#i never ever get involved in fandom discourse. ever

[tvuniverse]

Listen i just want to preface this by saying I don't even personally hate Tommy, but that's not really the point i want to make so here goes nothing.

The way a lot of people act as if it's impossible to dislike him because the characters have moved on so so should we, right? and that's the thing right here, as poc we're always being told to move on. We can't express our feelings, we can't hold grudges, we can't complain about issues without making it something more than it is, we always have to just... move on.

I know people are going to say it's just a show, it's not that serious, but the issues it touches on and the way fandom speaks on those issues are.

I've seen a lot of comparisons between Tommy and other mains, how each of them are flawed and have screwed up one way or another, and you're right, but it's still unfair to compare him to them. We've seen each of the main characters experience guilt, or be ashamed of their action, we've seen them apologise, put in the work to actually grow, and they have. There's not enough time in an episode for us to see that for side characters. In this case, Tommy didn't do any of the above and that's normal, he was a plot device to show some very real societal issues, and especially what people of colour/women might go through in the workplace, and once he served his purpose he didn't get much more beyond a few scenes where it seemed like everything was fine between him and chim/hen. It would be more appropriate to compare him to the buckley parents, (who appeared in more or less the same amount of episodes) like if people suddendly started saying no one is allowed to hate them because they got their redemption, their kids more or less forgave them, they more or less tried to be better parents. And yet it's still not enough for a lot of people, because how they treated their children, the shit they've said to them, hits a little too close to home for a lot of people and so no matter what the show says or does, they'll still be mostly hated by the audience, and that's more than okay. But if margaret buckley is your favourite character than by all means be my guest. And listen, i love this show, it's all about hope, and it means everyone gets a redemption arc, as short as it is (sometimes even just a sentence lol), but we won't always be satisfied with these arcs, especially if they don't feel proportional to the hurt the characters may have caused to our mains, so we'll all have different reactions to them.

I swear liking a morally ambiguous/grey character says absolutely nothing about you, but making excuses for them, antagonising people who might dislike them (for good reasons) or acting like suddenly triggers don't exist for people, does say something about you. One of my favourite characters is literally the worst person ever, an actual bigot, but i won't ever write essays about why people are not allowed to dislike him actually because he's my babygirl.. i very much understand why people would.

All of this to say, everyone will have different opinions about Tommy. Some might love him, some will be completely neutral or at worst slightly uncomfortable/bothered by him, and some will straight up hate him, and all of these are fine. Live and let live, love whoever you want to love, and hate whoever you want to hate, but please stop trying to dictate how others should feel, i'm begging. And this really does go both ways.

[dashiellqvverty]

hello the developer of tangled the series works at the daily wire now???

[scarrletmoon]

okay i know the Discourse™️ has been going on for way too long at this point, but

i think some people outside of the OFMD fandom don’t actually get why we’re particularly annoying about this show

OFMD is not the first queer show to ever exist. if anything, it's a late entry in decades of queer media. over a year and a half since the first few episodes aired, everyone knows that OFMD is queer. that doesn't make it particularly special

but back in March? this is the trailer that dropped in February of 2022, 2 weeks before the premier. if you're used to seeing queer chemistry in shows that aren't intended to be queer, you might see the hints between Ed and Stede here. but to most people? it's just a silly little pirate comedy. just guys being dudes. the trailer doesn't even hint at the other 2 canonical queer relationships in the show -- the closest it gets suggesting romance is the music and the pink in the poster

so when people watched this show in March 2022, they went into it expecting subtext and nothing else. to them, it was like watching Sherlock or Supernatural or Merlin in the 2010s. if you were in any of those fandoms -- especially Sherlock and Supernatural -- you know what it was like; constant jokes at our expense, being mocked for creating explicit fanwork, made fun of by the creators and within the show itself. if we saw queer subtext, that was our problem. this was a time when you pretended NOT to be in fandom, for fear of ridicule. we kept our fanwork to ourselves, we DID NOT share it with the cast, and we accepted that our favourite ships would probably never be canon. maybe one day, if we were lucky, we'd have a show where the subtext wasn't mockery as much as deliberate foreshadowing -- but that had to be YEARS away

right?

OFMD was never billed as a queer show, not in the beginning. there was no LGBTQ+ tag on (HBO) Max, it wasn't on anyone's list of upcoming queer shows in 2022, it flew under the radar through most of its first season. this was a show about pirates, and sure, some of them were queer. but not the LEADS. if you think they're romantically involved, that's must be fandom brain poisoning

except the 9th episode aired, and they kissed. and the show said "you're not crazy for thinking they have chemistry because they really do. it's been a romance this whole time". and in the 10th episode, Stede realizes that he's in love

(not mandating you watch this clip if you don't care for the show, but there's something that feels particularly earth shattering about no one saying the word gay but knowing that Stede's realizing he is, that it's completely unambiguous and explicit in a way that only straight romances are usually allowed to be)

this is why people freaked out about this show. no one knew. even the creator, David Jenkins, was surprised when WE were surprised that it was gay for real -- he set out to write a love story, using all the tried and true beats of a rom com. he'd never even heard of the term queerbaiting. he looked at historical Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet and thought "oh, there's something here" and just...wrote that, with very little fanfare, like it was inevitable. like it was obvious. of course Jim and Pam end up together. of course Buttercup and Westley end up together. what kind of disappointing ending would it be if You've Got Mail ended with the main characters just going their separate ways?

so of course Ed and Stede are in love

look, i get it. we're annoying and won't shut the fuck up about this show that seems mediocre at best. i watched the whole thing back in march, thought "huh, that was cool" and was sure that i'd forget about it in a few days

an hour after looking at fanart on twitter, i was lost in the fucking sauce

there's just so much to unpack from a mere 10 episodes. it covers racism, toxic masculinity, gender expression, sexuality, trauma and abuse. and i don't think we should overlook the fact that the non-white characters in this show get to be fully human in a way i haven't seen in my favourite shows in recent memory

additionally, most OFMD are 25 or older. we're not people who've been spoiled by queer rep, who don't get how hard it used to be, how you'd have to grovel for scraps, how shipping and fanfiction was a way to find queer rep where we thought there never would be. we've been here. we're annoying about this show because for a lot of us, it's the first time we've been treated like our queerness isn't an anomaly that needs to be relegated to its own section, that needs to be praised for the bare minimum of acknowledging that we exist. it's not pulling punches to avoid scaring away a straight audience. it just is.

OFMD for me is like when i watched Black Panther for the first time and realized that this is what white people felt all the time. have there been other black superhero movies? of course! does Disney fucking suck? BOY does it. but that was the first time i got to sit in a movie theater and watch a mainstream film that looked at Africa and said "look at how beautiful you are, exactly as you are"

and idk. i think that's really cool

[conundrumoftime]

Fandom grandma tales: how I survived canon ruining two of the ships I liked.

(Written after a discussion with some of my TROP fan pals about how canon can break your heart re: shipping, and how fandom manages. There are spoilers here for the entire run of Babylon 5, and for one story JMS wrote after it. yes, that story. sorry.)

Babylon 5 was a sci-fi space opera show that ran from 1993 to 1998. It is sci-fi of the era of 22-episode seasons, of huge ensemble casts with characters who get their own B- and C-plots, with an effects and casting budget that doesn’t always match its ambition, and - something it was quite pioneering in, at the time - grand pre-planned story arcs. 

It’s the first fandom that I was involved with in internet spaces as it was running, or at least when its final season was (there’s Discourse and drama from earlier years that I missed). Its showrunner, J. Michael Straczynski - ‘JMS’ - was very active in (non-fanfic) fan community spaces, and you always knew exactly what he was thinking about things because he was part of the discussion around them. There was also fanfic, which he didn’t stop but didn’t go near on the grounds of legal liability for story ideas. 

Most of the fanfic in the early days as the show was airing was focused around two big ships, of which one was canon endgame (Delenn/Sheridan) and one was canon all-ends-in-despair (Marcus/Ivanova). I, as a teenager discovering a developing online fandom for the first time with all the overwhelm and excitement that causes (ask me anything about what reading fic was like before the days of tags/ratings/warnings!) got into Marcus/Ivanova and also into one of the minor ships, Delenn/Lennier.

Delenn/Lennier was never, ever going to happen in canon. This is obvious; it clashes with Delenn/Sheridan which was JMS’s baby darling OTP, the show’s big love story. Delenn is married for the later part of the show. Lennier is her diplomatic aide, is absolutely devoted to her, and they have a very intense mentor/student relationship, which it seems is kind of standard in their culture (when Delenn’s own mentor died she went briefly insane with grief and started a genocidal war over it) but is still Very Intense. He is canonically in love with her, but that’s as far as the explicit canon statements go.

However. HowEVER. Canon also gives us, for that relationship, some wonderful ship fuel. Lennier knows about every bad thing Delenn has done, including all the stuff she doesn’t/can’t tell her husband. He’s her link to her previous world and culture and stands by her even when they kick her out. She says at one point, “without him, I would stumble and fall and never get up again.” 

And then… we had Season 5, the final season.

Season 5, for various complicated production reasons, was operating a little outside of pre-planned story arcs and in this season the Delenn/Lennier stuff ramped up about three gears in one go. It was still very obviously never, ever going to be canon, and was almost certainly not intended by the creator (who wrote most of the episodes himself) to look like there was even anything there. At this point Delenn is married; any relationship with her aide would not only be going against the show’s OTP, but going against it in the sense where she’s cheating on her husband, and there is Just No Way JMS would have gone there. And yet! Season 5 gave us:

A scene where Lennier says he can’t stay, it’s too painful to be around her now she’s married, and she’s devastated and has the following conversation with her husband about it:

S: I got your message about Lennier. Is there anything I can do?

D [snapping]: Almost certainly not.

S: Is it because of me?

D: In part, I think so.

S: Yeah, I was afraid of that. Well, as we say back on Earth, three’s a crowd.

D: On Minbar, three is sacred.

S [slightly uncomfortable laugh]: Well, I don’t think I’m ready to handle that one, Delenn.

Delenn then calling Lennier back to the station to do some secret mission thing for her, which involves her sneaking out of her bed while her husband sleeps to meet Lennier in a darkened alley behind a bar, where she tenderly strokes his face and they have a whole conversation about whether her husband understands her or not.

A scene where Lennier comes back from his secret mission to meet both Delenn and Sheridan, Delenn goes to greet him with a hug, and Lennier does this very pointed step back and nod in the direction of her husband, and she pulls back and just sort of pats him on the arms instead. 

I MEAN.

But, the issue here is not what fans did about it but what canon did about it. Canon did the canon equivalent of dragging that ship outside and shooting it in the head. 

In the final few episodes of the entire series, Lennier tries to kill Sheridan, runs away in shame, and then someone finds his diary in which he’d been writing for ages about what a bad decision he thought Delenn had made and how her whole marriage was an awful idea. Even to this day, it’s fun/awful watching people go through a first-time watch when they get to season 5 and hit that. ‘Character assassination in the form of a diary’ was a whole thing for a while. It’s been 20+ years and the actor who played Lennier is stilll mad about it (not because of shippy stuff, but because he - correctly! - thinks Lennier absolutely would not have done that). 

What *fandom* did, on the other hand, was Fixed The Problem.

Delenn/Lennier was not at all a big ship when the series was airing, and for a few years after. Then the fandom dynamics started to change. With less pressure on what canon was going to do, it felt like fandom had more space to play around with things it didn’t do. Fanfic got less interested in trying to fit within the overall story being told and started spinning off in all its own directions. And *this* ship started getting bigger and bigger. People did really interesting things with it, canon divergence went in all directions, everyone wrote a fix-it story of some variety, some authors did a great series of connected stories based on an idea that Minbari have three genders, the quality of the writing has been brilliant. And I think without that absolute whiplash feeling of what happened in canon, there would never have been this feeling of “well I’m not having THAT” which led to all this.

We did not need canon! Canon had done its thing. And canon had broken our hearts enough ways with many of the other stories it told (entirely on purpose) and we weren’t just going to sit back and let it ruin us forever.

By comparison, the other ship I was into was Marcus/Ivanova. This is entirely doomed. Susan Ivanova’s love life is just perpetually doomed. The first partner of hers we meet is an ex who’s interested in getting back together, but then it turns out he’s just using her to infiltrate the station for the fascist terrorist group he’s secretly joined. Then she falls for an archrival of hers, Talia, who works for Psi Corps, the organisation she loathes most of all things - but it’s okay because it turns out Talia is starting to question them too! Maybe these crazy kids can make it work! They have one night together and then OOPS turns out Talia was being secretly controlled by a sleeper personality implanted in her by Psi Corps the whole time. Ivanova’s love life is doomed. 

So for two seasons, she has this sort-of-flirty, sort-of-bickery, sort-of-friendship going with Marcus, who is on the surface of it very much “why not fall in love at first sight like a true romantic, YOLO!” but it turns out is actually deeply messed up himself and full of survivor’s guilt and pain and, you get the clear impression, would have died of shock if she’d actually called his bluff on the OTT flirting and said “yeah, let’s go for it”. And then he sacrifices himself to save her life. It is a very tragic ending, it is absolutely the way he would have wanted to go, she wakes up both furious and absolutely distraught, says that the last thing she heard was him saying “I love you”, says she wishes she’d at least slept with him once, and says that in a way all love is unrequited. PAIN. 

So, lots of fix-it fanfic, lots of ‘Marcus comes back to life’, lots of canon divergence AUs where he doesn’t die and they live happily ever after and both get over their huge levels of unresolved pain. Pretty standard for that kind of pairing. And as a pairing it doesn’t get in the way of any big canon pairings, it doesn’t imply anything icky like mentor/student power imbalances or adultery. And JMS clearly quite liked it. So that’s better, right?

NO. It was WORSE.

JMS wrote an Marcus/Ivanova story himself, published in one of the sci-fi magazines, to try to give them a happy ending. This happy ending involves Marcus, many many years in the future, waking up from the cryogenic suspension he’s in (it’s sci-fi, keep up, keep up). Ivanova is long dead, but he isn’t about to let this get in the way, so what he does is to *create a new Ivanova* by getting some kind of DNA + computerised memory/personality bank thing, finding a doctor who will clone her, putting himself back into animated sleep until the clone reaches the age Ivanova was when she died, then - THEN, I’M STILL GOING - takes her to a distant planet where, with her memories wiped and their spaceship having deliberately been crashed BY HIM so there’s no way back, they live out their lives in peace.

WHAT.

That pairing still does okay in fandom but it’s not really taken on a post-show world of headcanons and riffing on other people’s ideas and tropes in the way that Delenn/Lennier has (and we all just pretend that story never existed). 

So! This has been my experiences in the field of What We Do When The Show Has Thoughts On That Non-Endgame Ship We’re Into. Fandom manages. Fandom will see you through. And in the words of Susan Ivanova:

Babylon Five was the last of the Babylon stations; there would never be another. It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future, or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, for if we don’t, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly though, I think it gave us hope that there can always be new beginnings - even for people like us.

[neuroticbookworm]

Another Thai BL, another Asian parent-child conflict that enrages the audience and yet, is extremely nuanced. I’m gonna try and speak on it as an Asian kid who grew up in the East, but currently lives in the West, carrying complicated feelings on the Asian parenting I received.

I’m seeing a good discourse in the tags from @lurkingshan, @respectthepetty, @bengiyo, @heretherebedork and @williamrikers, among others, on the hypocrisy of a dad who hit his son in anger and is now lecturing him on the importance of controlling one’s actions when angry. I agree with everyone that the dad is being a hypocritical piece of shit. But I do not think that this is a failure in the writing of the show. Quite the opposite, actually. Because of how Ten responds and acts in the face of this hypocrisy.

Ten comes across as belligerent and confrontational in every interaction he has had with his dad, but it is never uncalled for, and he never seeks it out himself. He tries to stay out of his dad and his stepmom/his dad’s girlfriend’s way as much as possible, and only responds in a defensive manner when provoked. And in today’s episode, he even kept himself open enough in the conversation with his dad, despite his anger, to concede and accept a very good point when raised. Ten understands his dad’s hypocrisy but refuses to stoop to the same level of pettiness because he knows being a good partner and a good friend is more important than being right. This is a mark of excellent writing, in my opinion. The main character is fiercely loyal to his partner and his friends and does not let his baggage with his dad cloud his course of action.

I also see calls for an apology from the dad already brewing in the fandom. And I understand the instinct to want that. It is always so satisfying when mistreated children finally get the apology that’s been long overdue. But it’s rarely this simple in an Asian household. Times are changing faster than most people can in a lifetime, and there are systemic, cultural flaws in how an Asian society understands and teaches parenting. And if we factor in the social, economic, religious lines that heavily influence how an Asian person forms their social circle, it would’ve left these parents with little to no peers who can tell them what they’re doing is wrong. Parents striking their kids is clearly considered evil nowadays, but only a few years ago, it would’ve been a perfectly acceptable response to control a bratty child, on and off screen (and it still is in some Asian cultures).

Now, NONE of what I said above is an excuse to write off the behavior of Ten’s dad as acceptable, just because it’s very Asian. As an Asian who grew up in the East, the demand for an apology does not particularly resonate with me, because Ten and his dad both know that their problems are not gonna go away as soon as Ten’s dad apologizes. Because:

If Ten starts demanding an apology for every shitty thing his dad has ever done, where should he stop? Should he demand an apology for the time his dad probably struck him as a kid when he was trying to get him to memorize multiplication tables, as is wont of every Asian parent ever (it is such an ubiquitous experience to Asian kids everywhere that there are reels with millions of views on IG, referencing this experience. Does this mean every Asian parent is evil and must be put on trial by their kids? Holy moly, think of all the money therapists would make if every Asian kid in the world decided to call out their parents on their shit. Entire economies would crumble to dust from the sudden disruption in cashflow.)

Is an apology going to comfort Ten? Asian parenting warps the sense of self of both the parents and the kids, because of the levels of abject sacrifice involved in it. It is extremely possible that Ten’s dad had worked day and night to provide well for his family, for his son, before Ten’s mom fell ill. It’s the same choice he made for his wife, but in this case, it paid off, because now Ten is financially well taken care of, and he is privileged enough to pursue a career in medicine. If Ten demands an apology from his dad for not being there when his mom was dying, do we know for sure that when he gets that apology, his mind won’t conflate the sacrifices his dad made for him, thus making him feel guilty for forcing someone who clearly cared about him enough to work hard for him, into defeat (look at this rich soup of Asian parenting misery, yum yum yum. I know it’s delicious because I’m paying my therapist weekly to make the broth less spicy).

The dialogue in the show whenever Ten’s mom is brought up and discussed is always very carefully worded:

Not “because you did not act”, but “because you took so long to act”. Looks like Ten’s dad made a choice that ultimately did not pay off. He cared, and he wanted to do something to save his wife, but whatever he chose to do ultimately did not help. And now she is dead and he has managed to not help and comfort his wife in her final days AND unwittingly traumatize his son with his absence. The show has painted this storyline with enough nuance that I don’t believe we are meant to read Ten’s dad as a simple villain, but rather a father who does care but has made some serious mistakes. This situation is so emotionally complicated and realistically, it’s gonna take years for both of them to find a middle ground. Ten is gonna have to grow up and make a few mistakes of his own in life to develop proper empathy for his dad, and that’s gonna put a couple things into perspective for him (I’m not saying Ten is bound to make mistakes because he is bad. He is going to because shit happens in life and human beings always do better in hindsight than in the moment). And the dad is gonna have to grow old and let his aging body humble him a little and shrink his ego enough to see that he had failed his son by not being emotionally available to deal with their trauma, together.

I’ve been watching Kim’s Convenience, a Canadian sitcom that follows a Korean-Canadian family and their shenanigans. I’m only on S04E02, but there is a father-son conflict at the centre of this show that is still not directly addressed by both the dad and the son. It’s been years (almost a decade, I think) since the son has been driven out of his home by his dad for a dumb mistake he made as a teen. And the way the show works on it is so infuriating, because it is so Asian. It is rarely addressed aloud in the presence of the dad or the son, lest it leads to anger and screaming and storming off. The path to reconciliation is built with mom calling her son for help to fix something in their home because his dad is too stubborn to ask for it. With the son visiting the hospital when the dad had to undergo surgery, and having their first real conversation in years which the dad forgets after waking up from the influence of pain drugs. With the daughter’s old phone passed down to the dad with her brother’s number on it, which leads to them texting each other. It is all extra frustrating for me because I’m extremely straightforward in my conversations with my parents. I do not like ambiguous endings to verbal conflicts because they are a ticking time bomb and I do not have the capacity to forget its existence and let it tick away in the background. But, I understand it when my friends, and Asian characters in TV shows, don’t want to force things out in the open if it can be swept under the rug for the time being, because peace of mind in Asian households is fleeting and you would be wise to take what you get.

Good TV shows can best serve their audience when they serve their characters, and stay true to the experiences of the people they are trying to represent. My teen ass was regularly shocked, appalled and intrigued by the sexual liberation promised by Western media I consumed while I was in school and college. I was surrounded by a sexually repressed society that was convinced that the only moral way to enjoy pleasure was after marriage with your partner. And very predictably, this means a lot of dead bedrooms, unhappy marriages and kids growing up with no real understanding of what romantic love looks like. I would’ve never had the courage to move my entire life to the West, if the Western media I watched had not represented its people in all their messy, horny glory, albeit with a rose-tinted lens on gender, race and sexuality.

Some Asian parents in media need to fall at the feet of their children and apologize. I remember being absolutely fucking enraged while @lurkingshan and I watched Double Savage at the behest of our friend @waitmyturtles, and in the finale, Korn was the one who fell at the feet of his absolute piece of shit of a dad to apologize for FUCKING NOTHING. And after Shan and I were done surviving that show, I remember telling my friends that most Asian media does not have strong writing whenever Asian children need to defy their shitty parents and come to terms with their destructive parenting, because chances are, most Asian creators would not have successfully done it. Hence, intergenerational trauma (gasp! It’s all connected!).

So. I would never demand to see Ten’s dad apologize to him to consider Cooking Crush a successful show, because that is not the cultural context this story operates in. Would I enjoy it if he does? Hell yes. Would I be mad if he does not? No, because Ten is proving him wrong time and again, and that’s a constant reminder from the narrative of who is in the right.

[eriexplosion]

Cut for fandom salt

The reason I get so heated about the 'Is Tech Alive/Dead' discourse is that like. It is very hard for me to explain just how pissed I would be if he was dead. Not because 'oh no a thing happened in the show that I didn't like' I'm in my fucking thirties I've dealt with shows making stupid decisions before. It's what a permadeath here in particular would mean with everything surrounding it.

It's starting a series based around getting you to want a family to reunite just to pull the rug out 2/3rds in and say 'lol dumbass they were never going to reunite.' All those themes of family and needing it to be complete? Never meant anything.

It's building up a character, intentionally making sure he's read as neurodivergent in a very clear and confirmed way, giving him multiple plotlines, and then cutting them all off without finishing any of them by taking two episodes to set up a mission that has zero plot purpose except to kill him off and then say Oh well it's stakes and consequences there had to be a price to pay for... trying to reunite the family and save their brother I guess. How dare they.

It's providing zero confirmation in story on the death, spending months upon months saying shit like 'he doesn't come back in this episode at least' and 'this was the end of mine - and that's a good thing!' and 'if you could only see who's on my screen' knowing that there's a large portion of fans genuinely upset by his death, using social media pretty much exclusively to rub our faces in the scene, and then turns out they were just stringing everyone along the whole time, he really was dead, the lack of confirmation in episode meant nothing, us playing coy and dropping hints for ten months meant nothing, fuck you for giving a shit.

It's setting up a story where the clones could be more than soldiers and then abruptly cutting it off and going on and on about how wonderful it is that he died self sacrificing as a soldier and it's what any clone would want, because this show about how all clones are individuals is actually about how they're all interchangeable and any clone would want the same thing.

It's that if Tech is dead there is not a single piece of the show, a single interaction with the fans since it happened, a single anything from anybody involved that was not set up to make ND people hope (or god forbid even feel some kind of acceptance at seeing a neurodivergent character getting treated seriously) string them along, and then punish them for it so that everyone else can coo about how mature and bold it was to kill off the autistic guy for shock value. And then they don't even fucking address it the next season because ~oh there's just no time~

And I would really prefer if a show that I have loved almost every other aspect of, that has been genuinely well written and moving, didn't randomly decide to drop every single piece of their writing ability in order to put out the most ambiguous death scene ever, fuck with their audience for ten months, and then shit on them for caring.

[zykamiliah]

Hey, sorry to bother you, but I've been seeing something in the fandom that kind of confuses me, so I'm leaving this ask to my favorite svsss blogs.

I've been trying to get more into Shen Jiu's character, as he is pretty interesting and arguably a fan favorite, and I've noticed that, so far of the fanfics I've read, he is more often than not depicted as a good teacher. A harsh one, but still good? Or not terrible?

One that likes teaching, is involved with his students, taking the little of what we've seen of Shen Yuan's teaching methods and just, giving them a twist, "improving" them even sometimes.

Often it ends up being a show of how Shen Yuan was clumsy, not that good of a teacher (or of a Shen Qingqiu) and I'm... Kind of confused by this trend? Like, is it rooted in canon? Obviously this is still more interesting to read than the "SJ is just a tsundere that never did anything wrong ever" thing, but it feels kind of similar.

I cannot imagine a character as genuinely bitter and angry as Shen Jiu enjoying being a teacher, having a nurturing bone in his body or even being hands on in the teaching of his disciples, several of which he literally bullied out of his peak. But maybe it's just me and I'm wrong?

Was Shen Jiu a good teacher?

I guess I'm just curious of where it comes from. I like Shen Yuan's character, and it often feels like people take Shen Jiu's to show how bad at everything SY is, even if it isn't consistent with SJ's character and often lack nuances, in my opinion.

(Or even if the story claims loving SY while also stripping him away of everything that makes him interesting other than his obliviousness, but that's a whole other thing.)

Sorry again, and I also apologize for the long ask, I'd just figured you or someone that follows you might have an answer.

(Also, I get that fandoms gotta fandom, and I'm not saying people shouldn't write it or anything, I may be a strickler for canon but I'm not the police. Write what you want. I just wonder where it comes from, as I figure that knowing its origins might help me in the future, but I promise I'm not trying to start discourse or anything, so I hope I've made my point clear enough without offending anyone.)

hello!! :DD

well sj being ooc in fics is a common thing by now. people tend to portray him softer than he's in canon, to the point it sometimes turns his whole character upside down. in extreme cases, you'll be dealing with a bitter, more tsundere version of sy with sj's backstory, which is secretly what many people want IMO lol often this people also perceive sy as an incompetent dumb nerd that only knows about monster lore and has no other skills or abilities aside from that-- essentially, they fall for the unreliable narrator's trap of believing every lie he tells about himself.

it's never outright stated, but sj didn't like children, so is fair to assume he didn't like teaching or caring for them either. taking into account qing jing peak's toxic atmosphere pre sy's transmigration, AND the fact that sj was paranoid about being overthrown since he hadn't developed a golden core even after becoming a peak lord and taking lbh in, I don't think he'd be interested in teaching anyone anything. in a lot of cultivation novels, disciples are just given manuals and left to self-study them (like he let lbh use the fake manual, expecting lbh would die from using it. haha. such a good teacher!). this could be the case. aside from that, I don't personally think sj would want to provide any kid guidance. and that's not mentioning how he allowed and enabled bullying, targeted talented disciples, and overall was more worried about his own cultivation and survival and reputation than other things or people.

so where this fanon sj comes from? I'm not sure, really, but I think some people just want a version of him that's palatable AND defensible, like my friend furby says, a declawed sj that's just a poor misunderstood meowmeow who deep inside is secretly good and nice. it's a thing that people who struggle with liking "villainous" or "morally bad" characters do: twisting the narrative around to justify this character's actions. It doesn't help that he's SO complicated, and people who have very black-and-white thinking struggle to place him in either side of the spectrum-- it's the problem mxtx outlined through sqh and sqq's voices

ch.14 house arrest

ch.19 shen jiu

really, the fandom has just proved mxtx's point xD

anyway, there's a lot of misconceptions about sj. there are some pretty wild theories around. some fans also treat his abuse as The Worst Abuse in comparison to the Child Abuse he did, because of the (unconfirmed) hints that sj was sexually assaulted by qiu jianluo, as if SA is the worst kind of abuse and child abuse falls back on the tier-list ¯_(ツ)_/¯ because obviously anything that involves sex in inherently worse, apparently

in other cases, people are simply more familiar with the fanon version of the characters, and that's who they portray in their writing. after all, many people read the novel once and then go on to read dozen of fics; it's normal the fanon sticks more on the brain than canon (not judging! it happens to me as well lol) and those fanon versions are more popular because, as i said, this version of sj is more morally palatable (and bland and less fun ┐(︶▽︶)┌)

thank you for the ask!! :DDDD ❤️❤️❤️ i love receiving asks~

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/738186087970881536/i-dislike-a-lot-of-transcharacter-fic-because-a

Yeah, with some of the judgy comments left on the anon about the friend who was squicked out by a trans headcanon smut fic... I get the frustration that one identity is opt-in while the other is just assumed, and maybe it was that anon's wording, but I do think for a lot of people (including, or perhaps especially, trans people), trans fic is a DNW on requests less because they NEVER like it, and more because it's the sort of thing you've talked about on here about how if there's anything you only like when it's "handled well," that a lot of fanfic writers routinely handle poorly, you should DNW it. Because you can't know if the random person you're assigned to will be good enough to "handle it well," or even know what "well" means for you. And a lot of the people who write it the worst will jump at any gap in your wording to write it, if you aren't absolutely clear.

And honestly, I really dislike reading PIV especially in slash or femslash, so even in the fandoms where I am really into trans headcanons for particular characters, I still have to DNW PIV specifically because it seems like SO many people think that's the only option with trans characters in M/M or F/F relationships! In ones where I don't have any trans headcanons, or that have a habit of trans headcanons for characters where I disagree with it, or whatever, just DNWing trans headcanons seems more convenient. (I also am a veteran of a fandom where there was obnoxious discourse suggesting that anyone who disliked PIV in slash was transphobic, or sometimes even if you were a cis gay man or lesbian and didn't like PIV in your own offline sex life. Not even about if you're interested in trans people who haven't had bottom surgery in the first place, just if you like having a *specific kind of sex* with them. It was... yeah. Yeesh. [Also surprising to me, because I've had a lot of close trans friends IRL over the years who had dysphoria around PIV and preferred other kinds of sex with their partners themselves, to see people online treating it as like the Holy Grail of gay trans sex.] So it put a further bad taste in my mouth about a trope I already disliked, which is unfortunate because people in other fandoms I've joined since aren't like that at all. But you can't help when past bad discourse ruins a thing for you personally.)

Some of the best fic I've ever read, including smut, has involved trans headcanons for canonically cis or unspecified characters. But it is definitely a thing that - probably not helped by the fact that it was promoted so hard a few years ago in certain spaces as a thing to make your fic more "progressive" - is done so poorly SO often. And you can often really tell if the particular shitty writer is trans or cis, too. Because if it's a bad writer who is trans, it will feel like a self-insert fic. If it's a bad writer who is cis, it will be inaccurate and fetishy and often unintentionally-transphobic.

But I've read incredible trans fic by both cis and trans writers, and I only knew which one they were because I knew these people personally - because when it's done well, you (usually) can't tell.

--

[utilitycaster]

I've also seen people say (on twitter of course lol) that Matt interjected deliberately and pointedly after Orym's family question which also feels a little wild to me, like there are "sides" between the cast and he's taken one. I don't think I've ever seen how far people in this fandom can run with something, so I'm surprised even though I shouldn't be. The Bor'dor discourse still also bothers me because in-game Laudna was simply not aware of the nod or anything else but what she wanted to do.

Hey anon,

I agree entirely, that this is conspiracy-level thinking. But ultimately I think what's more important is that if the ship I'd claimed to have desperately wanted for months became canon, and when the most recent episode that aired had the two characters in this ship canonically dancing together and one putting their head in the other's lap, I still found myself spending far more time talking about what a guy who isn't even attracted to either of the characters involved did ten episodes ago? I think I'd simply delete my account and walk into the woods never to return.

Like truly, I wonder, what is it? Is it that Imogen still hates Pate? Is it disorientation from the constant whiplashing between opinions depending on which character they've decided to hate this week, of which the rapid flip from "Bells Hells has a tight Found Family Bond, you guys are just haters" to "Bells Hells is on the VERGE of a BLOW-UP" is only the latest example? Is it because not only did Laudna say nothing about the Turn Undead from two weeks ago, but asked FCG specifically to Scry on Delilah and even seemed amenable to them asking the Changebringer for help on this matter? Is it because in that aforementioned dance, instead of doing anything to return Imogen's affections, Laudna just wandered off to make small talk with someone else? Is it because the cast cheered harder for Cyrillia/Novos? Is it because Imogen and Laudna didn't even bother to take watch together on Slival? Is it because nearly every opportunity onscreen seems like a lost one and the fans are running out of people to blame? Is it because the latest 4-Sided dive made it clear that there's been no planning, no intent, no change, and six episodes later still no out of episode conversation, and the Rose City Comic-Con Panel has no new information and is giving "contractually obligated"? Is it because more so than the ship, the people wanted it to be the Popular Ship, and it's not, because there's no connective tissue, none of the little moments that made up the magic of every past canon relationship on the show, just an accommodating blank canvas to play back whatever one is projecting onto it? Is it because if they keep blaming Orym, and FCG, and Ashton, and coins, and dice, and the DM, and the other fans, and every one else, they don't have to admit that they would rather be pining for the actually good slow-burn they dreamed of, instead of experiencing a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one?

This isn't about Bor'Dor, or Orym, and it's barely about Laudna. Unless a chemistry that has not yet existed comes into being in the next episode, they'll either post some other conspiracy theories about an episode from three months ago, or they'll make up some other bullshit Us Vs Them thing to get mad about that Laudna will again fail to validate for them in game, and then rinse and repeat on this miserable treadmill of their own making.

[bisonaari]

Do you know of another community that's as tight-knit and involved as the Käärijä tag? This is a genuine question, bc I'm fairly new to this site, and I don't think I've seen anything like it so far. Like, yes, there are the huge tags with millions of followers and thousands of notes. And then there's other big tags where surprisingly the posts get almost no engagement. But in this community it feels like there are so many people who actually speak to one another. People actually interact with one another and share thoughts & feelings like a huge group of friends. I was just wondering if you'd consider this a regular occurence on tumblr, bc it seems so rare & beautiful.

Hey anon! I think I'm the right person for that because I've made my first tumblr blog in 2009 (it's still online, weirdly enough!), so I've been here a while.

This is the first time I've seen that

I've lurked in many fandoms on tumblr. I've never seen that sense of community in a tag EVER. Usually tags are a bit of you dump your shit there so other people find it and then you forget about it. Tags, in this sense, are a search tool

The only other fandom I've been that active in was Osomatsu-san, but it was filled with drama and discourse. So call out posts and people deactivating was frequent. Not ideal to build a community

This is the first time I've seen a tag used as a place rather than just the tool it is. The Käärijä tag feels like a market place in a town where you can hang out with other people. I think that we're just the right amount of deranged active people for it to work. Not too many that it's impossible to get to know each other, but not too little to not have an active tag. We're in the right age range to know what actually matters and what is just silly discourse that shouldn't be touched. We're all weird girls and gays united around this gremlin of a man, who loved his chaotic energy in the first place.

We had all the right ingredients to make this work, creating this weird community here.

I'm not saying that it's unique on tumblr. There are probably many other communities just like ours! I know that my best friend's roommate is in one as well in the more fnaf side of stuff. But this is very, very uncommon

I love you all so much I have no words

[beastranpo]

please stop calling dazai/ranpo ‘souheki’

I posted this originally on twitter, but it unfortunately didn’t get a lot of traction, so I figured I’d post it on here as well in hopes it would get a little bit more traction and I apologize in advance for the fact I will be ‘clogging tags’ so to speak to get the word out.

I generally don't like to flood tags but people who tag Dazai/Ranpo (also known as Daran/Ranzai) as ‘souheki’, please don't. Yes, it is their team name in the japanese version of 55 minutes, but it not unique to BSD the same way ‘soukoku’ is for Dazai and Chuuya.

'Souheki’ in japanese is commonly used to describe an unbeatable pair or duo/matchless people, alternatively referred to as 'two treasures' or the lit translation 'double jade' as the japanese for heki is the chinese for jade.

This being said: MANY OTHER SERIES' USE THIS NAME FOR CHARA DUOS!! If you look up souheki, especially in Japanese, you will find everything from the Lan Brothers and Lan Juniors fom MDZS, Ferdibert from FE3H, Haikaveh from Genshin Impact, and even Fukumori FROM BSD. It does not belong exclusively to Dazai and Ranpo, so you are making the search all the more difficult for everyone involved, and you are burying and missing out on amazing, pre-existing content of them that has been around for almost ten years now.

I’ve been a big shipper of Dazai and Ranpo for that same amount of time, and the ship name has always only ever been Daran/Ranzai. The JP fans have never changed it, because ship names and team names are not equal or interchangeable. (Similarly, content intended to be shippy for them is tagged as Dachuu/Chuuda, never SKK.)

Additionally, soukoku was introduced the second Dazai and Chuuya were announced as a duo in bsd. The term souheki towards Dazai and Ranpo was not mentioned at all throughout the series until 55 minutes, which wasn’t written until 4 years after bsd was created and Dazai/Ranpo already had a ship name. (I’ve been here since 2013, trust me it has only ever been this.)

Once a ship name is created, it is not changed, especially in the japanese fandom where we borrow the ship names. (dachuu, kunizai, akuatsu as examples)

The JP fans never even brought much attention to the souheki concept aside from how it catered to the ship itself. The ship name(s) has not changed for ten years.

For further comparison, this is how the google search looks when you search soukoku / double black:

And this is what happens when you search souheki / ‘double jade’ ‘twin jade’:

This has reached so far that even Japanese fans are seeing this and being confused because, again, ‘souheki’ is not unique to just Dazai and Ranpo!! And it has been used for other ships!

If you are posting content for them, please please PLEASE tag it as daran/randaza/ranzai/etc. Please stop using souheki and muddying the waters to find content of these two.

if you want to find content for them, these are their tags in jp:

乱太 / らんだざ / randaza or ranzai (top ranpo content ONLY)

太乱 / だざらん / dazaran or daran (top dazai content ONLY)

太乱太 (content that can be translated either way / switch)

Please keep in mind that ships are tagged accordingly for who tops/bottoms or is the one who may have the more confident or dominant personality in jp fandom to filter content and those who dislike one dynamic will not be exposed to it. This is not an argument over top/bottom discourse. Jp fans do not have that problem. When you write/read a fic with top A, their actions/thoughts/etc will differ greatly from reading bottom A content 9/10 times. Some people have a preferred character interpretation like everyone else and are much more consistent with filtering.

While I am certainly happy daran/ranzai are finally canonically confirmed to be the agency's 'unbeatable duo/two precious treasures' (souheki), it is misleading and quite frankly incorrect to claim this is their ship name and to please keep tagging them as daran/ranzai so older content doesn't get brushed under the rug and completely ignored/missed altogether in this attempt to give them a 'special name'. They dont need to combat skk. They are unique and special as they are!

Please give attention to the content made by fans of Dazai/Ranpo fans that have existed for a long time now! We promise there is actually a TON of content, it is not lacking whatsoever. You’re just looking under the wrong name!

As a really big fan of Dazai and Ranpo for a very long time, who is friends with a majority of the Dazai/Ranpo fanartists in Japan and has spent a concerningly scary amount of money for content of them over the years, I hope you will consider this advice. I really want fans of Dazai/Ranpo to come together, enjoy content old and new, and make more in the future together.  (〃＞＿＜;〃) 

Please share this around if you could!

[the-shy-wolf]

I’ll be posting this to Twitter tomorrow, but since I’m more active here, I’ll go ahead and post. To everyone who has supported me up to this point, I appreciate everything, more than you will ever know. Despite my claims of being an ‘edgelord’, I think it’s no secret that that’s absolutely not the case. I’m an incredibly sensitive person. So sensitive, in fact, that I’m easily stressed when it comes to certain things. I’ve been having to take frequent breaks from the internet due to my extreme levels of anxiety. My anxiety has been so bad, I now have seizures due to my stress levels being so high. Don’t worry, I am working with a therapist and psychologist with this, and with therapy and appropriate medication, I can beat it.

With that being said, I’m sorry to say I’m stepping away from the Deltarune fandom. I’m sad and extremely conflicted about it, because it was Deltarune that helped me make so many friends and meet so many people. This is my first time having a place in fandom, I was briefly involved in the Adventure Time fandom, but that was years ago and it was a brief thing. I’ve never had this many eyes on me, and it’s overwhelming. My time and the emotional investment I’ve been putting into fandom/art has felt like a second job, and I’m not okay with that. I originally started posting art, because I was inspired. It’s also helped me cope with the loss of my brother. But it’s no longer a coping method, it feels more like a chore and it no longer brings me happiness. I’ve been harassed by anon hate/criticisms mercilessly, and it’s taken a toll on me. I’m 30 years old, and if I have not developed a thick skin now, it’s safe to say I never will. Which is another thing I want to bring up: I no longer want to draw ship art of Deltarune characters, and that includes Kris and Susie. I’m tired of the shipping discourse/hate, and to be honest, I don’t want to only be known for shipping characters from a game. I think it’s made people not take me seriously as an artist at all, and it’s no longer enjoyable. I started shipping the characters because they both reminded me of my partner and I, but now, it’s all anyone ever relates my work to, and that includes oc’s. It’s frustrating. I’m a short, brown headed enby. Bram is a big freckled long haired dude. My ocs look like us. Please stop mixing the two- it ain’t that deep.

I’m sorry if this came out of the blue, but after receiving my diagnosis yesterday, I need to cut back on my stress levels, and a lot of that stress stems from fandom. Will I draw DR in the future? Maybe. Especially once new content is dropped. Idk if it will be shipping, but it’ll be something. I will, of course, continue to support all of my art friends. You’ve been nothing but kind and supportive of me, and despite my absence, I care very, very much. So much, in fact, I isolate myself from everyone because I don’t feel worthy to associate or even share my art. I know that’s a shitty excuse, but it’s true. There is a voice in my head that keeps telling me I’m not worthy to even associate. If this disappoints my friends/supporters, I’m so very sorry. It’s how my brain has always worked.

I also want to apologize for leaving my other sm accounts. I was not trying to worry or cause panic. I don’t think too many people even noticed, which is good. It’s not the first time I’ve deactivated. My hands get busy and sometimes deactivating and stepping away is a good reset button for me. But I wanted to throw all of this out there. I’m sorry if this is disappointing or upsetting, but I want to be honest. About all of it.

Thank you for reading, again- I’m so sorry. I’ll probably reactivate and post this message to Twitter tomorrow.

[noranb]

Dont feel pressured to respond to this as I don’t want to add to the discourse by any means, but as a counter point to the other anon, I never really got how it was ‘wrong’ to have characters who are properly aged up/consenting to be the focus of nsfw content? Cause like, it is fictional on one hand, and also, on the other, no singular entity stays a child forever. So long as they are of appropriate age and the context is there for it, it’s hard for me to find any ‘good’ reason to be against it.

I’ve seen this sort of argument destroy creators, fans and fandoms before, and it’s just not worth it honestly. people need to learn that if they’re uncomfortable with stuff that it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad or immoral and they need to just move on. People who can’t understand that distinction yet might not be ready for any sort of nsfw content in general, so I think that honestly, whatever you choose to do is fine.

People will find reason to poke and complain regardless of what you do, but I think you should do what you like and whatever makes you happy. I am sorry though that you’ve gotten negative messages about these sorts of things before, as no one should be harassed over how they ship a thing. Ever.

Anyways, wishing you a pleasant day, and know that I’ll support you regardless. I just wanted to like write and show that I understand where you’re coming from and that people will get it too, even if they don’t say anything

I agree! Like it'd be fucked up if people were to do this to real kids but fictional characters are. fictional lol their whole purpose is to tell stories through them, I don't see why that story should be contained to "sfw" content even when they're adults in it. Thanks for the support ;u;

(more asks under cut)

"they exist at the age you're depicting them just as much as they exist at the age they are in canon" <- put it in words better than I could, thank you ;o;

right, I feel like the only time this would be bad to do with existing fictional characters is if the original creator of the characters expressed that they don't want fan creations involving nsfw etc etc but hoyoverse doesn't give a crap so!!

omg kind of mind games are they playing on tumblr dot com T_T

[celluloidbroomcloset]

(tw for rape/rape mentions!)

just witnessed the most actually deranged post i've ever seen in my life:

"I feel like if Izzy had made Stede stab him for his own (sexual?) gratification, at gunpoint, we'd be seeing posts calling him a rapist, is all I'm saying"

?????? this shit is getting ridiculous 😭 i've never seen fandom infighting going so far and get so dramatic i feel like everyone really, really needs to take a couple steps back here. as an actual rape and abuse survivor myself seeing people using it as a pawn in their stupid game about fictional characters is so fucking maddening. the roundabout way they're not directly saying people could consider this act ed performed sexual assault is actually sickening (like this concept is a weapon they're CHOOSING not to wield, not a serious thing that they shouldn't just be flinging around like it means nothing) and using it as a way to further how izzy is the real Good Guy with no thought to how the things they're saying affect real world victims is insane, beyond tone deaf and compassion void. goes double for all the abuse apologism people happily fling about obviously as well as if abuse survivors just aren't in fandom and can see the shit they go around saying.

this is the most abnormal fandom environment i've ever witnessed in my life and i've been in some BAD ones. the victimising complexes of certain izzy fans are bizarre...

this isn't like a plea for everyone to just Get Along because i do think people should be aware of certain sociopolitical and intracommunity issues like this and willing to call out and expel abhorrent behaviour including abuse apologism, racism, homophobia/transphobia and transmisogyny, and of course harassment, but it's really on another level... i really wish everyone would just really utilise the block button or even just old fashioned DNI's and address things as they come up and communicate if necessary without waiting around like a spider in a web to jump down people's throats/start conversations that will just end in argument 😭 i understand that it's warranted and people on "both sides" are acting in similar ways but it's starting to feel less like occasional normal amounts of discourse and more like a really uncomfortable environment and it can't be healthy for anyone involved. sorry i kind of went on a tangent there lol all of that is generalising and directed at this fandom as a whole fwiw.

....that's....WHAT?! I mean, yeah, if Izzy did that, it would be not great, because of who the characters are, but that is one fucking weird hypothetical.

I am still new here, but coming in from the outside and wading into the tags was and continues to be fucking weird. Because 9/10s of the posts are fine, and then there's this strange, distressing faction that is very small but so vocal as to make it hard on everyone else. I've seen a lot of posts that are just explicitly dismissive of emotional and psychological abuse, or are attempting to justify those things as Not Really Abuse. Yes, this is a fictional show; no, it is not perfect in its representation, and there's stuff that I wish they had done differently or better. But there are also real-world things in there, and one of the things that I've liked about it is how it upends a lot of the problematic tropes and expectations of the genre.

I've said before that I'm troubled by anyone who looked at Izzy in Season 1 and went "that's my guy, he's never done anything wrong" and MEANT IT and continue to mean it.

Most of the folks I've interacted with have been lovely. There's this small group who just...are not, but who very badly want everyone else to conform to their particular brand of not-okayness. It's fucking dangerous.

I strongly recommend blocking immediately. The more you block, the better tailored your experience will be to you and the less you have to deal with the assholes.

[kataraslove]

Do you think Kataang will ever get retconned for Zutara? I can see Bryke/Avatar Studios/Paramount/whoever tf is in charge now for the upcoming movie being like, “To drive up sales we should reintroduce Kataang vs Zutara discourse. Let’s make it so that Katara never actually loved Aang and only settled for him because she couldn’t have Zuko.”

short answer: highly doubt it

long answer: bryke had the chance to give in to fanon and make zutara canon at the end of atla; they didn’t. bryke again had the chance to make zutara canon in the legend of korra; they instead gave confirmation that katara and aang got married and had three children. bryke could have made zuko and katara end up together in old age; we have not seen one instance in which they even interact. bryke could have had them date in the comics, especially now that zuko is currently single. instead, katara spends her time helping rebuild the world with aang. any supplementary material from avatar studios could have indicated that they were spending time together - but the only thing i’ve really seen is stuff like legacy of the fire nation reiterating their friendship during the series. so if bryke never made it canon all these times, they’re probably not going to reverse their decision now. especially not when it’s been 15 years and the canon ships have a lot more support now.

in fact, one of the writers who had wanted zutara even said, “they’re definitely together in an another universe.” and offered no follow up as to whether they canonically had feelings for each other in the current atla one.

i mean, mike dimartino doubled down on braving the elements by stating that the moment in which katara offered to heal his scar wasn’t intended to be romantic. for context, when zach tyler eisen stated that the scene of katara bringing aang back to life was more romantic than the zutara moment, mike offered no denial. mike even confirmed one of my fave kataang parallels in that episode. so, the chances of kataang being retconned for zutara happening with avatar studios content are very slim. and isn’t that the whole point of avatar studios; so that bryke could tell their stories in the ways that they want to?

while kataang is probably going to be retconned for zutara in the live action adaptation, I highly doubt it will in any animated content (not going to say no because if the past lives can be completely removed in avatar lore, anything is possible. but it just wouldn’t be consistent with the canon that they’ve spent establishing over the last 15 years).

finally, the whole “katara secretly wants zuko while being married to aang and maybe could cheat with zuko behind aang’s back” is an insult to katara’s character in general, but it is especially insulting for the version of her character that’s a married adult women with a political career and a baby. even if for some reason she hated being married to aang and/or secretly wanted zuko, I’m pretty sure the version of adult katara that we’re going to see will be way too busy with her own affairs to even contemplate cheating. quite frankly, i should hope that there’s a ton of plot lines that bryke plans on doing with adult katara that isn’t “having a secret affair with her husband’s best friend.”

now here’s what i think will happen (and you can revisit this in two years time if i’m right): i think the marketing of the movie might have zuko and katara stand beside each other. y’know, hype it up for the loudest portion of the fandom who is relying on content from 2008. emphasize on the Fire and Water and red and blue and whatever.

the actual movie content will consist of aang and katara - as lead characters - being politically involved while navigating early parenthood. i think zuko will get a little bit of screen time, enough to build-up events for the rumoured zuko movie (which will likely be a sequel to the adult gaang movie). i think the adult gaang movie will confirm zuko’s relationship with mai. zuko and katara might talk with each other, could even share a nice platonic moment - but that’s about it (and that would be enough to stir up zutara shippers).

meanwhile, for kataang, I think the movie’s plan is to break popular misconceptions that:

aang is a horrible father and husband

katara is a SAHM (not that there’s anything wrong with that)

and i’m not saying that as, like, things that i want to desperately see. i’m saying that based on all the comics that have come out in recent years and all the content from avatar legends. of the two, the second misconception is the one that i’m most confident about that. we will definitely, no doubt in mind, get to see katara’s career and legacy (which I’m super fucking excited about!!!). and the movie will 100% contain a plot surrounding katara. this i can guarantee you, based on everything that I’ve read behind the scenes. remind me to one day finish writing out all the evidence i have surrounding this.

but anyway, anon, I hope this helps give you hope and anticipation? long story short, you’ve got nothing to worry about. look at how beautiful the happy couple looks.