#i don't even mean this in a shippy way

[corvidsinatrenchcoat]

i nearly started crying at work because i remembered the kenhina friendship

it’s just... so pure... can you imagine a love without expectations? can you imagine someone seeing you and just... choosing you? no second thoughts? someone who, for all intents and purposes, isn’t anything like you, and yet has chosen you? for someone to see you and love you not despite but because of your faults? to meet your insecurities and boundaries with total acceptance and joy?

[beanghostprincess]

Luffy not knowing about Zoro promising Sanji to kill him if he ever ends up losing himself makes me go feral because that's something they can only know about. Because Zoro's respect for life and death goes beyond anything, and Sanji knows he understands. Sanji knows that if somebody has to kill him, it's him.

And I don't even think it's because Sanji assumes Zoro's opinion of him is hatred and it would hurt less for him to do this, but because Sanji knows only Zoro would be able to treat the promise as it is. Because he would put Sanji's wishes before any feelings he has for him. It's not that Zoro doesn't care, but I think he respects people's ideals and decisions to the extent of being able to kill Sanji if he so desires.

That being said, he'd do it if there's no other way to fix it. If it's either dying or living as an emotionless machine, which is the same as dying for Sanji, Zoro would fulfill his promise. And there is just... Something about Luffy not knowing. Their captain. The man they're devoted to the most as if he were their God. Luffy doesn't know. It's something only the captain's wings are aware of and the thought of these two keeping this from Luffy until the end is just insane. Not even trying to make it romantic here, but the bond and respect these two have for each other is crazy.

Maybe it's the poetry of it all, too. Somebody like Zoro, who has looked at Death in her face multiple times and said "no", ending Sanji's life, who wants to give in to death to not experience a fate worse than death for him.

[scarefox]

Pavel always: I have to tease the fans by flirting and touching Pooh every given moment

everyone else: you don't really need to-

Pavel: no I really gotta!

[silentassassin21]

the bottom table makes me a lil crazy btw

[minakoaiinos]

Lost my original post of this from the other day but I genuinely don't understand how Black Butler discourse ever shifted into the does Sebastian ~really~ like Ciel or is Ciel just dinner line of conversation that is pervasive as it is because Sebastian is the one that has absorbed his whole existence into Ciel's. Sebastian's face is what Ciel wants Sebastian's whole purpose is doing things for Ciel Sebastian's every hell of a butler yes my lord speech is about how he's Ciel's and Ciel is the one going around saying shit like whatever Sebastian is just my pawn 💅

[adhd-merlin]

merlin's happiness and pride at arthur's and then at gwen's coronation. do NOT make me think about it.

[kushanna]

you know, actually, saying that nausicaa doesn't love kushana is factually incorrect. she DOES love her. she loves her like she loves every single child, every single insect, every single leaf of grass on the ground. which is a whole lot different from the way kushana loves her.

[epickiya722]

What if when Midoriya shows up, it's like their fighting scenes in the second BNHA movie? How one of them was still fighting and not giving up and the other swooped in to support?

I know some people are like "oh, Bakugou is going to be a damsel, they want him to be a damsel so bad", but I kinda don't see it that way.

Using "damsel" just makes it seems Midoriya will come in and then Bakugou will be out the fight for the rest of arc and Midoriya goes berserk in the meantime.

To me, that one shot of Bakugou's face, the one where he has the little sparks and there's that look of determination? It gives me the vibes that this will lead into Bakugou getting up again and fighting and when Midoriya does come it's for them to fight together. Just how they did in the second movie against Nine (who is literally just a prototype AFO!Shigaraki when you look at him, suit and long hair).

In that movie, when one was in trouble, the other came in to give them support and together they relied on each other 50/50 to fight and defeat their opponent. That's the vibe I'm getting and honestly hope for. I want to see them go berserk together. Win that fight together. Go nuts like they did with Nine.

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Hey how romantic can I make this platonic fic without making it romantic. Asking for a friend. 

[advestager]

I feel like saying Josuke doesn't have any daddy issues whatsoever isn't entirely fair (I've seen some fic and comics go further into how he and his mom might have been treated due to the circumstances of his birth that were pretty compelling) but people who act like he grew up without any father figure are definitely off base imo. Every single adaptation and extra material have always had a focus on his close relationship with his grandpa for a reason!

see, that's precisely the thing. it is literally impossible to be a grown up human without having internalised some sort of illogical Feeling about oneself or the world – but fandom as a whole tends to just assign arbitrary ones to characters based on stereotypes rather than what they actually are like.

i do think josuke feels some sort of way about his lack of a father growing up, but that's as inevitable as joseph himself (or giorno, or jolyne, or even jonathan) having feelings about his own dad, and yet somehow jorge's absence does not get brought up despite joseph and josuke's fairly similar upbringings. the fact is that most of western fandom tends to view the JJBA characters through a (white, usa-centric) lens that simply does not lend itself to a fair or accurate reading when most of the cast is either POC or from an entirely different cultural background. that's why i'm so resistant to label josuke as having 'daddy issues'; the term means something entirely different to me than it seems to do to most of the fandom, based on all the fic, comics, and discussions i've seen (and had) about the topic. it's not exactly like the organised crime aspect of VA, but it fills me with a similar kind of frustration. i don't think one needs a degree in cultural studies or history or whatnot to enjoy a silly series about people punching each other with slutty soul-ghosts, but it's exhausting to see the same thoughtless, very specifically westernised takes being regurgitated over and over as Absolute Truth until the characters are so flanderised they seem nothing as much as a caricature of their original versions. i love transformative works as much as any other fan creator, but i also happen to like the source material. it is infinitely more interesting to me to think about what kind of relationship josuke might have to his heritage as a mixed-race person, or his identity as the son of a single mother or the obviously cherished and spoilt child of a family such as his own (especially in a place and period like canon's late-90s/early 00's japan), than to hear yet another iteration of 'haha, josuke has daddy issues' where the person saying it has no intention of analysing that premise beyond the puddle-depth obvious.

at barely sixteen years old, even as interested in high-end fashion (and as very much part of a working class family who could definitely use the nest egg) as he is, josuke's immediate reaction to being told his missing father is incredibly rich and wants to take care of him is to say that it's not necessary, and he's fine as he is. sixteen. i worked as a teacher with kids as young as a year old and people as old as mid-seventies; that kind of ease of mind is one-in-a-million and not something you'll find on someone who fits fandom's definition of 'daddy issues'. he's not angry at joseph, he's not grasping for money, he hardly even wants to find out more about the missing part of his origins. his only thought is to wish he wouldn't be the reason other people were hurt, and to protect his mother once there is a risk she might find out and be distressed about it. his entire morality system is (from what i remember of canon) mostly based around the question What Would Grandpa Do?, with some leeway allowed for the temper he clearly got from tomoko and for the fact that he is, again, a big and slightly spoilt sixteen year old.

so yeah. it might not sound fair to say he doesn't have daddy issues, but i don't think the terms fandom's operating under are fair to start with, so i'd rather recuse myself (and my interpretation of the character) from it all til we're playing the same game. the sandbox's wide and wild, and the block and mute buttons are there for a reason, so i'll just stay in my corner writing about higashikatas wielding their feelings like sledgehammers til my mum says it's time to go home.

[bazpitch]

hm. yeah. i don't know if i agree w the fanfiction booktok connection ppl r making. like there is some nuance to it. there is a very specific type of fanfiction that is being published as books rn (bad ones by mediocre rich white ppl). like, there is more to fanfiction than romance first of all 😵‍💫. some fanfiction just adds context to the text it's from. overall, there is a lot of bad fanfiction, but there is a lot of good fanfiction too! unfortunately, the bad fanfiction is oftentimes more popular than the good fanfiction, which i think is why booktok is the way that it is. probably speaks to the weird prioritization people have of a very specific dull type of romance over all other things. ultimately, i think it's a symptom of the fact that we are living in hashtag anti intellectual times rather than anything else.

[zukoromantic]

I wanna be horny on main so bad i wanna be horny on main so badddd

[mcstunwanted]

they're so at ease with each other and it's only episode two like... they just enjoy each other so much...

[watchthekittycatcher]

I always imagined Miss Missing You would be how I felt when someone finally broke my heart but it turns out there's a connection between the two parties that is crucial for the emotional impact to actually happen

[gffa]

Absolutely losing it that Tim's strongest, truest anchor to the previous continuity is Conner. His future self dressed as Batman travels back in time and makes a point to say how much Conner matters to them. Later in that same arc, Tim doesn't know the name "Conner" but he feels how it tugs on his heart. And when it's finally time to restore his memories of the previous continuity, even when he sees all three of his best friends as Zatanna reconnects him, even when he has to see them first, it's Conner that he immediately thinks of. I just find it so interesting that Cassie and Bart are also right there and I don't doubt that Tim loves them as well, but that there's special emphasis placed on Kon, in a way that's hard not to put together with Tim coming out as queer just a couple of years later. Sure, they're best friends, and sure, the whole Super+Bat teamup is a running theme at DC so it would make sense to prioritize that relationship, but also just. You can never talk me out of feeling it in my very bones that Tim was in love with Kon the whole time, not just in a fun shippy sort of way, but that he was legitimately in love with Conner and felt that so strongly it echoed through even an entire reality rewrite, you could change all of reality and you still couldn't change how much Tim Drake loved Kon-El. That doesn't mean Tim doesn't love others as well, I think he very much loved Steph and he loves Bernard now and may even go on to love others. But, yeah, I do absolutely for real think Tim was in love with Kon and maybe always will be, a little.

[ao3commentoftheday]

Any advice on tagging fic when you're not sure if it should be tagged as gen or shippy? A decent amount of my fic is written from the perspective of seeing them romantically but doesn't actually contain anything that's exclusive to romance. If I just tag it & then people who ship it and would read it through that lens might filter it out, but if I tag it / then people who platonically ship it and would read it through that lens might filter it out, and if I use both and additional tags to clarify that it can truly be read either way depending on if you've got shipping goggles on or not same problem. So I'm just not sure what the *best* way to tag it is. (Currently I default to my personal intent of / and sometimes make note that you can read it platonically as well, but...)

My OTP is also my BroTP, so there are a few fics where I've used both tags. Unfortunately, I also used to use both tags on fics that were clearly ship fic because I reasoned "they're also besties". I wasn't thinking about the people who only want to read the fics where they aren't romantic.

Since a lot of people have the same thoughts that I used to have, and even more people don't know the difference between / and & to begin with (if you're one of them - / means a romantic or sexual story, & means a platonic one) I would probably recommend against using both unless you also add something to your story along the lines of, "I ship it, but you don't have to" or "Can be read as romance or gen" or whatever phrasing you'd like.

I'm going to specifically call out the Gen fic readers (and writers) here since they're the ones who usually have fewer fics to choose from - how would you prefer an author to tag in a situation where it could be read either way?