#i love a good wlw ship and all

[shnuckattack]

Women who fetishize wlw relationships to an uncomfortable extent when woman character is anything except a lesbian: 🤯🤯🤯😡🤬😡🤬

[yangscowlick]

Because the “shrodinger’s queerbait” nonsense will never go away, indulge me an analogy (and a long post).

wlw ships are the “made from scratch” cake in a world where we only ever expect cake mix from the box.

Say you have a show where, in the first interaction between a male and female character, there is a red box. It could be a Betty Crocker box of cake mix. Because all it takes is just one smile — one wink — one raised eyebrow— and the fans don’t question it. We’re clearly making a cake here. The box is red.

Meanwhile, you have two female characters building their own relationship that have elements that could build to romance. There are eggs in the fridge. A few more episodes, there’s flour in the pantry. Sugar. Baking powder. Queer fans start whispering…we could be making a cake here. Other fans scoff “you will read into anything. They’re just eggs! Everyone has eggs in their fridge!” Maybe so, maybe not. They are written off as discrete ingredients, nothing to see here.

That red box is still sitting in the pantry. Obviously we’re going with that one, and it’s definitely cake mix. That guy and girl stood next to each other again.

The wlw relationship is now full-on batter. It was a cake recipe all along, but it’s not baked yet. The crowd that wrote off every ingredient is now saying the writers are just going to “squander” that box that could be ready-made cake mix or that they’re being “forced” to bake a cake with the very ingredients the writers deliberately bought and put in their pantry.

Now it’s in the oven, the cake is baking. That crowd will still insist it’s forced, or maybe its actually something else, or it’s rushed, or it’s pandering. Whether the writers painstakingly built a pantry to make the cake they truly wanted or they were cultivating good ingredients and realized they had the fixings for a more decadent cake and went there, it doesn’t matter. It’s still a recipe. One that fans who always have to piece together ingredients had hoped for or saw from the get-go, despite being scoffed at and disparaged. Just because that crowd didn’t see (or refused to see) those ingredients as part of a whole, doesn’t make it any less of a recipe.

And wlw fans shouldn’t have to keep writing essays to demonstrate that the wlw “cake” has all the ingredients every cake mix does, or keep pointing out that fans were ready to believe a cake was being baked when they saw a nondescript box, but that they’ll do anything to discredit or doubt the cake from scratch that’s now cooling off on the counter.

It is partly a function of heteronormativity from the audience in immediately seeing romance in any whisper of interaction between m/f characters and passing off all charged interactions between female characters are sisterly or platonic. And it also comes from writers, who are either being cautious so as not to spook corporate overlords or audiences, or who are preserving plausible deniability.

To take the analogy further, box cake mix is fine! It works! It is, practically speaking, what a lot of folks know by default. I thought I was a Duncan Hines girl once myself. Vanilla cake mix has the ingredients measured out, it’s a safe bet, it tastes like cake.

But it doesn’t mean every red box is cake mix. And it doesn’t make the cake that had to be pieced together from scratch due to censorship, caution, time, narrative build-up, what-have-you, any less of a cake.

[occidentaltourist]

bbc: Some sweet #Silvacre content for your FYP ❤️

[revvywevvy]

i would commit so many crimes for you bittergiggle garten of banban [zoom-ins under the cut]

[thesapphicsoldier]

Ty Chappell Roan for releasing good luck babe and causing a wave of lesbian edits and fanart on tiktok, I greatly appreciate it 🙏

[monstersinthecosmos]

As a fellow Marius lover, I always find it kind of disheartening how most of the content/fandom talk about him (meta, fic, fanart, etc.) revolves around m/m ships (Marius/Armand in particular but I’d even go as far to include Marius/Daniel here) when, in my opinion, Marius is like the one male character in the VC universe whose relationships with women are far more interesting than his relationships with other men (the only other character might be Lestat but even then it’s pretty 50/50). They’re so monumental and so full of complexities and pain and so much love and they define him and inform his character in ways that I think, his relationships with men simply do not. Interesting/hot under the right circumstances? Sure but like ARE YOU GUYS SEEING THIS MAN??? AND HOW HE RELATES TO WOMEN??? It’s one of the best things Anne ever wrote and I can never get enough of it and it makes me sad how little content there is of it and I feel I can never say this out loud because I would never want to make people feel bad about what they ship (truly not my intention here) but ugh SO MUCH potential there for life changing discourse and meta about Marius and the women he’s loved and lost and have shaped who he is and there’s like… nothing.

Tl;dr the reason I’m sending this ask is because I’m a firm believer that you must be the change you want to see in this world and because YOU get it! And every time you post or write about Marius/Pandora (or Marius/Akasha! Or talk about Marius/Bianca) an angel gets its (black) wings. You are seen, you are loved and appreciated tysm <3

OKAY FIRST OF ALL THIS WAS SUCH A DELIGHT TO GET IN MY INBOX, SECOND IM GOING TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST AND ADMIT I FEEL TOO INCOHERENT TO TACKLE THIS TOPIC HAHA. I don’t feel articulate enough to do it justice. And I don’t say that to be obnoxious and self deprecating but like in all honesty idk how to synthesize it neatly but I think you’re sharing some GREAT IDEAS. 

I have to say this in bullet points because I don’t feel equipped to string this into a cohesive post:

Marius was based on Anne’s husband, and Marius/Pandora was based on their marriage!!!!! And I think it explains a lot about why their relationship feels so fuckin POTENT to me, like it’s so genuine!!!!!!! And like knowing that I think it makes sense why she wrote him so HOT lol. Like she’s just writing thirsty stuff about her husband right? LOL

Also like insofar as there’s a lot of genderfluidity in VC there’s also something vaguely misogynist about it at times. And Anne Rice was a mega feminist and her work had so much womens lib in it!!!!! So I don’t think it’s intended as misogyny at all vs. Anne having conversations about gender and maybe her own relationship to gender. I think enough characters have said vaguely misogynist stuff that it makes me think it’s an Anne Problem vs being Watsonian. (This is also a historical/time period issue and we can discuss another time if and when vampires are supposed to break out of that when they transcend humanity and social constructs even when they’re still saying weird sexist shit at their big ages.) But I say that to say all VC characters are a tad sexist, even if perhaps she was writing with the intention of her own male power fantasy/male superiority/penis envy. AND THAT MAKES MARIUS VERY INTERESTING. 

Cause like really the three main ladies in his life (Akasha, Pandora, Bianca) DO define him so much! And we don’t see him pine for Armand the way he did for any of them! Why!!!

Like there’s that aspect of sexism where women can be infantilized by men who don’t think they’re being unkind and it makes me wonder, especially when the author is a boomer, like where is that line between condescension and respect? I don’t have an answer here, this is too big-brained for me LOL but like he is SO devoted to the women in his life and I just wonder like if he sees them as creatures unlike himself, you know? 

This is headcanon territory but I bet he’s such a fucking sub to Pandora lol and it just thrills me that he spent 2000 years begging Akasha for affection and she ignored him the whole damn time wow. And he continued to simp!

AND ALSO LIKE, I think people DO NOT DISCUSS THIS OFTEN ENOUGH, but did we forget that he chose Armand because he needed a Bianca rebound? He was absolutely TORTURED by his love for Bianca and picked Armand because he didn’t want to kill her oh my god. Oh my god!!! HE KEPT HER LETTER IN HIS POCKET OVER HIS HEART OKAY??? HE DIDN’T WANT TO DRAG HER INTO HIS COLD AND FATAL DOMAIN????? Fuck lol

It’s so fucked up that he didn’t go after Armand but spent like actual fucking millennia trying to find Pandora. HE KNEW EXACTLY WHERE ARMAND WAS AND LEFT HIM THERE LOL BUT PANDORA HAUNTED HIM EVERY NIGHT OF HIS LIFE FOR CENTURIES.

After everything he wound up spending like 200 years with Bianca or something and ?????? CORRECT because Bianca was the fledgling he actually wanted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But it’s odd, I know I’ve said this 337589235 times, but Marius like. Has an idea of the person he wants to be and he tries SO HARD to live by logic & reason and he just can’t reconcile with the fact that he has EMOTIONS. And so like part of the person he wants to be like, open/empathetic/wise and he begs his lovers/students/fledglings to CHALLENGE HIM when he’s not actually healed enough to be challenged? And to me there’s something kinda like, extra spicy about it when you’re in Rice World and you’re a lil sexist; how much that burns EXTRA when it’s Pandora or Bianca sticking up to you or AKASHA FUCKIN IGNORING YOU. 

Just really incredible that this person who is like the epitome of a patriarch has such fucked up relationships with all the women in his life. And like he underestimates these women, like the way he tries to manipulate Bianca and she leaves him! PANDORA AND AKASHA ARE UNAVAILABLE TO HIM AND BIANCA FUCKIN LEAVES.

akasSHA JUST IGNROING HIM!! JUST STRAIGHT UP FUCKIN IGNORING HIM FOR 2,000 YEARS!!!! HE'S OBSESSED WITH HER!

Anyway Enkil is ignoring him too but he doesn’t give a shit about that guy tbh lol 

Also the amount of space he gives Eudoxia and Zenobia in his book like there’s more here too but tbh it’s midnight and I can’t start unpacking. I just think like, in 2000 years it’s interesting how Eudoxia wound up having such a lasting impact on his life. 

I did just peek at the Eudoxia part and I’m dying, he goes “Her face was small, oval, and as close to perfection as anything I've ever beheld, even though she bore no resemblance to Pandora who was for me perfection itself.” CERTIFIED WIFE GUY.

What kinda mommy issues are we dealing with here? HIS MOTHER WAS A SLAVE THAT DIED IN CHILDBIRTH AND HE INHERITED HER GENES AND LOOKED LIKE HER AND DIDN’T LOOK LIKE HIS FATHER & BROTHERS? AND HE’S SORT OF AN OUTCAST AS A HUMAN LIKE ? THE STIGMA HERE? AND THEN HE SPENDS 2000 YEARS WORSHIPPING HIS NEW MOTHER??? PERHAPS YOU COULD SAY ENSLAVED TO HER? IDK MAN. 

IS THIS ALSO WHY HE WAS SO OBSESSED WITH LOSING PANDORA?

The irony too, and something I think a lot of people miss, is that he DIDN’T WANT TO MARRY PANDORA LOL. He wanted to be betrothed to a child so that he could FUCK OFF and NOT get married because she wasn’t old enough to get married! He fucked off! He went exploring! He said this is not for me! 

AND TO GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND BE MURDERED BY HIS MOTHERS PEOPLE???? IDK. 

I’m not sure how these last two points tie into anything but I just wanted to mention his complicated relationship with Pandora and his own heritage lol. And then Akasha like DELIVERS Pandora to him because she’s like “wow this guy needs somebody lol and I am not emotionally available” — Akasha who was famously a violent genocidal radfem and who would not approve of his relationship with Armand but explicitly allowed him to have Pandora and Bianca. IDK WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN! 

Did Akasha approve of these women because she knew Marius was completely pussywhipped and would worship them and she wanted to see someone mommydom the fuck out of him and she knew that Armand would never be that person? 🫢

And again I want to say like, taking the author into consideration!! Anne Rice had a HORRIFIC relationship with her mom so you see these themes pop up occasionally in her work. DESPITE ALL OF THAT SHE IS STILL A FEMINIST AND WRITES ABOUT MATRILINEAR FAMILIES like The Great Family or the Mayfairs. But thinking about Mothers in Anne Rice Works makes me think a lot about this like, the damage they can do and the voids they can leave even when you’re a feminist and love women! You see a TON of this with Gabrielle and I always think that Lestat & Marius are such similar characters that you can do a lot of extrapolating or backwards engineering to ask questions about them and how they work, since we get SO MUCH Lestat POV in this series to work with and how we can zoom out sometimes and ask like, what is common across her entire body of work and what is more specifically common between Lestat & Marius and WHAT EVEN MORE INTERESTINGLY is a result that they were both based on her husband in their inceptions. 

Like how much of this has to do with Marius’s actual feelings towards men vs women on purpose, or how much was subconscious author bias, how much was simply that Anne Rice based him on her husband and she was THIRSTY, idk. It’s always hard to say in VC because Anne was such an intuitive and self-indulgent author and the stories are so weird!!! So your mileage may vary!

But I agree with you that these are FASCINATING relationships!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I like Marius/Armand too (I recently made a post about how I didn’t “””””ship”””” them but then I spent 2 months working on a M/A fic every day and now I think I’ve corrupted and converted myself LMAO) but yeah like. There’s such a lack of substance between them in the end. He treats Armand like he’s temporary, fucks up and moves on, and it’s such a departure from how DEVOTED he was with all his other partners. 

Wow I didn’t think I had a lot to say, sorry about that. !!! EVERY TIME I BROUGHT A POINT UP I THOUGHT OF 5 MORE POINTS GOSH I COULD TALK ABOUT MARIUS ALL DAY.

[musicalmoritz]

I want to live in a universe where Aoinene has the exact same popularity and overload of content as SatoSugu

[lighthouseas]

im actually never going to be over how horribly sapphic couples are treated in like 90% of media ever. like ever

[heatmiiiiser]

Ggrrr I wish disenchantment was better. I binged it all because I'm sick somebody talk to me about this.

[musical-chick-13]

Thoughts on toxic yuri?

One of my very favorite storytelling concepts, I love it when women make each other worse. <3

I do think it's important, for me anyway, to note the difference between a dynamic that's toxic in one direction versus something that is mutually toxic. The first one doesn't really interest me a whole lot, usually because it means one character suffers constantly without being allowed to do anything else--at the very least, it will come across as the more ""normal"" character not really being that into the relationship in question. I need BOTH parties to be unhinged.

The important thing for any fictional relationship (though we're specifying toxic yuri here, obviously) is that it's interesting. If there is no limit to what the women can do within a dynamic, then there are an infinite number of ways for that dynamic to go. And while you can learn a lot about a character through examining their values and positive qualities, you can learn just as much (if not more) by considering their flaws. And those flaws really come out in the case of toxic yuri; characters get to show the uglier parts of themselves in this context, which I am always a fan of. A fraught, complex relationship, when written well, can be a really great way to psychologically explore the characters: what inspires them to act this way? why do they think this behavior is acceptable? if they don't think it's acceptable, why do they keep doing it? what do they think about the concept of love as a whole? how far would they go for intimacy or to be understood? how do they view other people in general? and probably most importantly, what led to them developing the beliefs underlying their actions in the first place?

From a more "psychologically, why do people enjoy this" standpoint, mutual toxicity often goes hand in hand with extreme obsession, extreme jealousy, and a willingness to forgive a whole lot of horrible shit. Which, yeah, in real life you don't want to be in a relationship like that. But I think there's a lot of emotional resonance in exploring those feelings. The idea that someone will never leave you. That they think so intensely about you specifically that they'll break anything and anyone to stay with you. That even if you're the worst version of yourself, someone will still want you because that's still you. Someone knows exactly how to fuck you up because they genuinely understand you. Things in fiction that we would never want in real life can be incredibly interesting or even cathartic to witness from a distance. I think we all feel things that scare us sometimes (or even simply feel an innocuous emotion so intensely that it scares us), and looking at unpleasant feelings within fiction can help identify, parse out, process, and successfully cope with those feelings. And I think, at the end of it all, a lot of people want to matter to someone, in some way. It makes sense that some creators would take that concept-of meaning a great deal to another person, of affecting them deeply-to its absolute extreme through writing.

(And also, consider. That I am very gay. And that horrible women are very attractive.)

[aaronymous9]

The WOF Love Interest slander has made me think about it. What would be my ideal love interests for each Wings of Fire protagonist?

Clay - Keep him without a solid one, he can have minor flings but honestly I like how the books kept him single and made it pretty clear Peril’s crush was one-sided. I don’t personally headcanon him as aromantic or anything I just think him not having a love interest is more useful and interesting to the character dynamics and the story than having one would be.

Tsunami - As I have previously stated, pathetic malewife ( gender-neutral as usual for the bisexual queen ) or equally as tough dragon who has a soft spot for Tsunami and she has one for them. I like how Riptide is the first person Tsunami meets but not in the way the books portray it, it shouldn’t just be “first male of the same tribe as her now they are dating” I feel “this was the first person I felt I could relate to on all the things I never knew why I did and you taught me so much but never used me for being a princess or forced me to be a certain way thank you”

Glory - Okay girlboss and her hitman bodyguard is cute, kinda reminds me of Yor and Loid Forger in a way but also the age gap has to go Tui how’d you fuck up the timeline that bad 😭😭 I don’t actually like how Deathbringer is written either I kinda would want more of a serious to outsiders but playful slowburn when alone with eachother. I feel like Glory wouldn’t actually get with anyone until she’s an adult because she would be so focused on her career BUT GOD GET A MAN OR A WOMAN OR WHATEVER IDC WHO IS YOUR AGE PLEASE DONT MESS UP THE TIMELINE AND IMPLY STRANGE AGE GAPS IT RUINS SHIPS

Starflight - Tbh… I love him and Fatespeaker nerdy quiet boyfriend and his bundle of energy nerdy girlfriend, just crank it up to 11 I want more I don’t care if she’s annoying it’s fun I just wish they did more with it it was so cute :(

Sunny - The aromantic queen.

Moonwatcher - Everytime I heard her worrying about “oh gosh oh me should I choose the nice funny guy who is nothing but kind to me or the nasty racist man who keeps telling me who hates me because I’m a nightwing” makes me want to rip my hair out. If you can’t tell love triangles are often poorly written and both choices are not equal. Solution: Give Qibli more apparent flaws and maybe don’t make Winter dragon racist it makes the bad boy character a lot less of a bad boy and more of “why are you giving this man the time of day Moon he hates you” energy. That was a rant and a half but basically balance it out more and in the end I don’t want her to decide. She can have some romance drama on the side but I feel like she could never choose, or she could go poly or open relationship but who knows. If I could throw Qibli and Winter in the love interest trash bin I would give Moon a quiet gf with an interesting backstory or something like that, someone who doesn’t have a bombardment of thoughts and is calm and peaceful and Moon can just chill with her. Or honestly if Arc 2 wanted to focus on plot more, discard love interest for Moon until Arc 3.

Winter and Qibli - Stated before. Honestly would prefer if Winter didn’t have a love interest at all and worked through his own issues with his friends where as I’m a little more open to Moon and Qibli personally I’m not the biggest fan. I think Qibli is another character like Clay that I can’t see any story reasons to actually give a love interest until after Arc 2.

Peril - Realize she doesn’t need Clay to love her to be worth anything and slowly come to realize to learn to love herself, maybe she gets to be with someone as an adult but after lots of healing and being able to separate her worth as a person from a partner’s love. <3

Turtle - I like how he has a crush on Kinkajou and how Anemone kind of ruins it but I don’t want it to go anywhere and I want he and Kinkajou to have more discussions about it and for them eventually decide not to get together. Or something like that I can’t really see Turtle with anyone but I liked that storyline.

Blue and Cricket: I actually really enjoy this ship and I want them to be happy, make it less sudden though Tui I stg they went way too fast but I do enjoy pathetic little boy x nerdy girl it is a very cute dynamic and made arc 3 tolerable in the first half for me.

Sundew: No complaints. Willow is amazing, I just wish she had more of a role in the story.

Snowfall: I think she and Lynx are cute but they do also work as friends, I don’t think she needs a love interest. Single girlboss.

Luna: I like Luna and Swordtail a lot actually Arc 3 had pretty good romance for Wings of Fire standards, I just wish it was fleshed out more before Luna’s POV book. Her thoughts and memories of Swordtail also made her book tolerable I’m ngl the plot was lacking but Luna and her awesome thoughts and mind and memories was super cool!!

I could also include the humans, the winglet characters and Darkstalker but I don’t want too!! Fuck the humans I hate them!!! Also I acknowledge I didn’t include any MLM ships in here at all but that’s kind of just because most male characters have pretty solid ships already which are primarily straight, which is sad that there isn’t a lot of LGBT rep in Wings of Fire besides Sundew x Willow and side characters Pineapple x Jambou(? He is so irrelevant I forgot his name help 😭 ) and arguably Sky/Peril. Maybe after Winter works through his angst he can get an emo boyfriend that would be my heart and soul.

[goldiipond]

never seen a more severe case of 'fandom shipping brain to the point where one ship makes up most of a character's tag' before willow park girl i am so sorry

[tittysuckersworld]

like glob men prettyyyyy and women handsomeeee and i want to kill god. i am being smited down with tummy hurty for so so long so i am jusy going to kill. and also mabey watch anomes at some point or just read manga-

[trashymouthgremlin]

im sitting on owl house thoughts

[hexados-on-a-string]

I JUST FUCKIN REALIZED ITS FEBRUARY. FEMSLASH FEBRUARY. bakugan sapphics i have failed you... i will make content to feed myself (a lesbian) tomorrow maybe...

[riddlerosehearts]

not to be a hater (though this is more hating on how fandom treats sapphic ships and female characters than anything) but last night i felt bored and deranged and kept thinking about my changing opinions on ATLA ships, so i sorted the mai/ty lee tag on AO3 by kudos and kept track of how long it took me to find an actual mai.lee fic, usually just by looking at tags and descriptions but sometimes taking a peek at the work itself... and it took 53 fics lol. 53 fics down the list of most kudos'd fics in the mai/ty lee tag, to find a 3k oneshot that is actually about them. on some of these i would click the "entire work" button and search for their names, just to find zuko and sokka's names mentioned 700 times each while mai and ty lee's would be mentioned maybe 10 times each. ugh. their tag already only has 871 fics to zu.kka’s almost 6k to begin with.

like, to be fair, from what i could tell based on their tags and descriptions, only 33/52 of the previous fics--so around 60%--were entirely/primarily focused on zuko or zu.kka (or the set of harry potter/zuko crossover fics i found). the other 19 fics seemed to be the odd zu.tara, zuk.ki, or azu.tara fic, or even gen fic about azula, katara, toph, or the whole gaang, that included mai.lee in the background. so not every one of the top fics in the mai/ty lee tag is actually focused on male characters. but still, to see so many of them be like that... i tried sorting by date updated and most of the stuff on the front page wasn’t about them either. :/

idk i just kinda feel like this backs up what i said before about mai.lee mostly just getting popular because zu.kka got popular and its fans wanted to get mai out of the way, and not because they actually care about the girls and their dynamic. NOT saying everyone who ships zuko and sokka is like this of course, but i think it also shows in the fact that zuko/sokka/suki has become a semi-popular ot3 whereas i have never once seen mai shipped with zu.kka, as part of an ot3 or even ot4. she just gets paired off with ty lee and then the two of them get a secondary role at best (in several of the fics i opened up, mai and ty lee were tagged but literally not even mentioned or there was just one line saying they were dating) in every fic. people just don’t seem to actually like her and to be honest, i don’t like her much either, although i tried to get myself to. i tried to more closely examine her character and see the good in her and i started thinking mai.lee would be a cute ship and seeking out content for it about a year before the ATLA renaissance of 2020. content was scarce but a lot of the oldest fics for them on ao3 are, at least, actually about them even if they’re just short drabbles. so after the renaissance i was excited to come back to tumblr after a hiatus and discover that they were finally a popular ship and people were seeing how good they could be together, but then every time i went to look for fanworks about them, on ao3 or here on tumblr, i realized everything i’m saying in this post. they’re a wlw ship, so of course they’re not actually popular, that would be crazy. of course their “popularity” is entirely owed to the fact that a mlm former rarepair (yeah, zu.kka was not that popular pre-renaissance, people who wanted an mlm ship used to prefer jet.ko) that involves mai’s canon love interest blew up. and i just hate that this sort of thing seems to happen in just about every fandom. i wish the ATLA fandom could’ve been better about it.