I actually started this once before and dropped it, B) For a proper analysis I’m gonna have to dive into spoilers, and C) I technically haven’t finished the entire series, as the last volume of the manga isn’t translated (and I will only talk about the manga here) I say this all so you’ll be gentle with me as I pop from subject to subject

To start let’s get that summary:

Tsukasa, a college student, is rescued from an attack by a devil, one of many vampires that can blend in among the human population. Anzai, her savior, is a half-devil who exploits his supernatural gifts as a member of a shadowy police task force that specializes in devil-related crime in Tokyo. As Anzai continues to keep guard over Tsukasa, the two quickly forge a tentative bond—one that Anzai fears will test his iron-clad rule of never drinking human blood …

So I feel like expectations play a lot into how you receive this story and what you want to get out of it.  My first time going in I was told it was a dark fantasy series, and then what I got in the 7 or 8 chapters I read was a lot of faffing about of will they won’t they with the external plot only appearing to be there to drive the main couple together, so I got bored and dropped it

This time I went in not only knowing there would be a lot of romance, but also personally more in the mood for vampire stuff, and kinda meeting it where it was allowed me to see it grow into more interesting ways

The beginning isn’t bad, but I think it is best appreciated when you know up front this is 50% romance and 50% thriller, both genres are equally important to the narrative, but rather than starting out with that ratio, the beginning focuses entirely on Tsukasa’s and Anzai’s blossoming romance, from there a greater plot concerning devils begins to unfold, and then the two really begin to work in sync to prop both sides up

Bc once the ball starts rolling, the plot becomes a high-speed mystery concerning secret conspiracies and questions of who you can trust, what started out simple gets more information added on that complicates matters as you begin to question your own judgement, still what keeps the plot from becoming a jumbled mess is the fact at the heart of the story is always Tsukasa and Anzai, it gives the narrative focus that I’ve see few things series have

I should also mention my first impressions of the romance being shaken bc I am so used to series having couples who are love at first sight yet waste the entire time actually getting together until the end, and while these two basically also have love at first sight and take a while to actually get together, they get together in an overall timely manner, and their relationship is allowed to grow and evolve in very mature ways, not just sexually but also emotionally, a lot of their arc together is learning about how to communicate what they want to the other and as their relationship grows, their strength as individual characters grow as well

Now I’m gonna get into some spoilers, but what turned the series from simply fun into can’t put down is the timeskip

A lot of the elements that I enjoyed were being done before the time skip, but I feel like the skip is what allowed it to reach new heights it just kept hovering up at

Bc slowly as we start from Tsukasa and Anzai, the world expands, first to his colleagues, then to their enemies until it is a large but never burgeoning cast of connections, and the way they keep it all together is that it is grounded by lot of casual little moments to see people just be people, no matter their relation to the protagonists, we are consistently shown the humanity of almost everyone we come in contact with, and as a result it is hard to not fall in love with people who had previously tried to murder your faves (and might still currently be doing so)  and after the timeskip we just get hit with back to back side stories of the cast each going through their own internal problems, while still keeping to focus on Tsukasa and Anzai

Another thing that helps is that the worldbuilding concerning devil’s is extremely well-done, again it starts out simple “they see blood, then transform into monsters, sexual lust is connected to their bloodlust” but not only do we learn devil’s themselves, but a lot about what it means for a world to have a population like this, for example we get a detailed look into the tech created to help devil’s have safe sex with human partners and while it can be easy to poke fun at such specific details, by the end of the series it really does feel like an actual genetic disorder rather than some supernatural stuff with a sciency explanation tacked on

A moment that really made me stop and realize “oh the person behind this must know stuff besides story-telling” was when after and educational lecture about devils, the speaker admitted privately that the model used to describe them was problematic in that it demonized certain sects of devils, like wow, it was a quick moment, but a story showing the struggles of nuanced activism? Then we not only touch upon exploration of devil’s through a social science lens, but the overall philosophy that gets brought up on how to deal with institutional bigotry is interesting (this will be endgame spoilers so if you want to skip this, scroll down until you see bolded words again)

In two separate cases, we see two queer women involved in institutions get asked to do something unethical, both decide that if they refuse then they’ll get fired and someone else will simply take their place, and their goal then becomes to work through the system until they make it to the top and can start openly resisting

The effectiveness of these strategies is intriguing to dig through, the first is a researcher breeding devil/human children to study, (many of the participants being convicts) and from her actions we see her try and inform those involved to the best of her abilities and get their consent, and when possible, try to use couples who are already together, any information that would put individuals at risk of being chosen for illegal experimentation, she destroys, when she becomes the head researcher, she changes the program to rely completely on studying the children of already formed devil/human couples who come to them willingly

The second is asked to head the conspiracy of wiping out all devils, when ironically she is a devil herself, and so what they do is essentially play their part until they’ve amassed enough power to eventually stage a coup, until they can get an insider to be the prime minister to publicly reveal to the world, the conspiracy and have vocal support of devil rights, not only does this plan depend on the actual killing of innocents and riling up actual bigotry, but it also attracts actual cold-blooded killers and violent bigots which complicate matters, and for all their effort, the prime minister gets assassinated right during his big speech 

As I mentioned their is still one volume left untranslated so I don’t know how it will add on to this, (most of the plot lines got wrapped up so I can’t see many major developments happening beyond wrapping up character plot threads) but they’re some juicy thematic questions to chew on as well, which is always a treat

Returning to some general strengths of the series, there really is a genuine sex-positive stance, I say that specifically bc it isn’t just simply exploring themes of sex, but also the way it does so, as mentioned above, there is a lot of baggage around devil’s and their sexual relationships, but a lot of what the characters have to learn is that such desires are normal and not some great abomination, just something they have to be responsible about, no one is shamed for communicating what they want/like, especially women, where multiple female characters are in fact openly encouraged to communicate to their partners that they are interested in sex, and from their we watch multiple couples (including a m/m one) work out what they want, in one neither is interested in romance, but is ok with a friends with benefit thing, two have the male participant be unsure of their feelings and so they work in their comfort zone (one likes physical touch and kissing, another they only hug) the m/m couple not only get screen-time of struggling with the “are you gay, I want to show interest but not get perceived as a creep” deal, but one admits to being repulsed by sex, and they still work out a romantic relationship

And the most surprising amount part of this, is that there is no unnecessary titillation, the eternal question of what is over-sexualization and all can get confusing and tiring, so I won’t define a specific threshold here or say this is the only way to tell such stories about sex, but first you don’t got any unrealistic body proportions on anyone or any creepy shots, everyone is fully clothed and dressed normally for the non-sexy bits, and while we do get a sex scene, it is pretty non-graphic (you got boobs and that is all that it on screen) so there really isn’t any confusing moments like in other stories I’ve experienced where I have to wonder if the framing contradicts its message 

I could go on, but the strength of the story lies within at the end of the day being about normal people just trying to live their lives, it really does seem to capture the essence of what it means to be human effortlessly, and I am just immediately charmed and ready to follow Ryo Handa in whatever other projects she does

[sometimesrosy]

Omg I just read your post about Raven and the potential character arc we’ll get in s6 and all of the themes and everything else and it BLEW MY MIND like its stuff I’ve never really put together and now that you’ve said it it just seems so obvious and I really really hope we get a big Raven arc this season because homegirl deserves it and I hope she learns to forgive herself by the end of it and just ugh I love that post thank you so much

Raven is one of my favorite characters and she usually gets a bit of character development. Like, she has some personal internal struggles to get through that are separate but linked to the main stories, like s1 had her loss of Finn and lack of self confidence, s2 had her leg, Finn’s death and Wick. s3 had her chronic pain and that whole ALIE storyline, s4 had her losing her faculties on top of her chronic pain and suicidal thoughts. but s5 really didn’t have her struggle with anything internal. There was all plot for Raven the genius and then her romantic arc, which it was time for, but she didn’t get that EMOTIONAL arc that she usually gets, so it felt her part in season 5 was thin.

This was one of the things that made me realize that many of the season 5 story arcs are actually TWO season story arcs, and we’re only half way into them. Because usually Raven’s story arc last for either the A season or the B season, not both. Not like Bellamy, Clarke and Octavia, who are full season stories. But like, we had Monty’s desires for peace, and Murphy’s self esteem issues REALLY be played out. They both pretty much concluded their personal arcs. But Raven didn’t start one?

And then I was like. SHE DIDN’T EVEN GET A DECENT PRINCESS MECHANIC REUNION? I mean. All of a sudden it just clicked. Like Raven’s story wasn’t told because they want RAVEN’S story to be linked up with Clarke’s story. They have a princess mechanic story coming. Because HER issues revolve around leaving Clarke behind, not getting spacekru back to earth. which now means abandoning Clarke FOR MORE TIME. Raven has DEEP self esteem problems but no one ever notices because she’s always like HELLO I”M A GENIUS. You don’t need to do that if you don’t have a poor self esteem. Her self esteem is built on being smarter than everyone and being able to fix everything and solve every problem. And this she couldn’t do.

She abandoned Clarke to die. She promised to get them home. Clarke survived and was waiting for them and she left her alone for another year. 

Yikes.

Combine that with Clarke’s betrayal. Yeah. I can imagine Raven being angry and not forgiving her. Especially when she realizes that Bellamy is STILL devoted to Clarke and her friend Echo is being dissed by Clarke AGAIN. Gina. Her. Echo. And ALWAYS Clarke. 

Okay. So that means the love triangle problem is coming up again. The love triangle problem was Raven’s original problem with Clarke. She never got over that resentment. And even though she knew that Clarke saved Finn from torture, she STILL blamed her for deciding who gets to die. Never mind that Raven had no problem blowing people up or forcing Clarke to take charge and “do her job.”

There’s a similar problem with Raven and Clarke as there is with Octavia and Belllamy. They’re always blaming Clarke and Bellamy for things that had to be done or were not their fault. And acting as if they didn’t have any part in any of it. Judging, without paying any attention to their own behavior.

And I think this whole show is about the redemption of the human race, not just their survival. And there’s no redemption until everyone involved starts taking responsibility for their own choices, their own actions and also for NOT stepping up and making decisions. Raven FORCED clarke to make that list. And then she blamed her for deciding who lived and died.

Raven needs to face this. She needs to forgive Clarke, but she also needs to recognize her OWN fault in things, and take responsibility and make amends and change her behavior. No one is actually asking Raven to lead, she doesn’t have to be a leader, but she’s a part of this too, and like Maya said, “none of us is innocent.” See, Dante was wrong, when he said he bore it so they didn’t have to. The people DO bear responsibility for what they do, for what they allow or encourage their leaders to do. You can’t just point fingers at the people who are making the hard choices while you sit back and wait for them to save you. 

Frankly, no one could be saved without Raven. She IS a part of the leadership, a part of the deaths and the lives. And she’s kept herself separate from it. I don’t think she can do that anymore.

TBH I’m not sure if any of that was a part of what I said before or what made sense to you. I’m kind of just thinking about Raven in relationship to the main story now, and character development, and the arc of the entire narrative and thematic lessons that we’re getting to the end of.

Because yeah. I think we’re getting to the end of the lessons. They’re breaking the cycle and becoming heroes and getting happy endings and conquering their flaws. I think humanity is going to be REDEEMED. And we’re going to need everyone on board to do it. 

I don’t know how soon we’ll start Raven’s story or how but I’m looking forward to it. 

[velvet-tread]

A theory, or wild speculation, or whatever; anyway there’s some Bellarke

Here follows a collection of thoughts that don’t quite add up to a thesis yet

Season 5 had one of the best runs of episodes I’ve seen on this show ever - strong themes, great setups, impactful character beats. 9 straight episodes of near-perfection.

But imo it fell short in the last couple of episodes. How short depends on your perspective, but my feelings about it range from mildly disappointed to Jane Austen mourning weeds and little weepy handkerchiefs. Either way - the collapse into fudgy incoherence and loose ends actually undid all of the great work the show did in the first 9 episodes.  WHICH IS FUCKING INFURIATING. 

The show painstakingly put together so much excellent character and relationship set ups which either never materialised or didn’t pay off or just fizzled out. And now I’m left wondering what it all meant, which not only frustrates me on a viewer level but also makes me feel like an idiot for wildly overestimating what the show was doing with the material.

*looks at the X Files forever*

Just to pick a few things out at random.

a) Bellarke were put in conflict, but there was no emotional pay-off, the framing was all over the place and the resolution basically a post-script. 

b) We spent the series agonising about the wisdom of going to war on a fragile planet, but the actual harbinger of Apocalypse 3.0 (I can’t believe I have to write that) was someone only tangentially related to that storyline, whom every single named character bar Kabby was trying to stop. So was everyone wrong? Or just ineffectual? The latter is far less interesting and more depressing tbh.

c) The worms

d) Memori

e) I could go on

I repeat, I would not be so pernickety if the run up to the s5 finale hadn’t been so good, and the set up so promising.  The idea of a reboot was genius.  The Bellarke separation was genius.  Blodreina = genius.  Mama Bear Clarke = genius. Eligius = genius. Spacekru = genius. 

But ultimately?  Can ANYONE tell me what s5 meant?  What difference did any of those things make in the end?  What conflict was resolved satisfactorily?  I’d argue that the Blodreina/Blake siblings arc worked the best (although *howl* Bellamy was never given any in-universe context for Blodreina) but generally I’m left with the feeling that very few of these stories or conflicts had any meaning whatsoever, and especially not Bellarke.

So I have a theory and I stand to be corrected as ever because I am very much processing.

I think there’s a strong possibility Jason and/or the 100 writers room began rewriting the back end of season 5 as they were filming the early season 5 material.

Given Jason’s comments immediately after the finale, I’m inclined to believe that the rewrites, if I’m right, were mostly around Bellarke and the Flame.  Specifically, I think that at some point when they were filming mid-season, Jason changed his mind about how Bellarke-y he wanted the season to be, if at all.  And on top of that, I think as he was pitching season 6 around that time, he realised that he wanted to go full-hog with the Flame in season 6. 

Those two things might be connected.  Perhaps Jason realised the full extent to which he coud “bring Lexa back” without actually bringing back ADC, around the Flame.  Perhaps he wants to recreate the show’s Clexa glory days.  And perhaps romantic Bellarke isn’t compatible with that vision. Dumb, in my view, but hey.

Perhaps, he just realised that he can’t doesn’t want to write romantic Bellarke.

If that’s the case, then well, *shrugs*.  Less satisfying for me, but I don’t own this shit.  I do, however, own the prerogative to speculate wildly on how and why they squandered all that promise in the last couple of eps.

Certainly, a mid-season back end emergency rewrite would explain a few things:

1.The loose threads and wonky framing

For example, Clarke’s fury at Bellamy for putting the Flame into Madi’s head was just...dropped?  Why? When it was SUCH A BIG DEAL in 509?  What were we supposed to the think about that?  What was she? And Bellamy, who didn’t appear to even remember who Clarke was until he saw her at the ship, being angry at her? Really? Where? Since when? And importantly - why? 

I’m a writer and it’s my experience that the best planning you do for a piece is when you approach it at the start.  You brainstorm.  You get your thoughts together.  You address each problem and question and mould it into a whole so it all makes sense.

But when you finish the thing and you look at it and you think - the thesis is wrong! I need to restructure the entire thing!  That’s when mistakes get made.  Especially if, for example, you’re up against a deadline or in this case a filming schedule, the threads that you would usually pick up at the planning stage or in the editing stage get missed.  And because they are part of the final editing process, there’s nobody around to pick them up and properly address them.

Result?  Fudge.

2. The curious ambivalence about Becho. 

Look I ADORE Becho. They are soft, and loving and real af.  I fully believe that was always intended to be the case. 

I think Becho was set up as a benchmark, for Bellamy in particular, a symbol of his peace and prosperity in space,. And, of course, I think it was also set up as a point of conflict for Octavia and Clarke. In the case of the latter, it was definitely a silent love triangle. How do you explain the love triangle framing on two separate occasions? How else do you explain the two separate interviews Jason gave about love triangles?

But here’s what Becho was not set up as: a relationship that was supposed to develop on-screen and take the audience with it.  Becho had no arc this season. It wasn’t “a story” per se, however much Tasya and Bob’s chemistry electrified me. It was the backbone to *other* stories. 

So, why, then, were Becho given every single Bellarke beat, especially towards the end? A background of forgiveness? Check. A steadying influence on each other. Check. The person they’re fighting for? Check. Plotting together? Check? Battle couple? Check.

Contrast with Bellarke. Forgiveness?  That’s something for Bellamy and Madi to discuss without Clarke!  Battle plans? Clarke will do that with Echo instead (oh my GODDD my ot3 came to life there *clutches hands and wishes upon a star*). A steadying influence on each other? Maybe! Until they forget each other’s names when they’re not in a scene together! People they’re fighting for? Definitely not each other.

Meanwhile bts, the messages were VERY confusing.  So the show was giving us a Becho that, while very real, was not the core of the story. Which was probably why, in early season 5, some deep Becho nods (the extra forehead touch, the “I love her”) found their way on to the editing room floor. All legit. But then, the script-to-screens then BROUGHT THOSE THINGS BACK to the viewer’s attention?  Why? Why give us those things even though they were cut? Was it because maybe, the show had changed direction after the fact?

And don’t get me wrong. I loved every second of the show’s affirmation of Becho. I still adore them.  But how does it fit into the jigsaw of the show as it stands?  It doesn’t really.  In fact, if you just swap Echo for Clarke in Bellamy’s storyline this season, you would have a hard time telling me that this isn’t exactly what romantic Bellarke would look like - the only difference is that in terms of screentime, Becho’s antagonism has had far more time, and Bellarke’s forgiveness/working together has had more time. IN-UNIVERSE, IT’S THE OTHER WAY AROUND.  It’s why shipping Becho comes so easily for me. And if the show wanted to frame that as Clarke’s personal tragedy, I would get it and probably relish it. But the trouble is, I’m having a hard time understanding what the show *is* saying about Becho and Bellarke, because it seems to be constantly changing its mind.

WHICH. BY THE WAY. MADE THAT ENTIRE WAKE-UP MARPER VLOG SEQUENCE A MASSIVE DAMP BELLARKE SQUIB.

SORRY.

3. The Flame suddenly jumping to prominence as a tool rather than as a symbol late in the season.

The show went from framing the Flame as a threat to this kid, who had hidden from it her whole life, for whom it meant literal nightmares of people burning at the stake, something for Clarke to rightly protect her from, to something that turned her into a mouthpiece for Lexa, to Clarke’s hostility to it being framed as “wrong”. There was an abrupt change of tone imo, to Clarke’s fears being justified to Clarke’s fears making her, and I quote Jason from an interview that nearly made me choke on my cereal, a “helicopter” mum.

Excuse me while I punch the nearest object to smithereens.

The Flame “gave” Madi battle ideas (which were different from Octavia’s how, exactly?) by Gaia’s bedside, with just a MANTRA? That whole scene felt cobbled together at the last minute. Like a film student’s badly edited homework.

It’s giving Clarke life lessons, ffs! 

*clenches fist*

The whole thing feels like a season 5 retcon, hastily put together to justify Madi still having the thing in her head for season 6, when it can do it’s victory lap for real.

4. The scenes that were dropped

a) Bob and Eliza both referenced a big Bellarke scene that got cut.  My guess? Not a romantic scene but some kind of Hakeldama that allowed them to hash out their various beefs with each other and probably involved some shit talking about the Flame.

b) And like, if that scene had some tenderness in it? Too Bellarke maybe? No, Bellarke BAD BAD BAD *stern looks*

c) also, wasn’t Echo supposed to have a sad scene of sitting in the snow and remembering Azgeda? That was supposed to be at the snowy back end of the season, but Echo had no sads really.  Only fierce spacekru love and some cuddles and some good sexy time. Was there an Echo sad that got cut? What was it related to?

5. The writers room walkout

Yeah. I don’t know what that means, but it sure means something.

Just fyi...for some context.  I love Becho and they currently own my heart but until recently Bellarke was very much my otp. Probably, deep down, it still is.

But I’m getting tired of running this race. I have no problem with the show doing a slow burn. I have no problem with platonic Bellarke. But I need consistency and, importantly, I need the show to remember that Bellarke are the backbone of this show. Their relationship - however you frame it - is the heart and without it the show is nothing but a collection of Elon Musk conspiracy theories on reddit.

JUST LETTING THEM HAVE A CONVERSATION =/= BELLARKE ROMANCE.

If you want them platonic, fine, you win. But gutting their relationship from the inside out to try to ward off the sniff of shipping is just counterproductive. It’s the lack of real, meaningful connection that really turned me off Bellarke this season, not the lack of kiss or lack of romantic framing. Early in the season? Yes, the set up was all there and it looked GREAT. But their conflict never got off the ground and we never got a cathartic resolution to show us the characters really, truly mean something to each other. 

Ultimately the show forgot that they were friends who love each other, and I just *clenches fist* can’t ship that.  Maybe that’s what the show wanted. But the flipside is that at this point I’m not really invested in their relationship in any context, which is why the end shot left me cold. I hope Bellarke hasn’t died in my heart forever but...idk it doesn’t look good.

[luminoustico]

For End of the Year Writing Meme: All the questions sound super interesting so just use this as an opportunity to answer whatever questions interest you most

So funny story I put this in my drafts to complete in the quiet time of New Year’s Day, but then I forgot about it completely. BRACE YOURSELF.

A. If you could rec a piece of music to accompany one of your fics, what would you pick? Why?

Lies by Marina and the Diamonds, to accompany the latter half of Valse Melancolique. It’s a really good song to show Irene’s POV at that point, especially her reluctance to accept that the webs she’s spun are basically collapsing around her.

“I just want it to be perfect / To believe it’s all been worth the fight,” is the most relevant set of lyrics, IMO.

B. Who’s your favourite side-character from something you wrote?

I really enjoyed writing side characters like Rose and Finn, though Rose just edges it because I’ve been enjoying writing her in Don’t Complicate It. Finn runs a very close second.

C. Get any good comments on your stuff this year?

Sure! All comments are good comments, let’s be real. Unless they’re an obvious troll comment or those “update now!!!” kind of comments. Those aren’t so good.

D. Any drawings or pictures that had a big influence on your writing?

The artwork of the late 18th century and Roberto Ferri definitely influenced the tone of Valse Melancolique. Many scenes from certain stories were driven by a single image I had in my head as well.

E.  Who’s your favourite main character you’ve written?

Though I do enjoy delving into Ben/Kylo’s psyche, I enjoy writing Rey more – she’s more enclosed, and I love chipping away at characters to get to their truths.

G. Where do you think you grew the most this year?

Towards the end of the year, I began to realise that writing can actually be fun like it used to be. I’ve been so aware of the way the world is currently that I’ve been convincing myself that my writing must have a message, or it’s not ‘worthy’. I need to understand that I started writing not to pass on any morals or messages, but as a release and a way to find enjoyment in the constant buzz.

H.  How do you write? Paper, pen, computer? Music, no music?

All of those. I write on my phone, on my computer, on pen and paper. Music and no music, it depends. Most often I’m listening to a playlist/album which then stops and I cease writing an hour or so later realising I’ve been writing in silence.

I.  What’s your favourite work you did this year? Why?

I’m always tempted to answer this kind of question with my most recent story. But I’m going to be really honest and say that star among the stars is a personal favourite. And it’s not just because of the pegging.

J.  What are the best jokes you told this year? Any jokes you thought were funny that people didn’t catch? Vice-versa?

I’m completely blanking on this one.

K. Who have you killed this year? Why did they have to die?

Qui-Gon Jinn (to match with canon), Molly and Sherlock (hey it was a story based on Dangerous Liaisons, and I was reading classical Russian literature at the time of plotting) and Kylo Ren a bunch of times (metaphorically).  

L.  Which character did you most write about this year, and why do you like ‘em?

I wrote more about Rey. As mentioned before, it’s because I like chipping away at a character’s surface but also it’s because I really relate to her, especially in regards to her feelings of loneliness and her tendency to put on ‘a brave face’. Plus I really admire her compassion and her strength. I envy it.

M. Meta! Have any meta about a story you’re dying to throw out there?

Not particularly -- just headcanons and reasons behind why I write what I write. (I’ve never been very good with meta anyway.) I really like it when other people meta my fic, or pick up on something I didn’t! That is an AMAZING feeling. 

O. Do you believe in outlines? Show us one!

I do indeed! I love my outlines. For some projects, I’ve got whole folders with docs labelled Initial Ideas, Plot Summary, Chapter Outline, etc. etc. I’ve got my notes app on my phone stuffed up to the gills with mini-outlines. I frequently use my story structure template, which is technically more for screenplays, but the breaking down into acts thing helps my brain figure things out. 

P. What are your pet peeves in other people’s work?

When an author relies too much on UST and ruins the pacing. Like, an author drags out the first getting together because they believe that the anticipation is the only thing generating comments. If it’s right to have them bang, have them bang! The awkward morning after is a delicious opportunity for UST -- just a different kind. 9 times out of 10, your readers are there not for the smut because they’re invested in the story and like your writing.

Q. Quote three bits of writing you read this year. Can be your writing, or not.

Let’s mix it up.

“ “Why did you do that?” he demanded as they ducked into a side alley. “What part of ‘keep a low profile’ is difficult for you to understand?”

“I’m a good haggler,” Rey said through a full mouth. She didn’t have any idea what she was eating, and she didn’t care. It took so much effort to chew each bite instead of gulping it down whole. “He was trying to cheat us.”

“You didn’t haggle. You pushed.”

“I did not. Why would I knock him over in the middle of his stand?”

Kylo just stared. “You need a teacher,” he muttered. He watched her eat for a moment, his expression somewhere between thoughtful and disgusted, before taking a bite from one of his own skewers. Disgust won out. ” -- Symmetry and Black Tar by audreyii_fic. (Grumpy smuggler Kylo Ren, spunky scavenger Rey, canon divergence. Excellent.)

“ "Ben," Rey breathes once Kylo's mere inches away. It's the name Luke introduced him with, the only name she knows him by, and he's never bothered to correct her. Why hasn't he corrected her? The question flees from his mind as she closes her eyes and he leans down into the space between them, kissing her full on the lips. It's not gentle, he doesn't know how to be, but she opens for him the way the flowers she loves so much bloom in the sunlight. ” -- the surface of last scattering by diasterisms. (It’s the apocalypse, it’s exactly the right time to meet the love of your life, right? Read for utter devastation.) 

“ Rey could spend hours in the Falcon’s inner workings. She’d spent so much time in the belly of hollowed-out Star Destroyers, which were horrific remnants of old worlds, cold and grey. The Falcon is alive, speaking a strange language she’s just about half-deciphered. Sometimes, on days where she misses the connection most and dreams of a boy reaching across the stars to find her, it feels like the Falcon doesn’t want to speak to her. It shuts down. Sparks spit at her, and mechanisms develop odd faults.Today, a jet of steam blows directly in her face, not harmful, but almost like a snarl of 'go away'.

Rey climbs out of the hatch, fetching tools. She works with that fault first.

“I’m not thinking about him,” she promises to no-one but the ship she’s looking after. ” -- If I was born as a blackthorn tree, by me!

R. If you had to rewrite one of your stories from scratch, which one would it be? What would you do to it?

Going to cheat here and head back to 2017. I’d rewrite Two Stars Aligned. What I’d probably do is make it a post-TLJ fic, where Rey and Ben decide to run away after getting involved in a secret relationship, but get shot down by the First Order -- after landing in Giaca, they become embroiled in Game of Thrones style politics and the ruling families, while the Resistance and the First Order conduct searches for them. I’d cut out the weird Force shit and make the redemption arc thing more organic by giving the whole story room to bloody breathe. Two Stars Aligned is actually the reason why I now try to stick to oneshots for exchanges and any anthologies I get involved in.

S. What’s the sexiest thing you wrote this year?

Sexiest thing written in 2018... It’ll have to be the pegging in star among the stars.

T. Themes, motherfucker, do you have them? What are they?

Feminism. Females being allowed to be as fucked-up and broody as the men they love, and perhaps, even broodier. Make women afraid of commitment, 2k19.

U. Any stories that took an abrupt U-turn from where you thought they were going?

If I were a blackthorn tree took a pleasing turn away from the initial outline. The initial idea was lots of secret trysts and stuff like that, but I much prefer the quiet romance with a note of hope at the end that it turned out to be.

V. Which story was the most viscerally pleasing to write? Tell us your narrative kinks.

Huh. Hm. Don’t Complicate It is turning out to be kind of fun to write; when I’m not allowing myself to be crippled by the brain goblins that is (they’re strong lately). It’s a combo of writing a trope/kink I’ve been wanting to write for ages -- A/B/O -- and remembering that it’s okay to have fun with it.

W.  Who are your favourite writers?

@kylo-wouldnt-like-those-chips - @conchepcion (every time I think I’m out, she pulls me back in *shakes fist*) - @introspectivenavelgazer - @audreyii-fic - @kylorenvevo - ambiguously - @fettuccine-alfreylo and SO MANY MORE (this post is long enough already!!)

X.  What’s your least favourite work of this year?

My least favourite has to be In Cars. It was an ambitious idea, which I didn’t really fulfil, I feel. Curse of being a perfectionist. I want something to be amazing. World-changing! Tear-jerking! I want Vestal virgins to weep golden tears over my words, already delicately transcribed onto ancient parchment by monks. Obviously, that’s an impossible standard, but I can’t help being cross when I don’t reach it.

Y. Why did you write? For fun, for a friend, for acclaim?

During 2018? Mostly for acclaim. It made 2018 a very difficult year for writing, and just a difficult year in general. I’m trying to make sure I have fun during 2019 with this stuff. Striving for perfection is a punishing task that no-one can ever accomplish because perfection doesn’t exist. Contentment does, though. As does happiness. And those should be more important.

Z. If you could choose one work and immediately finish it, what would it be? How would you end it?

I’d finish Sanctum, my priest Kylo fic. I’m split between continuing or rewriting anyway (the rewrite would include relocating the action to the medieval era, around the time Luther wrote that damned essay and pinned it to the church door). But I do know the exact image I want to finish on, which will remain whether I end up rewriting or not. It involves a name, a scrap of material and a rather fetching colour scheme. 

Ooh. Cryptic.

[crazyexdirkfriend]

rikudera did a very good post about the merits of djk (post 152664288208 on their blog). Also, I don't really see how it takes anything away from Jade's character. It also doesn't make these three bi characters any more or less lgbt. Homestuck is really important to both bi and poly people, and is the only piece of media with 3 (djk, callieJaneRox and dirkJakeTav) cannon healthy poly ships. That representation is important!

I don’t have an issue with djk as a ship. I also don’t think it makes any of them “less lgbt.” It would be a lie however to pretend that fandoms don’t have a history of inserting female characters into poly relationships with two boys to either make m/m ships more “””palatable””” or whatever, or to undermine a female character’s arc to make her their personal therapist. 

Homestuck is important to bi and poly people, sure. I wouldn’t call any of the three ships you’ve mentioned adequate representation though. I personally don’t see djk as canon- if it were canon, it would be badly developed. Jade not spoken to either of these boys in 3 years, of which much development has obviously happened because they’re teenagers. On the other side, considering the emphasis placed on Dave and Karkat not being quadromantic, I don’t see any reason why them ending up in a poly relationship would be the logical conclusion. 

As for Dirk/Jake/Tav, there’s no evidence that’s a canon relationship. If it was, sure I guess, but the same goes here- there is zero development, Dirk and Tavros never even have a conversation in canon (though, to be fair, neither do Dirk and Jake). I have less of an issue with Callie/Jane/Roxy- at least the three of them have been (in contact) friends for years and romance between them makes some sense. The implication of them dating is also enough (if still a bit meh development-wise) for me to accept it as canon. 

Canon healthy poly ships are very important representation, and I don’t deny that. I do however have an issue with giving Hussie credit for something that a) probably wasn’t intentional and b) had zero effort put into it if it was. 

For the record, none of this is a dig at djk shippers. I don’t think it’s “”unhealthy”” or “”problematic”” or such. I do however think it makes little sense in canon and is just a bit lazy. I wouldn’t have an issue with it if it was made canon and properly reasoned and developed as such- but it won’t be.

[brokenbloodlinesrp]

                                         🎅 secret santa 🎅

Seres sobrenaturales, intuimos que ya han escuchado acerca la actividad llamada Santa Secreto. Por ello deseamos incluirla una vez más en esta época del año. ¡Esperamos que se diviertan! Si tienen dudas, pueden comunicarse al ask o chat del main.

¿De qué va esta actividad?

El Santa Secreto consistirá en el envío de mensajes forma anónima a una persona designada para conocer más de ella.

Instrucciones:

Los participantes, o santas, deberán enviar al menos un mensaje diario a la persona que les tocó. Pueden preguntar por sus intereses, sus personajes en broken, su vida en el rol, sus gustos, disgustos, etc.

Sin embargo, no pueden preguntar aspectos personales. Nos referimos a develar su nombre de algún modo. Nos regimos bajo un seudónimo para la seguridad de nuestros usuarios.

Deberán abrir sus anónimos durante los días de actividad, al igual que activar el submit. No obstante, si existen inconvenientes, les pedimos que nos avisen de inmediato al main.

El último día de la actividad la identidad de los santas secretos serán reveladas, acompañadas de un gráfico hecho por ustedes acerca del personaje que rolea el usuario. Ejemplo: Kol es el santa secreto de Genevieve, el último día envía a su sumit un gráfico de Genevieve más un mensaje revelando que se trataba de él, el cual pueden enviar al submit de cada personaje o subir a su blog y etiquetarlos. Recuerden etiquetarlo como #brokenedits.

Estaremos enviando los mensajes de manera privada durante el día de mañana. A partir de recibir su nombre, pueden comenzar a enviar sus preguntas. 

Modo de envío: Este año hemos decidido implementar preguntas estructuras que pueden utilizar. Sin embargo, si alguien prefiere una interacción coloquial, puede hacerlo. La primera parte contiene preguntas para el usuario; mientras que la segunda parte son sobre tu personaje. 

¿Debo enviar desde el primer mensaje los ask sugeridos?

No, pueden presentarse primero si lo desean.

¿Es obligatorio utilizarlos? 

No, son para hacer más ameno y diferente esta versión. Pero pueden preguntar lo que deseen mientras cumpla lo mencionado anteriormente. 

               Actividad realizada del día 13 al 21 de diciembre. 

Preguntas sugeridas bajo read more.

Preguntas para el usuario. 

Playlist.  ( x )

1- Best/your fav playlist you have listened to so far?

2- Your favorite playlist soundtrack?

3- Fav sci-fi playlist?

4- Fav D&D/Actual Play playlist?

6- Playlist that makes you laugh the most?

7- Favorite horror/thriller playlist?

10- Which playlist do you listen to the most?

11- Have you listened to any YouTuber’s playlist? If so, who’s was it?

13- How many playlist do you have in your library?

15- Favorite playlist genre?

16- If you could magically travel to the world of one playlist, which one would it be and why?

17- If you had to be one playlist character for a week which one would you be and why?

18- (Random playlist Character) vs. (Other Random playlist Charactet): who would win in a fight?

21- Playlist you are currently listening to?

80′s movies ask. ( x )

bill and ted’s excellent adventure: are you more of an optimist or pessimist?

back to the future: which decade in the last century would you most have liked to live in?

the breakfast club: which high school stereotype do you fit into best?

ferris bueller’s day off: what’s your guilty pleasure?

the goonies: what was the last thing to make you laugh?

the outsiders: why is your best friend your best friend?

the lost boys: would you rather be immortal or objectively beautiful to everyone?

stand by me: why did you last go on a road trip?

pretty in pink: what’s your signature ‘look’?

drugstore cowboy: which historical figure most spikes your interest?

ghostbusters: where were you when you watched your favourite movie for the first time?

sixteen candles: at which age do you consider a person to be mature?

dirty dancing: where were you when you first heard your favourite song?

better off dead: why did you last laugh so hard it reduced you to tears?

heathers: did you apologise the last time you were unreasonably mean?

parenthood: is there anyone you’re not biologically related to that you consider ‘family’?

permanent record: where were you the last time you told someone you loved them?

st. elmo’s fire: what’s one piece advice you would give to someone two years younger than yourself?

dangerous liaisons: which language would you most like to learn?

rumble fish: who do you look to for guidance in times of need?

e.t.: what’s one ‘weird’ feature that you love about yourself?

young guns: what’s one style that you love on others, but would never try yourself?

oxford blues: why did you last pretend to be something you’re not?

dead poet’s society: the last time you made a decision that everyone around you told you not to make, how did it work out?

Ships. ( x )

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

give me a character (from anything ever) in my ask and I’ll rate:

looks: somewhat attractive | eh | not really my type | pretty | handsome | beautiful | stud | gorgeous | SWEET LORD MERCY

can you relate to this character on a personal level?: no | not really | somewhat | yes | they are me

would you date/be friends with this character in real life if they were real?: total bros | friends | best friends | date | become their steady boyfriend/ girlfriend | neither | i don’t know

Give me 6 characters and I’ll tell you who i would: ( x )

Push off a cliff

Kiss

Marry

Set on Fire

Wrap a Blanket around

Be Roommates with

Send me a fandom and i’ll tell you:

adarkling:

the character i least understand

interactions i enjoyed the most

the character who scares me the most

the character who is mostly like me

hottest looks character

one thing i dislike about my fave character

one thing i like about my hated character

a quote or scene that haunts me

a death that left me indifferent

a character i wish died but didn’t

Curiosity

death-is-legion:

Deep Red - I’m in love with you.

Red - I love you.

Pink - I think you’re cute.

Blue - You’re amazing.

Rose - You’re pretty

Purple - You’re hot.

Violet - I would date you.

Aqua - I could stay on your blog for hours.

Lavender - You are my tumblr crush.

Orange - I want to get to know you.

Tangerine - We have a lot in common.

Amber - I wish you would notice me.

Cream - I don’t talk to you but I really love your blog.

Anon or not, make me choose between (and i’ll gif it):

Show: _______ or ________ ?

Character: ________ or _________ ?

Pairing: _________ or _________ ?

Anything: ________ or _________ ?

Preguntas acerca de tu personaje:

Let’s try this

red: seven insecurities

orange: six fears

yellow: five turn ons

green: four life goals

blue: three fears

indigo: two weaknesses

violet: one thing you love

20 asks for  writers.

Some of these can also be used for canon muses. ( x )

When did you create your muse?

Where did you find inspiration for your muse?

Tell us something about the world/universe in which your muse lives.

What’s your favourite headcanon about your muse?

What’s something only very few people know about your muse?

Are there parts of your muse that resemble parts of yourself?

How many face claims do you have or have you had for your muse?

How did you choose the name for your muse?

If your muse could be a canon character in any fandom, which fandom would you choose?

Do you ship your muse with any canon characters?

Do you ship your muse with any other original characters?

Share a song that matches with your muse!

If your muse were the main character in a movie/book/show/game/…, what would it be called? What would it be about?

Do you have any NPCs for your muse’s world or story? If yes, can you tell us something about them?

Share a random headcanon about your muse!

Is your muse religious?

What is something about your muse’s background story that you’ve always wanted to have a thread about?

Give us one thing from your muse’s wishlist that you really want to write in a thread!

List some of your muse’s favourites! (eg. food, movie, book, song, drink, place, celeb, etc.)

This or that according to your muse: morning or evening? Marvel or DC? Mayonnaise or ketchup? Books or movies? Red or blue? Black or white? Halloween or Christmas?

For each   “ 💐 “   I receive, my muse will tell you one thing about their ideal dream wedding

Headcanons: ( x )

✿: What is your muses favourite scent?

☼: What is your muses favourite kind of weather?

☤: Is your muse allergic to anything?

♫: Does your muse like music? What kind?

✉: What is something your muse would write about?

✈: How far has your muse travelled away from their home?

💕: Does your muse have any crushes?

★: What is your muse’s zodiac?

✞: Does your muse have an religious beliefs? What are they?

∞: Is there something about your muse that has been constant throughout their life?

✘: What are your muses pet peeves?

💲: What is your muse like with their money? What’s their financial situation?

⚽: What’s your muse’s favourite sport?

✔: What is your muse’s sexuality?

✋: Is your muse left or right handed?

👓: Does your muse need reading aids? Contacts or glasses?

🎒: What does your muse normally keep in their bag?

🚑: Does your muse have any disabilities/impairments?

👕: What is your muse’s fashion sense like?

🎲: Does your muse like to gamble?

🍕: What’s your muses favourite food?

🍸: Does your muse like to consume alcohol? What’s their favourite kind?

💉: Does your muse have a substance addiction? To what?

[rationalisms]

mass effect for the ask meme (1/2/3 instead of seaons) ✨

ty tasha

the first character i ever fell in love with:i legit cannot remember, it honestly has been way too long since i first played me1!! i think it might have been tali? at least i’m pretty sure she was the one character i didn’t swap out once for someone else in the team config during my first playthru even when it was combat inconvenient lql

a character i used to love/like, but now do not:i honestly can’t think of anyone? i used to really desperately try to make myself like ashley but lately i’ve just accepted that i have always disliked her and never ever will find anything about her redeeming enough to make up for all the things i hate lol.

a ship i used to love/like, but now do not:when i first played mass effect 2 i actually thought joker and EDI were adorable and really loved the development of their relationship over the game. i was very excited for what me3 might hold for them and uh…. the actual content left me VERY cold lol. i think it’s a shame that their relationship was reduced to “lol hot robot bod” and all the actual development of EDI as a person and sentient being was completely concentrated on shepard alone. that was such a huge missed opportunity.

my ultimate favourite character:m o r d i n!! i love him so much and i have cried so many tears over just how much i love him so many times. he has the hands down BEST arc over the course of the games to me– i adore so much how he changes from someone who’s so remote and concerned with only the macro level of things to someone who learns to actually connect to people as more than just numbers or data. his self sacrifice is the most meaningful to me and i’m the proudest of his development.

prettiest character:samara, boob armor not withstanding lol. jack’s me3 design is gorgeous as well.

my most hated character:it’d be easy to give a p expected answer to this (kai leng or another easily hateable villain) but i think if i had to concentrate solely on characters on the normandy it’d probably honestly be james vega lol. i h a t e d that he was mandatory in me3 and usually avoid interacting with him. he’s the exact stereotype of male gamer self insert character i loathe and he was so discongruent compared to the rest of the team. also his interactions with f!shep made my skin crawl. h8 how you were forced into the dichotomy of ~ooOOOoo flirty~ or “i’m gonna be a huge dick to you for no reason”. just. delete him.

my OTP:f!shep/tali is REAL and i will DIE mad about bioware cutting it from the game!!! ESPECIALLY because they left the lead-up to the romance in and just cut the actual consummation!! i’m still just always crying overa) “you deserve better.” - “i got better shepard. i got you.”b) tali looking out over rannoch and saying “it’s beautiful” and f!shep NEVER EVER LOOKING AWAY FROM HER THE ENTIRE TIME and saying “yes it is” a HATECRIME tbqh fuck you bioware

the other is aria/nyreen they’re… so much….. lawful good and neutral evil exes who are still in love is the BEST set-up and i am still FIRMLY in denial about how they ended. as far as i’m concerned they’re running omega together.

my NOTP:literally any m!shep/female character ship. also f!shep/garrus. he’s SO my little bro to me and the one time i played their romance the content made me suuuper uncomfortable in how awkward it was lol i just can’t get with it.

favourite game and mission: (doing this instead of fav season or ep)me3. ik, ik, people dump on it all the time, but i honestly think it’s a masterpiece and i adore it to pieces. there’s been no other video game since that has affected me emotionally to the same level and there’s so many outstanding moments in it compared to the other two installments (even tho i love those as well). i have my issues with it (who doesn’t lol) but it’s still the best mass effect game for me.

as for fav mission, gotta be citadel dlc. ik, cliche answer BUT it’s such a perfect 3 hours of content i honestly wouldn’t change in any way.

least favourite game and mission:uuuuh i love me1 a lot but it’s my least fav out of the 3 mainly for gameplay reasons (i’m a huge completionist and i HATE having to do all the planet missions in the mako). 

least fav mission is the fucking derelict reaper in me2 it’s the WORST and scares me so bad! i’m bad at survival horror type video games!!! as much as i love how much ME can swerve into a different genre so quickly i am a big baby and i can’t shoot straight

saddest death:man idk how to choose! mordin was saddest to me personally obviously because he’s my favourite character, but his death is also such a satisfying conclusion to his character arc so idk! shepard’s death is gutwrenching as well, but again, it really makes sense to me as a culmination of her story. maybe legion. partly because “does this unit have a soul?” will haunt me forever and partly because that’s the death i felt served the least narrative purpose.

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate:i don’t HATE him but i never warmed to grunt as much as everyone else seemed to. he’s fine but i don’t really emotionally connect with him as much as with the other squaddies.

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave:aria and the illusive man lmao. they’re both terrible people and i love them so very much for it. the illusive man is for sure my fav non-reaper antagonist and such an interesting character. and aria should hmu next time i’m free B)

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave:kaidan……… he has never done a single thing wrong in his life and it, like, actively pains me to have to put him through All That or have to hear about what he’s already been put through throughout the course of the games. let him retire to his parent’s canadian beach house in peace

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship:the way this question is worded is really annoying me lol. i also don’t think i have any ships i actually feel are like “omg bad dirty wrong” for ME. i want everyone to be happy.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship:f!shep/liara and f!shep/kaidan. i like both their romances, especially liara’s, and esp later game content with them is rly good, but i will never care about the actual romances with them as much as i care about the potential of f!shep/tali lol.

[steviesays]

In depth analysis of Solo: a Star Wars Story

wow that title makes it look like this wasn’t just me rambling for 4 whole ass pages on word, but I wanted to give you guys all of my thoughts and reactions on the movie. All of the spoilers are going to be under the cut and I’ll continue to tag spoilers for solo for the next two weeks, so until JUNE 8TH so none of you are allowed to yell at me for spoiling the movie. 

alright yall here we go im going to start with the plot and move into the characters the same way I did for tlj.

After coming out of this movie, it took me the entire ride home to process and think about whether I even liked it or not. When I got home, I had a two hour long conversation with my brother on the purpose of all of these movies rather than on what the movie is about because hes a fake fan and didn’t go see it last night. But anyway, after giving a brief synopsis with as little spoilers as possible, we kind of came to the consensus that this movie didn’t really matter, plot wise. It was kind of just made to sell tickets (even though they didn’t even sell tickets because there was no promo). Literally the whole movie was just an adventure that Han Solo went on, there was no real character arc, Han was the same person he was at the end as he was at the beginning, the only real development was him meeting chewie and lando and getting the millennium falcon. Did we really HAVE to see the kessel run, like yeah it was cool, but having the whole movie based around that? I feel like we were all kind of expecting more of a backstory, which is what it was kind of advertised as, and I think it would have been more effective, at least from a fan perspective, to have seen what Han’s life was when he was a child on Correlia. We still have no information on his parents, except for his dad was apparently a mechanic that wanted to be a pilot. We don’t know how he became orphaned or how he ended up with that fucking lizard monster thing, how he met Qi’ra, or how any of this affected him. I think they just started the movie at a bad spot, but that decision was made to maximize profit. I guess no casual movie goer would want to see han solo roughing it through some angst, but for people that are fully invested in star wars? It was just kind of a pointless action movie.

Other than that, it was a decent movie overall. I didn’t walk out of it pissed like I did with tlj, it kind of just made me feel nothing. Like I knew all this shit before, I didn’t need to see it in a two hour film. Him meeting chewie and lando, getting the falcon and doing the kessel run in 12 parsecs were things that were already established. There was nothing really spectacular about this movie it kind of just exists as a plot extender, rather than something that moves the plot forward or gives us major insights. I guess they can get away with it being useful to plot by the scene at the end that establishes to everyone that Darth Maul is still alive and fucking up the galaxy, but they could have just made their own damn darth maul movie, which is probably coming anyway based on that scene.

 But now that I’ve dragged the movie enough, lets get into the characters because I have a lot to say. There were characters that I really liked, characters that had a lot of potential, and characters that I hated.

Lets start with han. I really liked him in this movie and I like the actor they got for him, I think he did a really great job showing han’s snark and egoism while also keeping his inner goodness and making sure the audience was sympathetic. As I said before, he didn’t really develop much as a character, he was born a scoundrel and stayed that way. His quest to do whatever he could to get home so he could save Qi’ra was something we all would have expected out of him. I did like that we were able to see his street smarts and ability to strategize more than we have in other movies. I guess we have a bit of development, in that he learns to be even less trusting than he already was at the beginning through all of the betrayals in the movie, but like …. He was already distrustful in the beginning from the life he had already lived. Also, this has nothing to do with what I was just saying but I just remembered, this is during the time of the empire. Didn’t the empire use cloned Stormtroopers as their infantry and navy with humans only being officers …………………… like correct me if im wrong, but im like 90% sure that’s right. Because the first order were the ones that used human Stormtroopers. And even so like, what are these infantry men even doing. Aren’t Stormtroopers the ones that have always invaded planets for the empire, these people weren’t wearing any type of armor or cohesive uniforms and I just remember being confused as fuck during this whole sequence. In a ‘this is a major plot hole’ kind of way. Were they running out of clones ?????? like just make more ???????????? like the whole reason they used clones was because using actual humans to do grunt work was barbaric and clones aren’t really seen as people. Also now that I’m thinking about it what happened to all of the clones once the war ended. I haven’t watched or read many of the side stories or books, so I don’t know if it’s just me that’s missing something, but idk having han join the empire as an infantryman just didn’t make sense to me. Also having an imperial officer be the one to give him his last name was just kind of yikes. Like they couldn’t have just had him come up with one himself in that moment. Whatever.

Now lets talk about Qi’ra aka fake bitch. I fucking hated her so much through this entire movie and not just because I called her fake leia in the lead up to it coming out (tell me han doesn’t have a type). Like what the hell honestly. She was the WORST. And its kind of sad because she really had the potential to be a better character, but it just did not happen. Like she was gone for three years and just happened to appear back at some sketch party? And the only explanation for it was “yeah ive been through some shit don’t ask.” And what killed me is that she just never fucking explained!!! Like han asked her multiple times to tell him what happened in the in-between time and they have this whole ass history, he was doing all this shit FOR YOU, and he doesn’t even get an explanation ???? at the very least give the viewers an explanation. Like I guess it was implied that she did some dark shit, slept her way to the top, killed a few people on the way there, but HOW ??? WHY ??? WHEN ???? how long has she been involved in this shit to be at the position she has and to be so changed by it? Her character was the one that changed the most, from being careful of people other than the one she trusted (han), but still having hope for a better life, to just being like fuck everyone, I’m here for me and I don’t care how many people I have to kill or betray to survive. But we never got that character development in the film so she just came off as a terrible human being. We never got the chance to be sympathetic for her, and tbh im about to get even more angry because this whole film was centered around M E N yes I said it im being that bitch right now because the women in this movie were paid DUST.

And on that note lets talk about fucking Val. Another character with so much potential that was just …………………. hnjdklsbckdsbcbsdlv. She was the literal embodiment of the angry black woman trope and it pissed me the fuck off. She was the one that refused to bend on bringing han into the group and continued to antagonize him the whole mission, which the audience obviously took as a damn joke because duh its han fucking solo. We all know that she’s wrong, but when everyone else jumped on board with han she stayed adamant in her position, making her the odd one out of the group. Every time she opened her damn mouth I got mad because she just kept putting han and chewie down and it was just so cringey because I knew that this would make her either a hated or a forgotten character. AND THEN SHE JUST FUCKING DIED. I was like oh ok, 20 minutes in and the whole squad is dead already god damn. Which brings me into my analysis of tobias.

I love woody harrelson and he did a great job but there were a few scenes that just annoyed me, one of them being after his squad dies. Like hes sad for like 5 seconds, punches han which is an understandable reaction considering the fact that it was his fault everyone died for no reason, and then hes just fine again? Like it was never brought up again that two people he was obviously very close to, especially Val, just died pointless deaths. Even the night before the mission he was like ‘yeah you got to get someone you can trust I got my girl val’ and then they kiss and im like oh ok theyre in love that’s cute we love representation of interracial couples, but then she dies and he never mentions her name again. He doesn’t even grieve for longer than 2 minutes ??? he gives han another chance even though this was 100000% his fault and everyone knows it ??? it was kind of like oh, ok why the fuck did we even do that, why did I have to watch all of this happen if there are no consequences. His character didn’t change at all throughout the movie either. He’s just as distrustful and self-centered as he was, he just has less friends now and he’s dead. He was a good fatherly/mentor-y figure for han throughout the movie, but that’s about it.

I don’t really have much to say about Lando other than the fact that Donald glover did a great job, but I really didn’t expect much else. B U T last week I reblogged a post about him confirming that lando was pan and in the tags I was like lol watch him still be in a het relationship and GUESS FUCKING WHAT. Like its as if they thought making him be in love with a robot that has a female voice, a female build, and people that address her with she/her pronouns would be enough for people to be like come on it’s a fucking robot they don’t have gender …. hsdakbckdsla and while we’re on this subject lets talk about L3 because her (it? I don’t even know) character probably made me the most angry while watching the movie.

L3 being like an advocate for droids was an obvious parallel to other civil rights movements like womens rights or even African American rights and the way it was handled made me so fucking angry. Everything the droid said was used as comic relief or made to be received as a joke because obviously shes talking about fucking robots. But honestly, let me get deep for a moment here, droids in the star wars universe ARE sentient. They have minds of their own and are put into the story like characters, but theyre treated as lesser because theyre not made of flesh and blood. I understand and identify with the things L3 was saying because she’s right, but through the whole movie it was made to be a joke, because you know droids don’t need rights theyre droids. But that was the same thing people in the fucking 60s were saying about black people we’re ‘just n******’ (im sorry I cant even type the word it makes me uncomfortable). And her revolutionary spirit mirrors that of women’s rights revolutionaries today. Being a black woman that’s involved in social justice in America, the characterization of L3 just made me upset because everyone was treating everything she said as a joke, and there was no rectification of it. After L3 died, there was no ‘hmmm maybe she was right maybe we should start thinking of droids more as people’ she was another wasted character whose only use was her navigation system when they could have taken a completely different route and addressed something that was actually wrong with the star wars universe rather than just enforcing it. And when she started to give the droids a mind of their own in the control room I knew it was going to dissolve into chaos and make a horrible situation because it was such a predictable moment that completely undermined social justice actions and it pissed me off.

I guess the plot twist that effys nest (is that how you spell her name? probably not it doesn’t really matter) and her squad were working with the revolution was cute. I deadass thought for a second she was gonna be like ‘what up tobias or should I call you DAD’ cause that would have been a 100% star wars thing to do. The bad guy was a generic bad guy so I really don’t have much to say about him. I loved the scenes between han and chewie which showed why they became so close.

This is really all I have to say about solo for know, nothing huge is coming to mind. Overall, it was a good movie if you’re not a fan, but kind of a wasted opportunity for everyone else. This movie had a lot of potential to deliver and im pretty disappointed that it didn’t. If you don't agree on anything I’ve said or you just want to talk about the movie with me PLEASE dont hesitate to slide into my dms I love discourse

[willag42]

Yuri!!! On Ice Fanfic Recs with Reviews  ["P” Authors]

Note: Doing some major reformating of the YOI fanfic rec pages. The pages that include my reviews are now having the posts separated alphabetically by author (see below). I am also creating separate page(s) that allow filtering the fanfics by category. It's a work in progress, but I'm having fun with it.

This page includes my YOI fanfic recs (with reviews) for authors whose names begin with "P".

Note: For any authors whom I don't know the gender, I refer to them with they/them. If any authors wish to correct me, please do so.

AUTHORS REC PAGES: #0-9 -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z

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Refer to this masterlist for all of my YOI fanfic recs.

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Phyona (@rageofthenerd)

The way Phyona writes the interactions between Yuuri and Victor are some of my absolute favorite. She writes them as good-natured rivals, always ready to compete against one another; as both coach and both student, willing to direct and support one another; as best friends, willing to tease and goof off with one anther; as lovers, passionately invested in one another; and as soulmates, completing and fulfilling one another. She is amazing at writing both comedy and drama, switching between moods and creating the appropriate emotional gravitas. But her stories have positive messages about growth and becoming stronger together.

Nerve Endings

Rating: Explicit Words: 74.1k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Canon compliant; Post-season 1; Domestic fluff; Anxiety; Miscommunication; Learning to relationship ❤❤❤❤❤  Summary: When Yuuri moves in with Victor in St. Petersburg, they have to work through Yuuri's anxiety and Victor's secrets to find their balance. ❤❤❤❤❤  Review: This is my favorite post-season 1 fic where Yuuri and Victor learn to live together. This is a story of their interactions off of the ice and how they inspire each other to be better people and boyfriends. Their interactions are awkward but eager at the beginning, and slowly they learn to work through their issues and grow closer emotionally and sexually. One of my favorite parts about this story is when Yuuri has an anxiety attack and almost convinces himself that Victor doesn't love him like he loves Victor, but he's able to work through the negative thoughts and recognize that it's in his head and that he doesn't deserve to think of himself like that. I really like how he is able to work through it himself, which I think is a powerful message. I recognize that this isn't necessarily possible for all people. We all need help at times and sometimes can't work through things by our own power, and that's why emotional support and medical science are so important. But don't discredit how much you can do yourself. Yes, Yuuri is an anxious bean and he can't help his brain chemistry, but he doesn't let it rule or excuse his decisions. He learns to accept and empower himself for both Victor and himself. I love this sort of hopeful and powerful message.

Puppy Love

Rating: Teen Words: 10.4k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Canon divergent; Dog Yuuri; Curses; Dead Makkachin; Hurt/comfort ❤❤❤❤❤  Summary: When Yuuri gets turned into a dog, the last place he expects to end up is Victor Nikiforov's apartment. He learns quickly that the only thing worse than being his idol's pet, is watching him pine for someone else. ❤❤❤❤❤  Review: A wonderful oneshot that is both humorous and sad. Victor is suffering the loss of Makkachin and becomes attached to puppy Yuuri, and Yuuri simultaneously wants to hide from Victor and emotionally support the man through his grief. The story is charming in how these two become closer in this weird situation that does eventually correct itself. And they have an appropriately awkward yet happy and honest interaction at the end.

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Piyo13 (@piyo-13)

Most of Piyo13's stories are fluffy short stories, about 50/50 Victuuri and Phichimetti. All are appropriately sweet. Her wraiths pinned to the mist is a longer fluffy story where Yuuri and Viktor are scientists in Antartica. Her meatiest, and my personal fave, story is a series that takes place in an alternate canon universe where everyone has daemons - external physical representations of a person's inner self. She's currently written three fics in this universe, and I look forward to whatever else Piyo13 writes in it!

hollow ground

Rating: Teen Words: 40.9k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Canon divergence; Daemons AU; Gold medal ending ❤❤❤❤❤  Summary: There's no rules regarding where a daemon has to be in relation to their skater, only that they aren't allowed on the ice. This has always seemed a little unfair to Yuuri. After all, he loves skating like he loves his own soul; why can't he have both? ❤❤❤❤❤  Review: There are several things I love about this story. First, the daemons are adorable and help enhance the story and character scenes without overpowering the characters we already know. They're given their own character without taking up the spotlight, which I feel is the best way to write OCs. Second, despite it being an alternative retelling of the series, every scene feels fresh. Piyo13 is selective about which scenes she covers from the anime, avoiding only retreading over what's familiar. The scenes are altered enough with the presence of the daemons to help them feel new. Additionally, she doesn't let the scenes drag, capturing Yuuri's thoughts succinctly and with wit, and then moving on to the next scene. Even better are the original slice-of-life scenes Piyo13 added to further develop characters and relationships. Moments between Yuuri and Phichit talking over chat (about more than Victor) that delve into their friendship; a moment after JJ's flopped SP where Yuuri helps JJ become motivated again; a moment at the end where Yuuri's parents tell him how proud they are and he thanks them for their love and support; and then all of the new moments between Victor and Yuuri, like when they first start practising pair skating. Third, and probably the best, the last few chapters fix all the major grievances I had with the anime's ending. (Note: If you don't want anything spoiled, stop reading right now). Yuuri gets the gold medal; Chris and Otabek end up on the podium with him; Yuuri and Victor's decision to return to the ice doesn't feel rushed (they return to Hasetsu before discussing their decisions); and, most importantly, Yuuri's decision to return to the ice is only influenced by his own realization that he loves it and that he doesn't want to stop what he's had with Victor just yet. It's not debased or obfuscated by rivalry, when Yuuri's main character arc was always that he's his own worse enemy. The series also includes two side stories: a falling star can't fall forever, a prequel about Victor and Vasilisa; and life's not a paragraph, focusing on Chris. Overall, this is an amazing story.

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possibleplatypus (@possibleplatypus)

possibleplatypus has recently started writing fics for this fandom. They've posted two on their AO3 account and have a few more ficlets and one-shots at their tumblr. I would love to read whatever else they bring to this fandom given the quality and creative storylines they've already brought to the table.

a song that never ends (Series, 2 works)

TECHNICAL SUPPORT Rating: Teen -- Words: 18.8k -- Status: Complete -- Summary: Research had needed a new field-tester (they always needed new testers, as most Aurors would “test” an artefact only once before screaming to be reassigned), and thus the most decorated Auror in recent history was currently shouting into a modified “smart phone.” Viktor was quite certain that phones were not alive, so he did not understand how they could be intelligent. He found that when it came to Muggles, it was best not to think too deeply into things. “THIS IS NIKE,” Viktor bellowed into the thin, rectangular case. “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”

movie night Rating: Teen -- Words: 2.5k -- Status: Complete -- Summary: However, they had barely started Howl’s Moving Castle before Yuuri wondered if he had made a mistake. "What a fascinating concept! What spells do you suppose Howl is using to keep his, er, moving structure up?" Viktor refused to call it a "castle." A terrible mistake. ❤❤❤❤❤  Words: 21.2k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Harry Potter AU; Aurors; Crossdressing ❤❤❤❤❤  Review: In this series, Yuuri and Viktor are both badass Aurors during a moment of downtime at the beginning of the story - Viktor forced into being a field-tester for the Research Department, and Yuuri recovering from his first, long-term undercover mission. What's really unique about this story is Yuuri's situation and what lead to it. He has taken on a new persona to help ease himself back into his life. Yuuri is amazing and adorable no matter what gender he is, and here he is both. I love how comfortable he is as a woman or a man and how his mannerisms change (and remain the same) across the two. There are a lot of misunderstandings during the first half of the fic - Viktor slowly falling for "Yukina", who reminds him of another Japanese man he was charmed by a year before - but eventually Yuuri opens up completely to Viktor and they become partners. So, so wonderful and sweet! The 2nd fic is a cute, little side-story after they've become partners, where Yuuri tries to show Viktor a Miyazaki movie... and proceeds to regret it once he realizes Viktor's one of those people who must always question and/or nitpick a movie out loud while watching. Haha. The ending where they re-enact an early scene from the movie is horrendously adorable though.

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powerandpathos (@agapaic)

Excelsior by powerandpathos (@agapaic)

Rating: Explicit Words: 77.4k Status: Work In Progress Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: (Mostly) Canon compliant; Except homophobia exists; Post season 1; Pair skating; Lesbian OCs ❤❤❤❤❤  Summary: Yuuri has won the Grand Prix, which was everything he thought he wanted. But for Yuuri, an end to skating could mean an end with Viktor, and when two female skaters approach them with an offer that could make them or break them, they are put to the test more than ever. Can they rise higher than they already have? ❤❤❤❤❤  Review: Another "homophobia exists within the canon universe" story that is still unique and interesting with how it handles the characters. Yuuri and Viktor are approached by a pair of female lovers who want to do a pair skate with each other at an official ISU competition, and they want Yuuri and Viktor to be their pair skating partners to get them to that point. Yuuri is an idealistic activist who never even really knew he was one until given the opportunity to make a difference. He can be a bit ignorant, following his heart on the matter and not fully understanding what he's sacrificing until in the thick of it and starting to be overwhelmed, but he's brave and kind and his heart is in the right place. He can be a bit preachy when it comes to Viktor's choice to support from the sidelines, but still loves him and tries to find a middle ground. Viktor is the pragmatic realist on the other hand, knowing that supporting this endeavor will cause him to lose his prestige and gold medals. Initially he's insensitive about Yuuri's choice, but eventually agrees to support him but in ways that won't cause him to sacrifice his hard-earned legacy. It's not that he doesn't believe in the cause, but rather he's not willing to give up that much. I personally enjoy this taken on Viktor and find his opinion a valid one, even though Yuuri's lines up more with my own ideals. Eventually, he does fully join and support the cause when things become more personal, but before then is a lot of struggle between the two to find middle ground and maintain a supportive relationship. It's a realistic struggle that I'm certain many couples can sympathize with, and I appreciate the story for going there. This story's greatest strength is the real-life issues, struggles, and reactions these characters face, and yet their desire to continue to support, fight, and love one another. It's a really great story that I hope powerandpathos decides to continue again some day in the future.

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proantagonist (@borntomake)

Drive

Rating: Explicit Words: 28.1k Status: Work In Progress Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Canon divergence; Road trips; Post Sochi GPF; Fluff; Feels; BFFs saving the day ❤❤❤❤❤  Summary: Yuuri remembers the Sochi Grand Prix banquet. He knows what he had the audacity to ask his idol, but that doesn't make it any less confusing when Victor Nikiforov shows up at Nationals two weeks later with a bouquet of roses in hand and a smile that doesn’t fool anyone. Victor has lost his drive and should be prepping for the European Championship instead of flying to Japan on a whim. After a crushing defeat at Nationals, Yuuri is in the midst of a crisis himself. Good thing they have their best friends – Phichit and Christophe – at their sides to keep them from falling apart. When Victor learns Yuuri must return to Detroit to finish college, he makes a rash decision to come to America with him. But why rush the journey? There's more than a week before classes start, dual existential crises to escape, and a budding romance to nurture. Time for a road trip. (A story in which two sets of best friends road trip across America together.) ❤❤❤❤❤  Review: Man, we aren't even to the road trip yet - we aren't even back in Detroit yet - and I'm already in love with this fic. proantagonist writes some of the best character interactions across all YOI fanfics - between Yuuri and Phichit, Yuuri and Victor, Yuuri and Chris, etc. And I am already so strongly invested in all four of the characters here. Chris' advice is halting Victor from his most unintentionally harshest commentary. Phichit is providing the emotional support that Yuuri needs at this time. And Victor and Yuuri are forming a connection earlier due to their friends' support. The latest chapter is my fave - they've pretty much had the entire beach scene conversation from episode 4, Victor has opened up about feeling lost at this moment in his life, Yuuri has an anxiety attack and snaps out all of his frustractions, Victor meets him in the middle, and they agree to help each other through their rough patches. Everybody is so supportive and wonderful, and I love such positive relationships. It's a sped-up version of their relationship from the anime with less miscommunication issues. And while I can definitely appreciate a slowburn, sometimes you just want to avoid a repeat of the same scenarios or the miscommunication tropes. That doesn't mean that there isn't a potential for more angst or miscommunication (I mean, there's always this fic's version of "Let's end this"), but everything is at a pretty healthy point currently. It warms my heart. And the roadtrip aspect just has the potential for so many more warm, supportive moments. I can't wait for more!

Winter Song Universe (Series, 2 works)

Winter Song Rating: Explicit -- Words: 156.5k -- Status: Complete -- Summary: Yuuri was aware that at some point — a moment in time he couldn’t quite place — Victor had become his boyfriend. There wasn’t a single instant when it happened. It was a slow awareness, as if Victor had silently been asking the question for months now, and Yuuri had been giving him the answer a little more with each passing day.

Falling (Victor's Story) Rating: Teen -- Words: 69.7k -- Status: Complete -- Summary: "What do you want me to be to you?" "I want you to be yourself." And wasn’t that just the funniest thing? This whole time, Victor had been trying to figure out which mask to wear to make Yuuri happy, when all he wanted was for Victor to take it off and show him the real person beneath. ❤❤❤❤❤  Words: 226.1k Status: Complete Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Tags: Canon compliant; Post season 1; Scenes between episodes; Fluff; Smut ❤❤❤❤❤  Review: In a lot of ways, I consider this the essential companion fic to the series. The story takes care to be true to the canon material while fleshing out the characters and their relationships with each other more. It doesn't spend time rehashing what we already see in the series; instead it focuses on fleshing out the scenes between the episodes and after the end of season 1. The story mostly focuses on the developing romance between Victor and Yuuri and has a lot of very well-written smut and emotional hurt/comfort scenes. For those perhaps confused by some of the characters' actions or motivations in the series, this story provides one potential interpretation by a fan who has extensively written and thoughtfully considered many potential headcanons on her tumblr. It's clear she deeply cares about the characters to spend so much time analyzing the series. She takes a lot of care to remain faithful to the series, while still fleshing out the Victuuri romance. It's a beautiful story.

[charleecat-bat]

Fandom Meme

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

Uuuh, well, lemme think, for fantoms that aren’t sonic stuff, I enjoy Retsuko and Haida because adorable. Angus and Gregg from NITW is too adorable for it’s own good. 

Sonic wise, well, I’m not strong on my ships but they’re are some I do think about or do think are matching, I think Shade and Knuckles are a good match, I enjoy Espio and Tikal, especially in my canon. 

I do love Locke and Luger a lot though, since I can see them working in my canon, but other then that, I’m not huge on ships so eh. 

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

Locke and Luger, mainly because they were related but then with some fanart and talking with friends of mine, especially @terraqua111, I started to like it and my friends had a point that they were too distantly related for it to matter anymore. She also showed me Lien-Da and Xenin which I liked. 

I also didn’t consider Locke to be paired with anyone else before Luger, then I saw @lockewat‘s ship, Chuck and Locke... and I thought it was quite suiting as well. 

Two other ones are Vanilla and Big because that was so adorable and that would be such a peaceful relationship good god it’s what they’d both need, so many picnics for dates. and @motobugg did some work on Rouge and Wave which I have never considered and I immediately thought... damn that would actually work a lot. XD Also Shadamy at some points due to a friends artwork and Shadow would be balanced from Amy’s personality that he would need.

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will. I’ve never been big on Julie-Su and Knuckles, in the comics it felt kind of forced to me, same with Sonic and Sally, that I don’t see them suiting each other at all. 

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

Ummm, I don’t know, I can’t think of one. 

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh, I don’t know. 

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?

Sonic fandom. XDD Been in that for around 8-9 years. Since I was 9 or 10 years old. 

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

I think it would’ve just been Shade and Knuckles. lol Again ships aren’t my life. 

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

Mainly ongoing stuff, I know it started with games, so I guess games? But I enjoy shows/series as well. 

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

Ummmm... not that I know of. 

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

Animal Crossing? I didn’t start playing the phone game until I saw people talking and reblogging stuff about it, then I tried it. 

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Well, in Steven Universe, a lot of the character have great arcs, that who their true opinions and colours, like how Amethyst had self-hating habits, Pearl didn’t think she was worth much, and seeing Peridot’s growing into a whole different gem, it’s really cool.

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

I’ll go with um... Lars from Steven Universe, I didn’t like him much as a character at first, but I could understand his insecurity and being unsure on how to act and how to show himself, and being scared to show his true colours... but now he’s showing his own worth and letting himself be who he is with the Off-colours, which I can genuinely appreciate about him, he’s much better as a character now. 

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

Can I say the entire brotherhood? XD I would love that like you wouldn’t believe. 

N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

Just more Brotherhood content in general, uuuummm more monster-related AU’s? I don’t know, maybe more merchandise too? I don’t know I’m not all that demanding about content. o-o I’m terrible at this. 

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

All the Way (Jacksepticeye fan song) is the one that came up on shuffle, and it reminded me of Hawking, at least my version. I could imagine he would listen to this to motivate himself or something like that. 

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

...Trying not to say Monster AU for any sort of fandom CRAP TOO LATE-

But what about a Shape of Water-esque AU? 

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

I haven’t really abandoned any fandom? o-O R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

When they’re not a couple and they’re just best friends, Locke and Luger I guess, they act like big dorks. I don't know, I don’t think about relationships much besides family ones. 

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

Hmm, well, I feel while Locke doesn’t know what his main sexuality is right now, he’d feel he’d be in writing (sexuality)/Asexual, as he never really had sexual feelings, he only had sex in order to have his son, and he honestly never liked it all that much. 

I also have a head canon that Steppenwolf is afraid of humiliation, or just making a fool of himself in social situations (he’s got a very well hidden social anxiety), so if he saw a bunch of people staring at him and whispering to each other, he’d instantly become worried about what he did. 

Another head canon is that I love to imagine Sabre can swordfight very well, and the person who taught him is surprisingly Tobor. As he was very good with a sword and shield combo back in the day (before his injuries). 

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

That Steppenwolf is a werewolf okay not really, I’m not really about strong head canons that I would ‘die defending’. I just like the thought of him being one because it’d be ironic for his name... and it’s just with me for so long man. 

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Steppenwolf (Sonic Fandom I guess)- I still don't fully understand why I liked him, I simply did but nowadays I just find the character I made him an extremely interesting character and every time I’ve wrote something or drawn something to try and cheer myself up, it made me feel he’d be a very strong, protective and oddly supportive in his own way. I’m not sure. I’m weird. 

Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe Fandom)- I just want her to be happy, I find her really interesting, her powers are really cool and I just want to know how things turn out for her, it just sucks that she tends to disappear for long periods of time. 

Angus (Night in the Woods)-He’s a bit underrated but he’s just so cute to me, especially with how others draw him, I love his character and I feel bad for him when he takes about his abusive childhood and issues growing up that made him who he is today, made me want to give him a big hug. 

V - Which character do you relate to most?

Well, I feel I can relate to Angus at a few points, always feeling like I have to be the responsible one, being usually quiet and wanting to hide in corners in parties (and your friend that you stick to is your corner in those situations), 

I also feel I can relate to Retsuko from Aggretsuko, always trying to keep calm and from losing my temper, also Mister Ton kind of reminds me of my dad at some points... and he can piss me off just as much as he does with Retsuko so yeah. 

Part of me also feels like I relate to my version of Rembrandt, he’s an artist, he deals with a lot of emotional issues, he’s insecure about his body size/weight, very motherly/fatherly and protective. 

I dunno. 

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

Annoying characters that think they’re full of themselves and practically perfect while thinking everyone else is below them and everyone is unworthy of their ‘greatness’... or mary-sues. 

Or just a needlessly dramatic moments or moments of anger and arguments that don’t need to happen. 

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Kind of the big strong protective one with a heart of gold and is very loving whether they show it or not, or big ass ones who are strong as hell but are really just gentle giants.

And probably monsters stuff like werewolves or stuff but sometimes that can backfire and become annoying. 

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

Team Fortress 2 is one, have a few friends who like that game while I don’t like it much anymore for personal reasons, some horror fandoms like Five Nights at Freddy’s, Little Nightmares all of that. Idk

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

Umm... I always strive to make my Guardians unique in different situations, hell, I imagined they were in certain AU’s or in certain video game situations, like a fighting game, I’d like imagining like ‘finishing moves’ they’d have or the type of weapons they’d have, or even simple stuff like hobbies or favourite foods. Just stuff like that... and I will try everything in my power to be unique, like in my Gem AU, wanted all the gems to be different and at the least unique, and the same with the Monster AU, only Thunder and Steppe’s are the same but they have a difference. 

Okay that’s enough. ^^; This was really difficult surprisingly.