#in the way that yuri is about the love between two people as ambiguous and ephemeral and all-consuming

[danmeichael]

i need to work on my chengxian fics....

[bloodraven55]

What do you think constitutes as 'yuri bait' since that term's pretty load cross-culturally?

that’s a tricky question bc the western concept of queerbaiting can’t necessarily always be applied to non-western media like anime but with that being said….

i think for me the key factor for something to count as bait has to be an active “no homo”-ing of the narrative either in or out of universe

there isn’t inherently anything wrong with queer subtext or queercoding in a work and it’s also worth noting that outside of romance-specific subgenres it’s not super uncommon for m/f pairings to be portrayed more subtly and ambiguously in animanga either but if blatant romantic build-up between characters of the same gender is later walked back on or retroactively denied then that’s something different entirely and much more of a problem

as an example to illustrate my point and what the distinction is imo……. two of the official pairings in the nanoha franchise are nanoha and fate who are openly shown to share a bed in the house where they live together with the child they’re raising as co-parents and have been confirmed to be a couple by word of god and chrono and amy who get married off-screen during a timeskip between seasons and are never actually shown interacting again after that point

one of these pairings is f/f and the other is m/f but they’re both treated with the same approach of “they’re canonically a couple but it’s never depicted explicitly on-screen bc the franchise applies a No Hugging No Kissing policy across the board when it comes to romance”

compare that to something like hibike euphonium where there’s basically a full-on love confession which was essentially confirmed to be intended as “like a love scene but also not” except that it’s then thrown out for reina having a one-sided crush on her teacher and kumiko having ship tease with her male childhood best friend that also goes nowhere

in the first case there were no promises of queerness made which ended up broken while in the second case the audience were intentionally baited-and-switched into expecting queerness which was later outright rejected in the narrative and that’s why i personally don’t view them as at all equivalent

i could also talk about how i’ve noticed that a lot of people who use the term “yuri bait” often 1) are not queer themselves and 2) don’t seem to take sapphic relationships that seriously and talk about them in a way that feels pretty dismissive but that would be starting a whole other conversation

[abbynx]

Pink in the night

Yuri Katsuki X Reader

Genre: Angst, pining, songfic

A/N: I've made Yuri's feelings for the reader ambiguous and left for the interpretation of the reader.

Also: Bold letters are the commentator's dialogue. Pink, bold and italics are the lyrics, and plain italicised letters are thoughts.

Song: Pink in the Night, by Mitski

There was a massive pit of nerve residing in you as you secure the blades of your ice skates. Having been rearranging your article of clothing again and again, you soon caught up you looked fine and you were only doing so in hopes of somehow soothing yourself. It was rather unbecoming of you to button and unbutton your shirt again and again and quite frankly you were starting to feel a lot of people are judging you for it.

How did Viktor managed to convince you to skate as an interval of the clash between two Yuri's? Simple, your Yuri. You wanted to please him so much, you agreed to Viktor's proposal. It seems that Viktor's happiness is also Yuri's. And it pisses you off at the implication..

You sighed. It was just a thought piling after another. You haven't seen Yuri since the beginning of the program, he's probably with Viktor. Your best friend can't even take the time to bid you good luck before you skate. Did he forgot about you?

The thought made you burn, but at the same time guilty. How could you feel so pissed about your best friend meeting his hero?

"Let's give it up for Y/N L/N! Performing, Pink in the Night!"

"Well... I guess I wouldn't get a good luck from anyone."

The crowd fell into a hush, only the sound of your blades against the ice reverberate across the rink.

The moment you stepped on the ice, your brain had also slipped into a state of autopilot. There was no crowd, no cameras... Just you and the ice.

Just you and the ice.

You assume to position, head lowered and hands spread to your sides. The soft music begins to reverberate across the massive space, the instrumentals intense against your ear as the soft pink glow flooded the rink, creating an ethereal feel.

I glow pink in the night in my room

"Y/N L/N has been skating alongside Yuri Katsuki, but has never participated in competitions. The piece they are skating to is a song that's dear to their heart and an open letter for their future significant other."

The routine started for you, and akin to a blooming flower of spring, your lowered head steadily rising to meet the crowd's gaze, you greet them with arms with open.

You began to glide along the rink, feeling yourself being swayed with the music and the softness of the singer's voice. All the heavy feeling that previously weighed on your chest loosened with every move, the fluid movement of your arms riding along the breeze.

I've been blossoming alone over you

"Does Yuri know this is dedicated to him??"

All eyes were on you and you couldn't be more uncomfortable in your skin. It doesn't feel right to perform this in front of a thousands of eyes, when this piece was supposed to be only for him.

It's like publicly proposing and what's supposed to be an intimate moment becomes open, a crowd's entertainment. But if this what it takes to let them all know that you love Yuri, and only Yuri, then so be it. You will scream his name in every roof in the city that you love.

It was funny to think that you reassured yourself at the beginning of the performance that it was just you and the ice, and now here you were, hoping Yuri was there, watching you. 

He would watch you... Right? He's not outside, or in the locker room... With Viktor...

And I hear my heart breaking tonight

When did you start hating the Russian skater, the person you admired with Yuri (albeit, you weren't as intense as the bespectacled man)? All the sudden, there's this unpleasant and sickening feeling saddled in you. You were constantly flickering between your jealousy and guilt.

You're happy for Yuri when the news came to you that Viktor had flown all the way to Japan from Russia to be his coach. His dreams are coming true, to be trained by his idol, his hero! But why were you so irritated at the fact that Viktor is just so close to him in a way that you have never been before? For god's sake, you've been friends since fifth grade and you have never been at a close distance with Yuri.

I hear my heart breaking tonight

You hated feeling this way, it was selfish of you. If by holding back hurt yourself, then you would gladly take the pain as long as he could be happy...

But people are inherently selfish.

What about your happiness?

Do you hear it too?

"Here comes the triple axel... And..."

"Come on, Y/N. You could do it..." Yuri clenches the rail guards of the rink, his eyes following your fluid form brace for the jump.

"Oh! They nailed it!"

The crowd erupted in cheers, and Yuri's grip loosened around the cold bar with a relieved smile.

It's like a summer shower

Yuri did not reach you in time before he had the courage to tell you, but he really love the way you look in your attire. It was how you always dress yourself- the white button up shirt, pressed, prim and perfectly presentable. But at the skating rink, you looked just as angelic and poised as ever. You needn't wear anything flashy, as you were already that captivating.

Has he ever told you that you looked so beautiful? It's not because of the clothes you wear, it's just... Everything about you is so divine and sophisticated that you could wear anything!

With every drop of rain singing

If it were the real you performing, you'd land your jumps sloppily with the grace of a jackhammer. With all the pent up feelings and all, you couldn't stand to feel this way. You wondered if Yuri noticed this.

You hated how close they were, how their faces inched closer, how Viktor can easily reduce Yuri into putty in his hands, how eager Yuri is to impress him and all that. And yet you felt guilty for feeling this way, how could you be so selfish like that?

Though your thoughts were far from a blissful ignorance, such a gullible yearning little angel- you manage to keep them away from seeping from your expression. Your face remained as a kind, carefree ingénue feeling melancholy for the first time.

Bracing yourself for another jump, you allowed yourself to be immersed in the music.

"A triple toe-loop, and a double toe-loop!"

"I love you, I love you, I love you

I love you, I love you, I love you

I love you, I love you, I love you!"

Following the perfect execution of the toe-loops, a camel spin that perfectly synchronised with the singer's dulcet tone voicing what you yearned to tell Yuri.

Ending the the spin, you leap out in joy, as if basking into the unanswered infatuation you've been expressing for him for as long as you remember, with utmost grace and patience. Contrary to your need to keep your feelings to yourself and suffer bitterly in silence.

I could stare at your back all day

I could stare at your back all day

The program is almost ending, then he would turn away from you again. It all felt so short-lived to you, but you hoped Yuri knows how he means to you. You wished your performance spoke to him without uttering his name, you somehow wished he knows this performance is for him and not for the mass.

And I know I've kissed you before, but I didn't do it right

"Another successful set of triple axel!"

After nailing the jump, you followed it up with a one foot spin synchronised yet again with the singer's voice.

Something within you thought it was dumb to express your feelings to Yuri in this way. It was so damn cliché and not to mention, you should've went straight to the point... But you can't. Not with the look on his face whenever Viktor is around.

Can I try again, try again, try again

Try again, and again, and again

And again, and again, and again

"Dangit Yuri, you know I'm not good with words... How the hell am I supposed to let you know that I love you?"

Your chest was rapidly rising and falling by the time you ended with your pose, arms around your body as if replicating the touch you long to feel around you— holding yourself the way Yuri never held you.

The crowd broke into a cheers, but all you searched for within it was Yuri through your fits of panting... He wasn't there.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Y/N L/N!"

"Yuri?" You called breathlessly, taking yet another scan around the crowd. You search for him at the entrance of the rink, but we was with Viktor.

Suddenly, it was just you and the rink again.

[canmom]

Animation Night 98 - Kyousougiga

So, because I spent so long on Houseki last week, I haven’t been very well prepared this week. I have a couple of ideas in the pipe - German animation (yeah really! did you know The Neverending Story is German?), Yuri Norstein, and the British traditional animation studio that I entirely forgot existed which is Cosgrove Hall to name a few.

However I don’t have any of those on my hard drive yet, and by the time I’d done a writeup, eaten dinner, and downloaded the films it would be very late indeed...

Instead, let’s follow up on a recommendation that @anarcha-catgirlism​ made me during the pretentiously titled ‘solicit Bryn’s anime opinions’ ask meme. We’re gonna watch Kyōsōgiga, the original net animation turned anime TV series directed by “Izumi Tōdō”... the collective pen name used by a number of Toei Animation producers. “Tōdo” is, if you can say a pseudonym for an ambiguous set of people is ‘best known’ for anything, best known for the renowned Pretty Cure (usually abbreviated PreCure) magical girl series - something I will one day investigate in depth but not this day.

So while this may be a collective creation of Toei “Only Anime Studio That Still Has A Union” Dōga, the main name attached to the series is actually Rie Matsumoto. Prior to Kyōsōgiga, she had indeed mostly worked on PreCure starting with assisting with direction of 18 episodes of Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star in 2006 at age 21, working her way up through episode direction to direct a movie, HeartCatch PreCure The Movie: Fashion Show in the Flower Capital.... Really?! in 2010 (try saying that fast). It seems she soon got a reputation as one of the youngest directors in the anime industry, although that may not be true anymore.

So what’s this all about? Here’s what I dug up last time upon receiving the rec:

Kyōsōgiga (an allusion to ’scrolls of frolicking animals’ which are seen as a precursor to manga) starts with a priest who creates a kind of alternate dimension using his power to make drawings that come to life, centred on the 'Mirror Capital’ 鏡都 Kyōto, a hard-to-translate pun on once-capital of Japan 京都 Kyōto. There, he draws a rabbit character who comes to life and some highly Buddhist shenanigans take place:

One of his drawings, a rabbit named Koto, whom he drew as the God of the   Mirror Capital, came to life upon striking a deal with a Bodhisattva. Lady Koto managed to win the love of Myōe. After finding a war orphan, Yakushimaru, and taking him under their wing as an adoptive child, the family dimension hop to Kyoto for a better life. Myōe draws two siblings for Yakushimaru. Yase, and Kurama. The five of them live happily together until Lady Koto, having fulfilled her end of the deal with the Bodhisattva, has to be taken away. With their time as a family at its end, Myōe leaves   Yakushimaru the title of high priest, and his prayer beads, telling him that he will return with the beginning and the end in tow.

The anime picks up (I presume?) when a girl called Koto stumbles into this alternate world, and seeks a way to get home, while Kurama seeks to bring back the original Lady Koto - but unfortunately to reopen the connection between Kyōto and the real world is a big threat to the multiverse. Of course Koto must be connected to the original family somehow.

Emily Rand gives a more thematic description:

Kyousougiga is many things. It’s the television directorial  debut of Rie Matsumoto, who had previously worked at Toei Animation  across a variety of the Precure franchise. It’s stunning, with  amazing visual and audio direction as well as storyboarding and  cinematography. Like many anime series and pieces of media in general, Kyousougiga is also a look at the idea of home and family.

“Home” in Kyousougiga is first established as the Mirror  Capital, a drawn replica of Kyoto that High Priest Myoue created to  escape the world with his family. But “home” is also the near-empty room  where Koto meets her mother and sees her father’s face for the first  time. It’s the hill where they watch the city and sunsets together. Or a  ruined garden at the so-called end of the world, after a much-needed  airing of grievances. “Home” isn’t a place but the people you love isn’t  a new narrative, but Kyousougiga tells it so beautifully, with characters you want to root for, and the stunning visual setpieces that Matsumoto loves.

The animation in the clips I’ve found looks vivid, stylish and energetic so I’ve got to say I’m really excited. It’s not entirely clear to me what the best viewing order is: apparently the first episode of the TV series is “A re-airing of the original ONA with some cuts and a new soundtrack.” and it seems the recommendation is that this is redundant with the ONA, so we’ll take the revised version plus the 5-10 minute OVAs. However, if somebody knows better, please let me know the ideal watch order!

Phew, finished that in record time, leaving the whole evening clear to enjoy some anime! Since we’ve got a whole cour and some ONAs to get down the hatch, we’ll be starting p much immediately, so please take your seats in the Animation Night Cinema of twitch.tv/canmom while i run and warm up my chilli!

[kanchelsis]

If you wrote the Nikolai Duology, how would you change it? You have some good ideas!

aaaaaa thank you!! people have been so lovely about my salty post ghsfjks i'm kissing you all on the cheek 💕

to answer your question, i think it might be less about what i would do, and more about what i wouldn't do. i'll make some bullet points and say whatever comes to mind.

(to be honest, the idea of nikolai having his own duology has lost its appeal to me, which is sad because i adore him. i just believe he's a better side character than main, and there are more interesting grishaverse stories waiting to be told. but let's work on the assumption that i have to keep the basic pillars of the books and not just throw away the whole concept.)

ok so... zoya. i would take her in a completely different direction than lb did. i love a good morally ambiguous character, so i wouldn't just erase that - what drew me to her in tgt was her stubbornness, her shallowness, her capacity for petty cruelty, but also her determination and confidence. we can't just have her holding one of the most powerful positions in ravka and everyone just accepting that. not only does she need to have doubters, the doubters need to have a point.

we have a ruthless young woman, a soldier no less, suddenly needing to utilise diplomacy to protect an entire country. make her screw up. make her uncompromising and callous. make her human. don't expect her to step into this role seamlessly just so unlimited power can be handed to her on a silver platter.

if she has to be an ultrapowerful grisha, it's so much more logical to make her work for it. to hell with the saints on the fold stuff, what even was that?? lb tells us that everything we thought about grisha power is wrong, but 1) throws away the really cool magic system she made and 2) doesn't replace it with anything else. just let zoya be a squaller, not a dragon-saint-chosen-one or whatever.

writing this has kinda made me sad, since zoya could've been amazing, but anyway. onwards to nikolai.

this is the nikolai duology. if he's giving his name to the series i expect him to be the central character. i'd want his main struggle to surround identity and an uncertain future - who is nikolai, underneath the charm and flirtation? there could be an internal war between the demon, carefree sturmhond and the duty-bound king of ravka. both he and zoya are faced with a disarrayed court filled with people who don't think they have what it takes to lead.

there are so many nonsensical subplots in the duology that... fizzle into nothing. cut it down. pick a few things to focus on and give them the detail they deserve.

speaking of, the cult of the starless! lb took what could've been a source of endless interest and turned it into a bland caricature. we get it ma'am, you hate the darkling. but the problem is that the darkling's root motive gets conveniently glossed over in favour of character bashing. he wanted a safe world for grisha. that still doesn't exist. there's a tidbit about grisha no longer being forced to join the second army, but that was not the issue at hand at all? they're not going to know how to use their powers. they're still going to face discrimination.

so onto my point, what if the cult of the starless was predominantly grisha? those who feel let down by the world around them, who see the darkling as a martyr for a reason. now THAT would be something to contend with. a physical consequence for the events of tgt. put them next to people like genya and nikolai who intimately understand the harm the darkling has done, and you've got a badass subplot going there.

plus, imagine zoya spotting old friends and comrades amongst the starless. angst potential. also, yuri's treatment in the books pisses me off so much - lb wants us to see him as a foolish annoyance, but this kid literally marched the religious sect that he leads right up to the gates of os alta. now top that off with grisha powers (inferni would be cool) and you have a way more threatening character.

zoyalai. right, ok. what irks me about these two is that their so-called banter and pining go nowhere. we get some half-hearted justifications for them not being together, and the narrative completely overlooks zoya's comments about him in the trilogy. let's fix this.

maybe they could start off professional around each other, somewhat cold. until at some point, they begin an exclusively physical affair, just fwb and nothing more. i think this could work given the fact they're both flirty and materialistic. the stakes would be that if the court found out, their reputations would be significantly tarnished, yet neither are willing to stop. as they spend more time together, feelings blossom. they're no longer the demon king and squaller general to each other. they just want to be nikolai and zoya, yet both are too proud to make the first move. let the pining commence.

either that or give nikolai a new love interest. wasn't there a line in kos that joked that nikolai would be prone to falling in love with a palace maid? the potential spice of his love interest being someone with zero political standing, someone like dominik. a fellow pirate or even a starless member.

i don't even know what to say about nina. i was devastated over her treatment. there really do need to be more stories where a character who has lost a lover moves on and finds love again, but matthias is quite literally freshly buried when she meets her new boo. that's a major disservice to the potential of hanne's character as well. i'm kinda in favour of scrapping nina's whole plot. it would need a colossal amount of overhaul to work and even though i'm enjoying sharing my ideas, i don't have time to think about that.

same goes for isaac and mayu. either scrap it or give it the attention it needs.

i'm aware this is very kos-centric, but kos is the root of my issues and row is just an extension of that.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: no darkling return. no alina and mal. this story has been told and wrapped up. please don't cheapen it by going back and contradicting tgt. no gratuitous, shoehorned crow cameos either.

that's that about that, i guess!! i apologise for any spelling or grammatical errors, i wrote this rather quickly. i know this isn't gonna be for everyone. that's alright. i just ask people to civil about it and if discussion is going to be had, don't take things in bad faith. sorry anon this got long af.

[cateringisalie]

My list of bearable Binal Bantasy VII tags is thinning...

But seriously. Being skeptical of Tifa’s narration of past events is not without merit. By the time the Lifestream scene rolls around she has been through three comas and some grevious injuries. The Lifestream scene is as revelatory for her as it is for Cloud.

The new assertion she was in any way actually friends with Cloud is not only in conflict with the OG’s portrayal but counter to Cloud’s development, her development, the growth of their relationship as adults and why (in general) people have them stay together post game.

Its unnecessary, frustrating and further damaging Tifa’s character who is spinning off further from who she was.

That Tifa and Cloud were not actually childhood friends does not mean they do not have a relationship in FFVII. It does not mean they cannot be together. Tifa “falling in love” with Cloud at the water-tower does not for a second make their later relationship any more meaningful.

All this new ship information does is make the relationship have longer longevity than previously assumed. As if whichever relationship has lasted longer is betterer and stronger. As if this should automatically undercut any other relationship Cloud or Tifa can possibly experience.

(in fact - and darkly cynically - this feels a lot more like enforcing that Cloud/Tifa and Zack/Aerith operate in near exactly the same way. The pairs fall in love in record time (two years prior to the Nibelheim incident both times as far as I’m ware), the boys go missing and the girls never move on with their lives. I get the boys have gone missing without a shred of explanation or closure, but now for both of them people are willing to wipe out a quarter of their lives waiting. Teenagers are resilient you know? They will be inconsolable if this happened but they would bounce back a lot faster and cleaner than they would expect. The approval of the never moving on this is purely to keep the shipping uncomplicated. There can only be one pairing for Tifa, there can only be one pairing for Aerith. And if you think otherwise you’re wrong in canon. And who wants to write or read about a non-canon ship? Unless its yaoi/yuri in any case. I am so tired)

Childhood friends incidentally is not, however much some insist, a common trope of the series - unless you stretch it a fair amount and it encompasses a trivial number of the pairings. And none of the big ones (you know; Squall/Rinoa or Tidus/Yuna).

Could Tifa do with more backstory? Of course. Did Tifa’s mother deserve a name? Absolutely! But not like this. Not when Cloud helping round up cats in Remake is now tied to finding Tifa’s cat in a new authored backstory. This speaks again to the constant magpie-ing of existing imagery and moments from older parts of FFVII to feed the present. The retconning in of importance by changing the meaning of otherwise unimportant moments.

Tifa is not and never was under any obligation to like Cloud as a child. She did not bully him, but neither should she expected to involve him in anything she did. I understand the book has muddied this gloriously, but for what effect?

I mean, I know where the desperation to make Cloud and Tifa childhood friends stems from. I know why you want Cloud to have fallen in love with Tifa at like age 5 or something and for Tifa to fall in love with him at 13. And I rail against it all the time that its not necessary. Being first does not mean better.

Maybe I am old, cynical and exhausted, but I kind of like watching Cloud and Tifa grow closer in FFVII. I like watching Cloud and Aeris grow closer in FFVII. I like to experience these things where I can... experience them? I don’t like reading books which assert things in blunt statements that clarify exactly what the writer intended. I certainly don’t have the patience to wait for a later book to clarify what happened on-screen when I have drawn my own conclusions based on my preferences. Especially as this is all contributing to that continued sense that the OG is a smelly, badly designed embarrassment we would rather tiday away for the crime of being graphically inferior (never mind it was championed on its looks on release) and “goofy” (and apparently unable to run the gamut of emotions I remember from serious to comedy, to silly, to tragic, to pessimistic and quietly optimistic and moving).

I’m coming back to this point to stress it - I want to see the relationship growth. Remake gave me that for Aerith and Cloud even if the details aren’t to my taste. First meeting is awkward because hey, random stranger/Cloud is tired. Cloud gets involved and spends more time with Aerith. And the high-five thing is used as a clumsy/awkward/eh but clear metaphor for how their relationship develops over the course of their time together.

To the point that yes, it makes sense for Cloud to want to rescue her. Less sense for Elmyra and Tifa to be “Well they might not vivisect her” and then delay for two full chapters, but the whole thing flows.

And here’s where I get accused of being a fake fan: I don’t like how Cloud and Tifa’s relationship develops in Remake. Flirting. Tifa being mildly fazed by Cloud claiming its been five years. Scared when he almost kills Johnny. Maybe hurt depending on your resolution scene (hey podcast people! No Gold Saucer multiple dates because too expensive? How are there branched resolution scenes in Remake then?). But there isn’t growth. They seem to fit into each other’s lives without worry, bit of flirting, strange super-intense moments jammed into inappropriate sequences (the train roll, climbing the plate, Cloud remembering the promise unprompted, Tifa not actually engaged with Avalanche’s plans). There’s no sense anything has changed between them, the missed five years has done anything to them.

And I’m sure some would take this as proof of correctness. But... somehow Remake is better for realism despite a lot of new clumsy, but this relationship is not dinged for being implausible? No way does that five year gap not seriously impact any prior relationship to say nothing of developing from scratch.

See this was a neat thing about the OG; while Tifa seemed to have an edge over Aerith by knowing Cloud longer, he was in effect meeting them at the same point in his life and more or less starting from scratch with both. Both ships are valid, and even if Cloud is with Tifa come the end, it doesn’t mean he can’t have romantic feelings about both women.

Oh, but Nojima has changed his mind/always intended it this way. And? I can change my mind about liking what he’s written - and my patience and tolerance of Nojima has waned massively since 1997. To the point where his involvement invokes a pained groan from me.

Plus the hilarious attitude that this is from the same people who insisted “the OG will always be there, stop moaning about Remake”. Well guess what? I don’t like Remake and I don’t really want it around. The OG is better.

Yes, Tifa is under-served and sure, it could be clearer about shipping (but the apparent hostility to ambiguity and personal interpretation is deeply distressing. These things can mean something to you and don’t have to mean the same thing to everyone. Interpreting the romancs - again - not a competition).

BUT

I will take the OG version of Tifa where she believed in the cause, where she had friends (again, yes, the relationship between Tifa and the rest of Avalanche is not well depicted, but it was better than actively curtailing it), where she ran a bar THAT ACTUALLY OPENED AND SERVED CUSTOMERS, where she hated Shinra, where she didn’t know how to treat Cloud because she had only really talked to him once in her life and DESPITE THAT that they great closer and spent their last night before THE END OF THE WORLD together over the Remake.

Where Tifa is wary of Cloud for about 5 seconds, twice and then defaults to constant flirting. Where Cloud is near smothering Tifa every second they’re together and she doesn’t tell him to fuck off once. Where she’s allied with Avalanche but hates their methods (and the pacifists are in a shop around the corner and she is not with them because...?). Where she has some absurd contrived plot about medical bills and buying Seventh Heaven for Barret and Marlene.

Which would lead to a whole other rant titled “Marle is the Worst” but this has dragged on quite long enough.

But seriously; if you argue that we can’t hate Remake because OG is always there, then you have to stop applying Remake back to OG and using it as proof. Which is exactly why many people bemoaned the Remake at all. OG is one thing, Remake is another. I don’t care for the latter.

And I know if anyone does read all this it will be about the meanie Cleriths who diminish Tifa for no good reason. And yes, they are indeed acting in bad faith. But what makes you think for a second evidence will convince these people?

In particular, the argument has raged so long and always will because if people do not like a ship they will not accept it as canon (if they care about this as a factor) NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS. Literally. Look at Loki if you want the most recent example of this.

Canon is to many “what I want” and often does not tally with the general interpretation. And you know, if being “canon” or guessing right early wasn’t triumphed as such a vital thing, we might not get these really terrible and pointless arguments.

Canon is a prize but here’s the big secret: fandom - in general - does not care. FFVII is an excellent case example given Sefikura overwhelms the other ships (and I think AZGSC is close?). And that’s not canon. That’s not even in the ballpark of the Cloud/Tifa vs Cloud/Aerith arena (even give that the former is roughly twice the size of the latter, you already won, so please stop?). Canon is only important if you think its important - and you get some more official art of sequences you can gif. And maybe you get kissing/implied sex/marriage/kids, but most of all you get a smug sense of superiority. And the last is why I have no patience with this.

[telehxhtrash]

I know its a big debate but I am not a dudebro for thinking killua and gon are platonic. I have no problem with people who do at all, but I honestly just think they have a strong friendship, and I am for encouraging boys to have these types of bonds with each other ~screw toxic masculinity~ I like following your blog btw

Hi ! First of all, thank you for liking my blog! I’m glad you’re enjoying my content even though I’m killugon trash HAHAH

Oh lord, it really is a big debate. I’m not calling everyone who doesnt like a romantic reading of killugon a dudebro, only the people who are vehemently against it because they say people are projecting and that there is no basis to our claims that hxh is queer work.

This is gonna be me ranting for a bit because it’s a subject that’s very dear to me so i’m very sorry in advance, it’s not against you, just a general statement !

I totally agree that fuck toxic masculinity. It’s so fucking toxic and men should be allowed to show emotions, affection and care openly without fearing for repercussions. And having portrayals of friendships where the characters are not afraid of sharing their love with the other in a totally platonic way is amazing.

However. 

There’s been countless representations of this type of relationship in media over the years. In every media, not only anime. I always cite the same example, but take Naruto who is the example that speaks to me the most. (ive never seen it so dont flame me if i say dumb shit). But from my understanding, Naruto and Sasuke’s relationship was a full on middle finger in the face of toxic masculinity. They shared a deep bond, pretty much like Killua and Gon’s. I know a lot of people shipped them because their relationship was borderline homoerotic, but in the end it was just a beautiful representation of a very deep platonic friendship. 

And when you’re queer, it’s heartbreaking. Because you’ve been projecting this entire time, for the work to tease you, to literally bait you into showing you inherent queer behavior only for it to say “haha lol jk” at the end is fucking rough. Especially when you’re young and questioning your sexuality, looking at relationships between two best friends and thinking “oh, this feels like I feel when I’m with my best friend, is this romantic love?” and then the work saying nope haha its purely platonic ! its rough. trust me. 

The community doesn’t have a lot of positive, healthy queer relationships to identify with. Especially in anime. Most queer relationships are labeled under the special genres “shounen ai” and “yuri” (both of these categories painting queer relationships in the worst possible ways ever btw, but thats a whole other subject). But it’s fucking sad. Because we deserve to see queer representation in works that are not classified as those genre. We shouldn’t have to dig into a particular genre to identify with characters : there should be queer representation no matter the genre, whether it be a shoujo, a seinen, or for example, a shounen battle manga.

And that’s why HxH is so important to the queer community. Because it displays just that. That you can have good queer representation in non shounen-ai genres. That queer relationships are normal and should not have to be classified under a certain category. 

A lot of queer people identify and recognize HxH as queer work, because of a few reasons. Togashi has always been interested in queer representation, having put queer characters in every single one of his works. There was a trans girl in YYH, a trans man in Level E, Alluka in HxH. Togashi also wrote several gay characters in both of these works. I always repeat myself on this, but Togashi also wanted to write a gay sports manga, but was turned down. His favorite manga when he was younger was a shounen-ai. So yes, Togashi has deep history and is very involved in queer representation.

Togashi is also very fucking smart. Just look at all the metas people are producing every day about hxh and understand how much effort togashi has put into his work : he’s a smart man, who makes conscious choices about everything he puts in his manga. So when you see the way he portrayed Killua and Gon’s relationship, and for now most importantly Killua, you know it’s not accidental. Togashi has put SO much subtext in his work about Killua in general, from his birthday being Tanabata to him wanting to commit a lovers’ suicide with Gon, and Togashi KNOWS how it comes across, he’s not dumb. He knows what those things mean, he knows that a shinjuu is a heavily connotated word, and that people, ESPECIALLY JAPANESE PEOPLE who have the cultural context, are gonna think “oh, maybe Killua is gay”. Because that subtext is intentional. And there’s a lot of it. If you haven’t read my post on the subtext of HxH, I invite you to do so because there’s a LOT of it. 

In short, HxH has the subtext, has the potential and has the one author that is not afraid of putting queer stuff in his work. That’s why Killugon is so important to the community, and that’s why a lot of people, especially queer folks, insist on the romantic reading of their relationship. 

Because it’s extremely important to queer people. Positive representation of queer relationships in anime is hard to come by, ESPECIALLY in the shounen genre. And sadly, because our society is drowning in deep internalized homophobia, people easily dismiss queer behavior in media as platonic actions.

How many times have I seen people assess that two people of opposite genders in an anime are in love only because they looked at each other once (take Ponzu and Pokkle for example). Or because they held hands. Our society is so quick to romanticize interactions between two people of different genders, but fail to do the same when it’s same-gender pairings. 

Straight people hand holding, kissing, blushing around each other, admitting their love out loud, looking at each other’s eyes deeply are immediately categorized as in love. But when it’s people of the same gender, people immediately say “it can be platonic”. And whether you’re aware of it or not, that’s internalized homophobia.

That’s why it’s infuriating to see people dismiss the subtext that Togashi has tried SO HARD to plant throughout his story. Because it’s there, and if Killua was a girl, there’d be way less people opposed to a romantic reading of their relationship. Because it’d be widely accepted that Togashi is writing them as a developing couple, no questions asked. 

Which brings me to my final point (promise, I’ll stop ranting after this). Sadly, the voices of the people who assert a platonic reading of a relationship are often louder than the voices of queer people who identify with the work. When confronted with an ambiguous relationship between a same-gender pairing, people unconsciously tend to choose a platonic reading of the relationship. Which is harmful to the queer community, because the voices of the queer people who identify with the work are silenced. 

In conclusion, yes, representations of deep platonic friendships without toxic masculinity are good, and very much encouraged. We’ve just had a shitton of those over the years, and queer people are craving for proper representation. Togashi is deeply invested in positive queer representation, has planted a lot of conscious subtext in HxH, and he’s the one author that would NOT queerbait. So people being insistent that Killua is pretty much canonically gay, and that it’s likely that Killugon will be a romantic pairing is not for the sake of mindless shipping. It’s because there are a lot of reasons to believe that this is Togashi’s intention.

And like I said, sadly, people insisting on a platonic reading of their relationship is unintentionally harmful to the queer community, because people are so quick to dismiss elements that make queer people identify with the work as platonic behavior, dismissing queer people as “wishful shippers”. 

There are plenty of reasons to believe that HxH is queer work, and while platonic readings of killugon’s relationship are valid, it sucks that it’s become overbearing in the anime community, to the point where outside of tumblr, people literally bully you for thinking that there’s a possibility Killua might be gay and in love with Gon. (trust me, i’ve faced a lot of people saying that it’s disgusting to label killua as gay)

So yes ! Killugon can be read as platonic. The queer community is just very adamant about people not dismissing Togashi’s subtext because HxH is the healthy, positive representation we need. It’s a beautiful piece of work that has the full potential (and who is most likely headed this way) to display a healthy, loving, positive canon gay relationship between two of its main characters. 

Showing that a shounen battle manga can feature a canon gay relationship, showing that you can be young and gay and what you thought was best friend behavior was maybe romantic and that it’s okay because feelings change and are hard to figure out especially when you’re young and queer !! 

And most importantly showing that unlike every portrayal of deep male best friends relationships in shounen anime that turn out to be painted as purely platonic, sometimes behaviors that queer people identify with ARE queer behavior, and not just platonic love, but romantic, homosexual love. 

[ridiasfangirlings]

Do you think that K queerbaitied when it came Shiro/Kuroh, Reisi/Mikoto, and Misaki/Saru?

Honestly...I think it's complicated XD So first, I think it depends on the definition of queerbaiting you use – like I've seen people use 'queerbaiting' to describe any series where a same sex couple becomes popular with the fans but doesn't happen regardless of whether the show was doing it intentionally or not. I also feel like it's a bit hard to apply a concept that was developed for Western shows to Japanese anime because I think there's a bit of a different 'expectation' in the audiences. Because K really fits into a slot that an awful lot of shows featuring largely male casts do: a show that's obviously trying to pander to a female audience by teasing close relationships between the male cast while also not making the show explicitly 'gay.' Now there is some sign that this kind of thing may be changing – Yuri on Ice was a huge surprise in that regard, a show that actually went there – but also remember that there's also the whole boys love genre which is dedicated to actually going there too, and K never marketed itself as a boys love series.

That being the case, basically with K I feel like it stands this way: Sarumi, Mikorei, KurohShiro, etc. were absolutely deliberately set up so that the fangirls would squeal over the cute boys being cute together, but at the same time I never felt like the show was being anything less than honest about its intentions – that is, I knew from the start that this teasing was just fanservice and that as a member of that fangirl audience I was expected to recognize that it was fanservice, and so in that sense I don't see it as queerbaiting because there was never any 'bait.' Basically to me, queerbaiting is when a show will have two same sex characters in a close relationship and there's a conscious attempt to make the audience think it could happen – think Supernatural with all the Destiel teasing right until the end, or how many times on Sherlock they had characters mistake Watson for Sherlock's boyfriend and then be all 'ha ha they're not gay...unless?' only to end it with 'no actually they weren't gay whoops why did you think that it couldn't be that we deliberately tried to make you think it'. K had the fanservice moments like Shiro blushing when Kuroh grabs him in episode one or the Sarumi kabedon in ROK but the show never had moments of other characters commenting on these relationships like oh just kiss already or the creators teasing that they could hook up, there's no sense to me that K wants the audience to truly and honestly think the series was going to end with everyone getting gay married (the closest we get is Shiro's “wife” comment about Kuroh, which was clearly a joke, and that comment from Gora to the effect of pre-betrayal Sarumi being 'like a married couple where the wife asks for a divorce and the husband thinks but we were doing well weren't we,' but even that is still in reference to past relationship and not indicating that Gora intends them to get married).

Also I think worth noting with K is the endgame: yeah we don't get any gay relationships but you know what else we don't get any of? Confirmed straight relationships. Not even Awashima and Kusanagi end up together confirmed, and I think that is worth mentioning because K basically treated all relationships equally when you think about it. Yes we didn't get any canon gay but the show also didn't have, like, Fushimi marrying Douhan at the end or anything either just to drive home the 'no homo.' Now, that said, would it be nice if more series did go there and just gave us the relationships rather than teasing them? Sure, and I feel like there have slowly been more shows willing to give us actually gay characters and relationships (again, Yuri on Ice, or more recently stuff like Stars Align and Sarazanmai with canon gay characters, or actual BL stuff like Given getting an anime). But K does seem to have made the conscious decision not to have any actual romance in the series and to keep everything ambiguous, and I feel like slapping the 'queerbaiting' label on it isn't quite warranted.

[indigoire]

Genuinely curious question! I've only watched the Yuri on Ice!! Anime so maybe I'm missing something others are picking up. I'm bisexual and I've always wanted to believe in the canon of yuri and viktors relationship, but I dont really see how it can be anything other than queer baiting? The shows provides the audience with so much sexual tension and romantic scenes but never outwardly confirm the relationship or their feelings? From my understanding it's just a show about straight dudes acting reaaally gay. Can you give me some clarity please? I feel like I'm going crazy

Hey, no problem anon! I genuinely love this show, so I'm always happy to talk about it.

I could just say "we have canon word of god (Kubo-sensei, the creator) that Yuuri and Viktor are in a romantic relationship" and be done with it, but I don't feel like that's what you're asking. This isn't some Rowling situation, where Kubo said the characters are gay for brownie points. Rather, Kubo and the team working on the show did their best to show a gay relationship while dodging censorship as best they could. The sad fact of the matter is that Japan is still a deeply homophobic nation, and Kubo, at the end of the day, is making a sports anime, not a yaoi. Kissing and confirming their commitment to one another is the most us viewers are going to see. The juicy details are left up to fan interpretation.

There is a huge difference between queer-baiting and censorship that I feel often gets lost on fans. Queer-baiting would be affirming textually how straight and manly our leads are while winking and nudging at the viewers whenever the mere possibility of the leads being queer pops up. "Look, we totally could go there! Because we're progressive! But we won't because our leads are straight. But we totally could, and you should totally watch, juuuuust in case." It's manipulative to fans, and can even put actors in an uncomfortable position where they have to walk a tightrope of plausible deniability.

That is not what Yuri!!! On Ice is trying to do. Spoiler alert: Viktor and Yuuri kiss in front of a stadium's worth of people! I would say that's pretty affirming of their relationship. It's clearly framed as a kiss, and it's only blocked by Viktor's arm in order to appease the censors. Later in the series they get engaged! They're even congratulated by their friends! Granted, Yuuri refers to his engagement ring as a "good luck charm" but Viktor certainly sets the score straight.

As a sidenote, Kubo said the reason Yuuri and Viktor aren't targets of homophobia for getting together is because there's no homophobia in her world. It's just not a part of the story she wanted to tell. So the lack of shock or anger in the other characters stems from that; certainly they can be surprised that Yuuri and Viktor are together, but no one's going to throw any slurs their way or demand they be apart.

So I would say there's plenty of evidence for Yuuri and Viktor's romantic relationship, even if we cut out the innuendo, the flirting, the touching, the hugging, the promises, and the sheer closeness of these two. If you're waiting for the characters to stand up and go "I love being a queer man and being in an exclusive relationship with my male lover"...maybe this isn't the series for you. Kubo kept everything ambiguous enough for the censors, but still concrete enough that there is no denying the connection between Yuuri and Viktor.

Anon, if you still don't see it as romantic, that's absolutely fine. The ambiguous nature of the Yuuri and Viktor relationship can certainly be a downside to the show. I would just like to point out that it's been four years and change since the show came out. Gay marriage was only federally legalized in the US a year before the show aired. Canon queer relationships in cartoons (outside of yaoi/yuri) were not super common. She-ra, Owl House, they didn't exist at the time. Four years doesn't seem like a long time, but it's been leaps and bounds in queer representation. Yuri!!! On Ice was definitely a pioneer, not the first, but certainly one of the more visible shows in recent memory, and it definitely made an effect on the anime world.

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: One World, One People (1x06)

Oof, okay, so I obviously enjoyed watching this, but I do have some things I would like to discuss.

Cons:

The biggest one is honestly about Isaiah. I understand that this is a superhero show, and there's some cheesiness baked into the very concept of it. I like the idea of a triumphant ending for our heroes, where amends are made and everyone is brought some measure of peace. BUT, I feel like a more nuanced, more true to reality ending here with Isaiah might have been different. Maybe he gives a tip of the hat to Sam, says he's happy he's found his peace, but he still doesn't agree with his choices. See, the thing is, some people who have been hurt by systems want that system to acknowledge its mistake, to apologize, to make amends. That's what Sam is pushing for. He believes we can do better, and all that. And that's a wonderful perspective. But other people who have been hurt by systems might not want anything to do with that system ever again. At the end, when Sam sets up the part of the museum for Isaiah, he says "now everyone will know what you did for this country," and Isaiah seemed pleased and touched by this. But I couldn't help but think... he was forced into doing those things, and then punished for doing them. If he'd decided he didn't want acknowledgment, didn't want to be linked to the idea of American heroism... I couldn't blame him for that. It might have added more nuance to the ending. Sam could have even said that it's okay if he and Isaiah don't agree on the best way forward, they still have mutual respect, or whatever.

As a white lady, maybe I'm off base. I'm just really curious at what the reaction is going to be. All through watching this show I kept saying to myself that an ending where Sam takes up the shield and becomes Captain America can't stand on its own. There's got to be nuance. There's got to be some good justification for it. And as I'll talk about in a moment, I think they've done an okay job... but I also wouldn't be surprised to find some people enormously dissatisfied with this conclusion. Steve Rogers handed the shield to Sam, yes. But should we forget what he did before handing it over? Well, he walked away from the government and was on the run because he didn't respect their choices. Just some food for thought.

I also just want to say: ????? to that ending for John Walker? It was so bizarre to see the light banter moment between him and Bucky after Walker had quoted Lincoln. Like... that felt so out of place. And now he's being made into an American agent? I don't understand that random lady's role in events. I don't know if I'm supposed to think it's sinister and creepy as fuck that John still has a uniform, and even the suggestion of authority (I do think it's creepy as fuck, for the record), or if I'm supposed to be... pleased that he got a new job? Just, tonally, the stuff with Walker in this finale was all over the place. He didn't seem to really matter, and yet he was still there, and the episode didn't seem able to reckon with his presence.

Oh, also, I can totally respect a bit of ham-fisted politic in a show like this. It's really the only way to do it. But Karli saying that Lamar didn't matter, and John saying "you think Lemar's life didn't matter?" was, perhaps, a little on the nose. I'm not sure I like the BLM mouthpiece being blond haired blue eyed John Walker, especially when Lemar's death, at least as a narrative function, only happened to allow John to get sad and angry about it. Where's his wing in the museum, huh?

Also Sharon Carter, she's my girl or whatever, but I gotta admit she was kind of boring to me in this whole series. I wanted more from her. The reveal that she was the Power Broker had me shrugging. I wanted to be more shocked, but she was so clearly telegraphed as being fishy from minute one. The fact is, we haven't had enough time with this character to figure out who she actually is as a person, yet. I don't understand her, and that's a shame.

Pros:

That was a long "cons" section, especially for an episode that kept me riveted the whole way through!

First off, the action was exciting and different and had so many classic "superhero moments" while not totally abandoning a more grounded feel. Sam holding the car up was such a Moment. Also the "that's Black Falcon!" "No, that's Captain America" moment was so cheesy but exactly the right kind of cheesy, you know? We got to see everyone being a bad-ass, crowds applauding, Sam's fantastic entrance with the new suit, the wings, the shield... damn. It was all cool in the way the best Marvel products need to be.

So, Sam taking the shield. I think it works because of his speech to the politicians. Specifically calling out the power they have, and the people they have in the room with them when they make the decisions that will affect so many people. There's this wonderful moment when one of the politicians asks a legitimate question: what about people who came back after the snap to find someone else living in their house? It's so complicated. And as the show ends, we're not given a simple answer. Sam merely points out the miracle of having everyone fighting the same fight for once. These rich and powerful people have had no idea how impossible it can be, and now they're getting a taste of that. There might just be the power of equalizing in all of this.

And most important to me? The government didn't hand Sam the shield. Sam took it and took ownership of it on his own terms. Think back to the legacy of Steve and the shield, honestly. Yes, he was given it by the government, but then he stole it when he ran away, then he gave it up, then Tony gave it back to him... it's a lot more complicated than it might first appear. Nobody's going to argue that the shield was Steve's to give, and he gave it to Sam, and Sam took it for his own. That made it work for me, as a direct contrast to the way in which John Walker got his hands on it.

Karli's death was inevitable and tragic. While I never cared all that much for her character as an individual, she worked quite well as a symbol. Sam points this out in his speech as well. Hasn't anyone stopped to wonder why people believed in this cause so much they were willing to die for it? That matters. It means something. And more will follow. I appreciate that the show ends on an ambiguous note. The people in power are still the people in power. And yes, their decision has been postponed. They've decided not to relocate people and replace the borders immediately. But what is the long-term solution? How does the world begin to heal? Well, we don't know. We don't get to see that.

If anyone got short shrift in this finale it was Bucky, but I'm honestly okay with that for a couple of reasons. One, this is Sam's show and I'm happy that it stayed that way. And two, we saw Bucky's emotional arc come to a head in last week's episode. The work isn't done, but he knows what the work is that he has to do, and we see him start to do that. He gives the journal up to his therapist. A way of letting go of his guilt, but also of saying goodbye to Steve in a way that can give him some actual closure. He confesses to his friend Yuri what really happened to his son.

And more than all of that, he shows up to hang out with Sam and his family. He brings cake. He goofs off with the kids. He hugs his friend, his partner, Sam Wilson. I can see Bucky coming to peace with some things. Coming into his own. It breaks my heart that we don't get to see more of that play out on screen. The show had to make a choice about whose story to prioritize, and in my opinion it made the right choice. This was a show about Sam's journey and Sam's decision here at the end was the capstone of that.

That scene at the end, though... the kids hanging off of Bucky's metal arm was such a poignant image for me, because this man is a killing machine, was designed to be so, but has remade himself into something else, and this moment really showcased that. Also, that gay-ass ending of Sam and Bucky looking out over the water together and then strolling away, Sam's arm around Bucky? Thank you for my life, Disney, I guess. And we got Bucky calling Sam "Cap," and his obvious admiration and pride in him for his speech... I just love them, y'all. I really do.

I wouldn't say anything about this show broke the mold or made me really excited about Marvel again. I enjoyed it, because I already liked Sam and Bucky, and I got to spend more time with them. I was nervous about how they were going to navigate certain political stickiness, and honestly I think they did... an okayish job. I could have wished for them to go even further, but they didn't take the easy way out, in my opinion.

I hope they make more of this someday. Regardless, I'm not ready to say goodbye to Sam Wilson or Bucky Barnes, so I hope we get to see Captain America and the White Wolf grace our screens again in some project or other!

8.5/10

[fatesdeepdive]

Entry 1: Anticipation

Introduction

What is your most anticipated game? Not the upcoming game that you’re excited about, the game that, more than any other, made you count down the days until its release. No game has ever made me as excited for its release like Fire Emblem Fates did.

Fire Emblem Fates was first announced in January 2015. Back when that trailer was first released, I was still obsessively playing through Fire Emblem Awakening, the game Fire Emblem Fates was meant to be a successor for. The trailer hooked me and I eagerly waited for more information on this bold new entry into the Fire Emblem series. The trailer showed a battle between two armies, a monster destroying a castle, a woman dancing, and a duel between two swordsmen. Between these clips, the trailer showed a return of Awakening’s gameplay, the addictive gameplay that’d taken away hundreds of hours of my free time. This trailer told us nothing, leaving me eager to learn more about this new story.

As the months went on, it was announced that Fates would tell the story of two kingdoms at war. More interestingly, the player would be given the opportunity to choose which kingdom to support, adding a layer of moral ambiguity and complexity to the story. I loved this concept and had no doubts it would be executed perfectly. The game released in June 2015 in Japan, but American fans had to wait until January of the next year to play it.

I bought the game as soon as it came out.

And I loved it. I played through all three routes half a dozen times each. For about six months, Fire Emblem Fates was the main game I played.

I haven’t played Fates in four and a half years. I don’t know why I went from spending multiple hours each day playing it to dropping it and never going back. I’ve played Awakening about once a year since then, but I haven’t gone back to Fates for some reason.

Since its release, Fates has gained a certain...reputation among the Fire Emblem fanbase. Put bluntly, it’s widely considered to be the worst Fire Emblem game. And, to be honest...I can kinda see why. Looking back, the game’s writing was filled to the brim with problems. But still, I can’t bring myself to hate the game like other Fire Emblem fans. I still remember asking my mom to preorder it for my Christmas present when I was fifteen. I still remember devoting hours of my life to this game.

So, I’m left with this quandary. Who should I trust? Other fans, or the memories of my youth? Is Fates really as bad as people say? Well, I kinda want to figure that out for myself. And I think the only way to figure this out is to obsessively play the game.

Over the next few months, I’m going to do a deep dive through Fire Emblem Fates and post my thoughts on this blog. I’m going to go through every chapter, every support conversation, every part of this game to answer the question: is Fire Emblem Fates a good game?

Opening Cutscene

Booting up my copy of Birthright for the first time in years, I’m greeted with an opening cutscene containing much of the footage from the trailer. It’s worth noting that the two armies from the trailer have very different aesthetics, one being heavily influenced by feudal Japan and one being heavily influenced by medieval Europe. The transition from the battle to the woman dancing is done by zooming out, revealing that this battle is actually taking place inside a painting. I actually really like this, it shows that the hostilities that this game is centered on have been going on for a long time.

Another thing to note: the song the dancing woman is singing has been translated into English. I’ll be going through the Lost in Thoughts All Alone’s lyrics and analyzing them when they appear in the actual story. The dance scene leads into circling shots of two families; judging from their different styles and fancy clothing, they are presumably related to the two kingdoms at war. The eastern family has a red and white color scheme, while the western one has a black and purple color scheme.

After that, the camera pans into a deep chasm until it arrives in a land of floating castles and islands, which looks interesting. Next, the opening cutscene shows the dancer in a lake, being choked by a large dragon-like creature. As the creature pushes her further underwater, its scales turn into light and fade away, turning into a humanoid form. Finally, the trailer shows the two swordsmen clashing as the dancer freaks out, setting her up as being an in-between that doesn’t want this conflict to grow. Her necklace flies off as she panics and lands in a pool of dark blue water, bringing us to the main menu.

The opening cutscene, like the trailer, hooked me in and made me excited to play this game. Even though I know that the game is going to bungle the story beats it sets up, I’m still excited to dive right it.

While staring at the dark title screen, which features only the quiet sound of waves for background noise, I get a strange hint of nostalgia. It’s a weird type of nostalgia, though. When I replied Awakening last fall, it felt familiar and comforting. Coming back to Fates, it doesn’t feel familiar. I recognize it, and it’s nostalgic, but it isn’t comforting. It’s like nostalgia for something I’ve forgotten, if that makes sense.

Character Creation

Jumping in, I am presented with three settings each for two types of difficulty. Normal/Hard/Lunatic control the strength of enemies, while Phoenix/Casual/Classic determine whether or not units come back to life. I’ll be checking out the other difficulties in a later entry, but for now, I create a Normal/Casual save file. Yes, it’s taking the easy path. But I barely remember this game and am playing it on a deadline, I don’t have the time to restart every level multiple times.

Next comes the character creator. We’re shown the player Avatar standing at the bottom of a lake and given the ability to customize gender, build, hairstyle, hair decoration (if a girl), hair color, face, scars, and voice. None of the options look bad, but the fact that it’s just choosing from a set list of faces is a bit disappointing. Understandable, considering the fact that these assets are drawn in, but that just raises the question of why there needed to be customization in the first place.

A few oddities about the character creator: hairstyles are sorted on two axis chart of Stylish/Simple vs Wild/Slick for boys and Long/Short vs Cute/Wild for girls. I don’t have time to go into each hairstyle, some are better than the canon versions, some are absolutely ridiculous, some are just boring. The short build is the canon design for Male Corrin while the tall build is canon for Female Corrin. This is probably for the best, because Short Girl Corrin looks like she’s eight. Finally, while both choices have three voice choices, two of Male Corrin’s choices are played by Cam Clarke (Corrin’s other male voice is Yuri Lowenthal, while Female Corrin’s voices are performed by Danielle Judovits, Marcella Lentz-Pope, and Stephanie Lemelin). Later games featuring Corrin stick with Clarke and Lentz-Pope.

I flip a coin and end up deciding on Female Corrin. I go with the generic design, because I really don’t care enough to customize her. Speaking of design, Corrin’s design is a mixed bag. Regardless of player choice, Corrin always wears the same outfit: a grey, black, and white suit of armor with a blue cape. Corrin’s generic hair color is also grey, but like a pinkish grey. I do appreciate Corrin being associated with grey, gold, and blue, making them visually appear to be between worlds, but I personally think the armor looks too complicated, looking more like a striped suit than actual armor. I also don’t get why it has a neck cuff.

Also, Corrin is barefoot. Always. This does give Corrin a sort of animalistic appearance, but that design element isn’t present anywhere else in Corrin’s design. Fire Emblem Awakening was kinda infamous for the fact that none of its characters had feet on their models and I get the vague feeling this game is overcompensating.

Next, we get to the details that actually matter. Name (I went with Corrin, because it’s the canon name and I don’t relate to this character at all), Birthday, Boon, Bane, and Talent. Boon and Bane determine stat growths, but they are labeled by personality traits instead of the actual stars, which is both more immersive and slightly annoying. I made Corrin Quick and Unlucky. Talent determines what Classes are available to you. I didn’t care, so I spun it randomly. It landed on Mercenary.

Prologue: The Ties that Bind

Now that we have our character created, let’s start the game. The game starts with the dancer singing Lost in Thoughts All Alone at the shore of a lake before walking into the lake and sinking below the waves. The song continues as she goes underwater, which means she must be amazing at ventriloquism. As she goes deeper underwater, ruins start to appear, floating in the water. The dancer swims into a bright light and disappears.

Smash cut to the Western prince riding on a horse, commanding an army as they charge into battle. The Eastern prince charges through his army, wielding a sword surrounded by lightning. The anime cutscenes in this game are beautifully animated and incredibly cool to watch. The Eastern prince introduces himself as Ryoma of Hoshido and challenges the Western prince, Xander of Nohr, to a duel. Xander accepts and charges into battle, wielding a sword surrounded by shadowy purple fog. The two clash as the cutscene ends.

We then see Corrin and a Hoshidan Pegasus Rider named Hinoka fighting an enemy, This fight is rendered as an actual game cutscene. Side note, the fact that this scripted battle features Hinoka guarding an attack for Corrin is a great way to foreshadow that mechanic. Hinoka mentions that Corrin looks distracted and reassures her, pointing out that all of Corrin’s siblings are here.

The game then moves onto introducing basic mechanics. If you move your cursor away and look at the other units on the battlefield, you’ll notice that all of them have unique names and designs. Fire Emblem Fates shows both armies off to you during the prologue, which is really interesting. Still, it must be noted that the Nohrian Units are marked as enemies and the Hoshidan Units are marked as allies. This isn’t super important now, but keep it in mind.

Between turns, Ryoma asks Xander why he’s invading and mentions a cowardly attack. Xander tells him to surrender and the two fight some more, both doing decent damage. The camera pans over to Xander’s siblings. The youngest of them, Elise, mentions that, due to a bridge collapse, they can’t get over to Corrin. Her older sister, Camilla, tells her not to worry, because their royal blood allows them to manipulate dragon veins. Camilla moves over to the river and a fireball flies out of her, striking the river and evaporating it. The third of Xander’s siblings, Leo, tells Elise to stay back as they attack the Hoshidans. The Hoshidan royals remark that Camilla’s use of a dragon vein means she’s royalty and the Hoshidan prince Tamuki smirks, saying that he’s always wanted to use a Nohrian royal as target practice.

The two armies of named characters start fighting and a Nohrian general named Hans shows up with an army of reinforcements. He then refers to his own army as cannon fodder and says king Garon sent him to kill them all, because he’s very obviously an evil person. A Hoshidan general shows up and we get some more tutorials as Corrin and Takumi beat up a single redshirt. And then the level just ends.

Corrin and the Hoshidan royals run up to the bridge to help out Ryoma. Xander calls out to Corrin, happy to have found her alive and well. He beckons her to come back to her family, which angers Ryoma, who shouts that Corrin is his sister. Xander counters, saying that Corrin is HIS sister. The other royals argue over which family owns Corrin and Hinoka states that the Nohrians kidnapped her. Xander points out that the Nohrians raised Corrin since she was a child and are her real family. As the two families fight over Corrin, the screen fades to white and we hear voices yelling for Corrin to wake up.

The prologue features some good teaching of mechanics, some bad teaching of mechanics, and an introduction to the game’s plot. It introduces two countries at war and Corrin, a bridge between the two that is caught up in this war. I just have one question.

What even is this chapter? It isn’t in media res, the actual point in the game this chapter is playing off of happens differently. The fact that it cuts to Corrin waking up implies that it’s a premonition of the future, but Corrin can’t see the future in other parts of the game. At least, I don’t remember that ever happening. Sure, this chapter introduces the plot, but it does it in such a confusing way.

Awakening did something similar to this, admittedly, but Awakening is a game about time travel. That scene happened, just in a different timeline. Awakening’s use of media res both set up the plot and helped foreshadow the game’s main twist.

Also, the Hoshidans are allies and the Nohrians are enemies. In a game about a morally grey conflict between two sides made up of real, suffering people, it’s not great to start out by calling one of them evil.

These two traits, aping Awakening without knowing why it worked and failing to be a morally grey story, are going to become much more apparent as the game goes on...

[silverdphantom]

The Rebellion of the Grigori: 2. The causes of the Rebellion

Why did the Grigori rebel against their own ?

Out of Love ? Out of greed ? Were they driven by self interest ? By care ?

In the Book of Enoch

As the human population grew in numbers, beautiful daughters were born to the men. The Grigori saw them and desired them. They knew nonetheless that going to those women as human men do would be a great betrayal toward their superiors. But their yearning went stronger than their fear, and despite the worries of their leader Shemihaza, they swore an oath to assume together the consequences of their actions. And they descended on Earth and took as wives the women they liked.

Here, the reasons why the Grigori turned their back on their own look pretty simple: lust. Some could also interpret it as geniune attraction or even love.

In the manga

The question becomes a little more difficult.

We know almost nothing of the three original Grigori, apart from the few details given by Mephisto and Lightening (two rather secretive characters).

The only thing we can guess is that, as in the Book of Enoch, the causes of the Rebellion are deeply linked to their relationship with the humans. I would like to discuss the two main parts of that relationship:

The protection of humankind as a whole

The union with some humans in particular

We have no flashback of the Grigori to help this reflection and the Grigori themselves are not anymore in the state to speak for themselves. But I think we can take two other demons we know better as relevant examples: Samael and Satan.

1. The protection of humankind

Why did the Grigori side with the humans ? A lot of people in the fandom, myself incluses, and even some AoEx characters (aka Lightening), are sometimes doubting the sincerity of the alliance of the Grigori with humanity. Since many powerful demons, especially the Ba'als, see humans as inferior beings, the Grigori having a secret agenda is a tempting idea. But in spite of the creepiness of the Grigori agency and Mephisto's ambiguous attitude, we were given no clear reasons to think they might end up betraying humankind. Satan, Lucifer and Amaimon themselves seem convinced Samael is working with the humans.

They could have a logical reason for that: they need the creations and the bodies of the humans to live a material existence, but also merely to exist (as their ego is the result of human faith and imagination). At the end, destroying the humans is just as destructive for them. For Mephisto, those are sufficient reasons.

But it does not explain why they renunced that very material existence. Something for which Lucifer has threatened to destroy the world. Something for which Satan caused the Blue Night and has been since then pressuring Samael and Lucifer.

We have the exemple of a demon who willingly renounced incarnation. Ironically, Satan himself. He took that decision because he had no way to find a long-term body and he preferred to spend the time he had left with someone he "loved".

2. The union with the humans

In the myth, the half-human children of the Grigori, the Nephilim, were merely the consequences of their lust for the humans.

In the manga, it is unclear. If their conception was deliberate, maybe the Nephilim were meant to be new bodies (as Satan plans to turn Rin into), to be weapons for the humans who could match in power the Demon Kings themselves, to be heirs who could replace their ancestors after their crystallization.

The only exemple of the union of a demon from royalty and a human we coud have a closer look on is Satan x Yuri (which there again resulted in the birth of Nephilim children). Obviously, that was a rather very unhealthy relationship. Yet, Satan was (or thought he was) in love with Yuri and the twins were just a unexpected consequence of that feeling.

Has it been the same for the Grigori ?

In the end, a big part question of the reasons for the Grigori to rebel relies on another question, often asked : are the demons able to have geniune feelings, to love ?

Samael clearly said that demons do not believe "love" exists. They look strangely obscessed by the concept though. Kato herself explained that demons are basically inhabiting almost dead bodies that are forced to remain functional. If feelings there are, they must be really watered down. Nonetheless, since then, we have seen more than once a demon having an emotional breakdown, sometimes about a human. I am not sure what we are supposed to think about that.

To conclude, the comparison between the manga and the inspiration from the Book of Enoch raises a lot of questions, because in the second one, it was the Grigori's attraction toward some humans that started everything.

Next time : 3. The Nephilim

[skyborneveggie]

Trying to process my very mixed feelings..

This past week has brought up a lot of stuff for me that I haven’t thought about in a really long time, so I’m writing this to try and process my incredibly mixed and confused feelings. Maybe in another week I’ll feel completely differently, but for now I’m just trying to make sense out of this swirling stormcloud in my brain.

As someone who was moderately in the SuperWhoLock community but never actually watched Supernatural, there was never a time when I knew about Supernatural without knowing about Destiel. They were introduced to me in the same breath. My literal first memory I have of the show was the “Don’t ruin it for everyone” clip that was being passed around. And that was the reason I could never bring myself to watch it. I was in the process of being queerbaited by Sherlock, I knew I was getting baited and I still couldn’t resist it. So I really, really did want to let myself get queerbaited twice at the same time. I was so sure that never in a million years would Destiel ever happen.

So I skipped Supernatural altogether and moved on to Hannibal, which I watched while it was airing, so you can imagine my horror when I thought I was getting baited again. I completely shut down that side of my brain and refused to acknowledge any subtext I noticed as being anything other than circumstantial. And when Hannigram actually became canon, I think it helped heal that wound a little, and I started to have hope for media again.

Then Yuri on Ice happened and stabbed me through the heart. I know a lot of people loved Yuri on Ice and considered it revolutionary, but personally I felt really betrayed by it. I felt tricked. Ambiguity & censored maybe-kiss to boot.

After that I spent a lot of time in fandoms where the shows were finished and the outcomes were known, because I was tired of the emotional whiplash. I pretty much gave up on ever finding a show with a lgbtq+ protagonist. I even started to become bitter about Hannibal, the show that had previously brought me so much hope. Because even though Hannigram ended up being technically canon, while Will Graham may have been bi/panromantic, it was pretty clear he was heterosexual. I was just so exhausted (and still am quite frankly) from everything just seeming like an excuse to not show same-sex intimacy onscreen.

I think 2019 was really the year that healed me in a major way. We got Klaus from the Umbrella Academy (and this year we found out Vanya is bisexual), and Good Omens. Not to mention in the period genre, Gentleman Jack, and a romantic partner for Downton Abbey’s Thomas Barrow (although that series is a whole other can of worms I’m not going to open right now). 2019, to me, was the year I didn’t have to beg for representation. I didn’t have to be in denial and convince myself I was crazy for seeing things because I was afraid someone else would call me crazy for seeing things. And that felt so freeing.

And so now, finishing off 2020 with Destiel, I can’t help but feel somewhat relieved. Yes, the confession scene was super problematic and there are things about it that really bother me. But I’m relieved because it feels like the end of an era- the queerbaiting era where Supernatural was king. They strung people along for so long, and I’m positive they had zero intention of canonizing Destiel until the last one or two seasons. Even though I’ve never seen Supernatural, the impact its queerbaiting had on this community was huge. It permeated everything. For the eight years I’ve known about Supernatural, its presence has been looming over me like an oppressive cloud, whispering, You’re never going to get representation, look at us! We’re one of the longest running sci-fi shows, with one of the biggest fandoms, and as long as we’re around, showrunners can look to us and say “Hey, Supernatural queerbaited, so why don’t we too?”

I understand why some people are angry, and I understand why some people are happy. Personally I keep oscillating between the two. But moreover I’m just relieved. Supernatural did something that nobody in a million years they would ever do. And to me, that confession, coupled with the end of the show, represents the end of an era where people thought it was ok to bait us. It gives me hope for a future where I never have to see the words “subtext is more meaningful” or “romance would cheapen their relationship” ever again. It gives me hope for a future where there are so many more, better options out there. To me, it represents a future where we don’t have to cling to Supernatural, and queerbait, anymore.

[laruna]

What was Laruna’s friend ship like with the other bts members?

I’ve discussed Yuri’s relationship with Namjoon a lot and detailed their beginnings extensively in Epiphany… and I’ll do it again! Namjoon was her first love on top of being one of her first friends. It took her time to develop feelings for him, but from the start she found him to be a very magnetic person. She’s always loved him a lot, to the point of even idolizing him at times—in turn, he lived off of her validation because he was a teenage boy with low self-esteem and it feels good for a nice girl to be constantly complimenting you. 

If there are moments in my writing during the Glass era where it seems like he’s leading her on or that their relationship is ambiguous it’s because he truly does not know, either. He just knows that she’s nice and makes him feel nice. Because of that dynamic, I feel like her leaving South Korea and them separating for a hot minute was good because they grew into their own fully-developed beings before they had the chance to really become co-dependent on one another and complicate their relationship further. I’m excited for when they reunite and I can develop on that relationship more!

Yuri’s relationship with Seokjin is very sweet. It may not seem like it at first glance, but they’re two people who relate deeply to one another. I think one of the points they relate on the most is that they’re both very well-off? Like I would peg Jin as upper class and Yuri as upper middle class? Anyway, class is obviously a topic that’s touched on and criticized a lot among the boys (especially Yoongi) in their discography with songs like Baepsae and Spine Breaker. At times, Yuri and Seokjin can feel awkward discussing what they feel to be first world problems with the rest of the boys when they’ve all struggled so much, so they’ve kind of learned to share their problems with one another and it’s nice. 

She tends to talk to him about her problems and ask his for advice more often than he does with her. He can definitely baby her at times and has the tendency to not take some of her advice seriously since she’s so much younger than him—he really doesn’t like when people younger than him try to tell him what to do, after all. Post-reveal, he has a lot of trouble with connecting Laruna’s sexy, mature image to Lim Yuri because? That’s a baby? That’s his baby and seeing her objectified or overly sexualized in any way makes him super uncomfortable. Overall, she’s his baby and he appreciates what she does for him and the group a lot.

I’ve also discussed Yuri’s relationship with Yoongi very extensively in Interloper but let me talk more about them because I love them a lot! Yoongi was the second Bangtan trainee to arrive at Big Hit so him, Namjoon, and Yuri are kind of considered the original three? The rest of them refer to their trio as the poltergeists of Big Hit because of how they were just allowed to run rampant in that place for the first three years. They definitely had a rocky beginning, with him kind of seeing her as a vapid little rich girl, but he eventually lets up with her because she’s just so nice and he doesn’t want to be an ass. They come from different walks of life and don’t always see eye to eye, but at the end of the day they care about one another a lot. 

I think she likes that he’s so blunt and believes very strongly in what he says, whereas he likes that she’s very genuine and easy to read. They grow close just because they’re both very honest people so they know it’s going to be an honest, productive conversation without any bullshit. Things get complicated when they start having romantic feelings for each other that they don’t know how to put into words, so they act on them, instead. They don’t really talk about it at first, but things will get messy when they do. More on this when I write for them later so I can avoid spoilers!

Yuri’s relationship with Hoseok is also a positive one. They’re similar in that they’re both people who are very serious about music and their work, but are sweet and bright when they’re off the clock. He tends to toe this line of trying to be professional since she’s their producer and a senior in the company who arrived before him, but also wanting to tease her because she’s so easy to fluster. He sees her as mature and very talented in her craft, so much so that there are times where her age really does just slip his mind. He still tends to milk the ‘oppa’ thing with her because he enjoys messing with her. 

Despite this, he’s very observant and understanding to her and her more serious problems. He knows not to touch upon the topics of things like her family life and the complicated dynamic between her and the other two rap line members, and even steers others away from the topic if he can tell that the conversation is headed that way. In turn, she’s very kind to him and often showers him in compliments not only about his kindness, but about his skills and looks, and they often jokingly flirt with each other. Overall, she’s a good friend who feels more like a peer than a junior to him.

Yuri has a very turbulent relationship with Jimin, but it’s one that gets better over time. Just like her and Yoongi, they have rocky beginnings, but there’s also the element of this going unresolved because Jimin is too soft and passive to touch on the tension. She reads this as him being fake, so she doesn’t quite trust him. It’s because of this mistrust that she meddles in his affairs quite a bit. It doesn’t help that Jimin was added into the group’s line-up really late compared to the others, so they didn’t quite have enough time to bond. Underneath it all, I think Yuri was also somewhat resentful that they softened to Jimin so quickly and so late into the game. 

She envied his abilities to make friends really easily, especially since it was difficult for her to make friends throughout their childhood. Secretly, he envied how easily she was able to speak her mind. When things are finally resolved between them, they learn that they have more in common than they thought, with both of them having a lot of insecurities that stem from their appearances. They eventually come to care for each other very much, but definitely express their friendship in a very teasing, playful Tom and Jerry relationship. I touch on their relationship a lot in Beholder so once I stop being so busy and finish that I will be able to scream about their complicated bond a lot more!

Unlike his best friend, Yuri has a peaceful relationship with Taehyung, with the only strain on it being her rocky relationship with his best friend, Jimin. Other than that, they get along really well! He looks up to her a lot and sees her as a very smart, mature person due to her production skills and good music sense. For a good chunk of his trainee days, he referred to her as a noona because he really thought she was older than him and she didn’t bother to correct him because she doesn’t like being treated like a little kid when she’s been present for so much longer. After that’s corrected, their friendship with one another remains very friendly and casual, despite him being older. They tend to refer to one another by name and don’t really bother with honorifics and such.

While he treats her as an equal for the most part, he also tends to dote on her because of how small and easy to fluster she is. He treats her in a way that’s very gigil? I don’t know how to explain it in English but basically: she’s tiny and cute and it makes him lose his shit! He just wants to squeeze her and pat her head and squish her cheeks! They’re both very affectionate people, though, so it works out. He’s a very gentle and forgiving person and she knows this, so he’s one of the first people she reconnects with when she returns to Korea, despite her not being as close to him as some others during her time as a Big Hit producer.

Yuri considers Jungkook to be one of her favorite people in the world, but that’s none of your business. In all seriousness, with him being the only trainee younger than her, she enjoys doting on him a lot. She definitely treats him like a little brother, especially since she’s already an older sister. With Jungkook’s arrival to Big Hit, she quickly fell out of the company maknae role and assumed a much-preferred mother or older sister role in the group. She’s prone to ‘going too easy on him’ when compared to how she treats the others and going out of her way to comfort him when he’s upset. She considers herself to be not only his producer, but his unofficial vocal coach. 

As any older sister, she’s no stranger to teasing him and often affectionately referred to him as ‘big nose’ during his trainee days. She has also definitely made him pinky promise to buy all of her meals and carry her around everywhere once he’s big and strong and successful enough. Their closeness in age and similar dispositions made it easy for the two to share their feelings with one another, so the two grew rather close. He was probably the most hurt when she left Big Hit, but also one of the quickest to forgive her. Their friendship is very sweet once they patch it back up. She coos and giggles about how handsome he’s become and how he’s grown into his nose and asks if he can carry her and buy all her meals yet!

[jhaskii]

Nerd/Jock AU Headcanons

it’s been 84 years since i last did something for my kanadia au. anyways, here's the long awaited headcanons post that i should’ve done first but! haha :^D

kinda long so i put half under the cut

dia’s your straight A nerd who’s extremely competitive. she basically clawed her way up to the top of the gpa food chain and she’s not gonna let some crusty ass hoe take her place. she killed a man to get there afterall.

kanan is the buff daddy jock who’s the captain of the school’s swim team and a lesbian magnet. she comes off as a heartthrob fuckboy™️ but really, she’s just a soft uwu bean. please give that girl a hug

dia’s known for her exceptional grades and being an ice queen. she easily comes off as cold and distant, and her presence shakes everyone in their boots. nobody’s willing to talk to her except her best friend mari

mari’s the popular highschool thottie and is the best wingman/friend dia could have, even if she annoys her to no end

“hey dia do you think it’s possible to fit this platform heel up my ass?” “oh please don’t.” “i think i’ll try it when i get home~ :)”

because dia has such a bad perception of people — her dumbass of a best friend not helping her case — she tends to view people negatively

right off the bat she hates kanan even before meeting her cause she thinks people who play sports are just a bunch of violent orangutans trying to skin each other over a game point (well i mean she’s not entirely wrong) but that’s not even the biggest reason why she hates interacting with her

both of them knew of each other since they were kids but never talked. kanan would always play soccer with the boys while dia was mostly by herself doing her own thing. none of them acknowledged each other’s existence till high school

their first genuine encounter was when they bumped into each other in the hallway and kanan’s duffel bag just battery rams into her shoulder and makes her drop the “book” she was reading. kanan says a bunch of “i’m sorry’s” before going to pick it up

ha bad idea

dia starts freaking out. this bitch is having a panic attack. her blood cells are shaking so hard and she’s trying to tell kanan that it’s ok and that she’ll pick it up. 

dia’s willing to do anything to get the book back without kanan having to get it herself. she’ll sell her kidneys, hell she’ll even stick a heel up her ass like mari was saying

get fucked anyways dia cause kanan already picked it up and saw the front cover of her yuri doujin

dia’s already thinking about what to write for her last will and testament because embarrassment's gonna be the cause of her death

kanan does hand the book back but the atmosphere is so awkward and tense. dia’s face is incredibly red and she pretty much rips the doujin out of her hands before running off

dia tells mari what happens and she gets a howl of laughter as a response

“i can’t believe the bombshell of the school found out you read gay porn, that’s fucking rich” “FOR THE LAST TIME, IT’S NOT GAY PORN.

dia actively avoids kanan ever since the incident but it becomes the opposite for kanan. now that she found out the future valedictorian is actually a huge dork, she’s got her third eye woke and is computer ENHANCING @ dia 👁️

continuously pesters dia everyday for attention and dia hates it like, go away sweaty??? kanan would tease her constantly about the book thing and dia wants to tear off that shit-eating grin of hers every time

it doesn’t really help that kanan’s a jock too so her dislike gets bass-boostedamplified

mari’s aware of what’s going on between the two and finds it hilarious and cute. she hasn’t seen dia get this worked up over someone, even around mari herself. she’s an avid supporter of kanadia now. also because she claims that her “boobs tingle when it knows something gay is happening”

this whole back and forth teasing and death threats continue on for a few more weeks before mari decides to do something about it

she confronts kanan and finds out that she is in fact, interested in dia.

“Hey do you think my best friend is hot” “Uhhhh haha well... :D”

sadly the same can’t be said for dia cause she just outright denies it each time, but mari’s convinced dia would if she gave her a push

mari devises a plan where she gets dia to tutor kanan. kanan isn’t even dumb, she’s literally the next bill nye, but it was the best shot they had since dia believes all jocks are dumb anyways

kanadia meet in the library and dia’s mortified but also furious because thanks a fucking bunch to mari’s ambiguity of her “tutoring someone” she didn’t think she’d be helping kanan

as each tutoring session progresses, they start getting into more friendly banters

kanan’s attraction towards dia becomes a full blown crush like holy shit this girl’s so fucking pretty? the second coming of christ??? dia’s quirky side is honestly so endearing to her and she loves it

dia realizes that kanan’s so nice and caring? she thought all jocks were stupid brutes but kanan’s one of the sweetest people she’s EVER met. kanan always asks how her day is and does small gestures like buying drinks for her before tutoring and god dia hates nice girls. to top it off kanan’s fucking HOT too. who said it was okay for kanan to be on the swimteam cause her body is so toned and fit her arms have the definition of a ps4

dia’s so whipped and she doesn’t even want to admit it

she also finds out kanan’s not a dumb shit. she figures it out when she looks through kanan’s problems and finds some of the work was right but the answers were wrong like ok bitch you got some explaining to do

kanan’s been faking it just so she can keep seeing dia :)

dia can’t really tutor kanan anymore after she found out though cause there’s no point in tutoring a girl that’s honor roll material.

it’s ok though cause kanan gave dia her number

dia is sent flying perpetually through six dimensions and back

she owes mari starbucks now

this got really long cause i got carried away but yeah, that’s that. there’s gonna be a second part to this since i have headcanons too for their actual relationship but that’ll come out in another 20 years cause i’m a lazy bitch LMAO

[tenitchyfingers]

and going off from @kuro-n‘s tags on the previous post (didn’t want to comment directly on it because it’s frankly long and I feel like it’s a bit off-topic):

#im just gonna say it#if shiro was a woman there'd be zero ambigutiy about sheith endgame #none#keith #shiro #sheith #voltron #vld spoilers

YOU ARE RIGHT AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT. How do we get rid of this sort of gray area in fandom? Like, when someone talks about how 2 characters of the same sex are in a relationship and someone else says “are they though?” there is always the sense that their concern would be about how a relationship that isn’t explicitly coded as romantic, complete with kissing and marriage, could be queerbaiting, and I get it. We saw it happen with Yuri On Ice. For the bigger part of the show, a lot of people were holding their joy back because Yuuri and Viktor hadn’t kissed (yet) and there was no official confirmation of them being in love, or at least romantically interested in each other. Because there would always be that lingering little voice being like “they’re pulling you by the nose again”. A very dear friend of mine kept doubting until way past half the season, because they could not really trust the show to deliver what they hoped was going to happen. Now, in that case, the pairing did end up being endgame, but so many times we’re disenchanted and think that any “lowkey” relationship could most likely be “2 guys sitting in a hot tub” etc.

And of course, on the flip side, there’s a lot of room for homophobia in the same kind of statement. “Are they though, you fool? Where’s the canon proof?” How do we tell the difference? Because a lot of bigots will wrap up their words in ambiguous language and pretend they’re really worried for the same people they’re talking over, and sometimes that line is very thin and it’s not easy to decide whether you’re talking to a homophobe or a LGBT+ kid being distrustful of the source material and the authors of it. My YOI fan friend made me realize this. You can’t write off this argument as homophobia every time, because sometimes it really does come from a place of genuine fear of being made fun of again after it happened so many times. I remember their hesitation in celebrating everything I was squealing about, and I know it came from a sincere fear of being misled.

And absolutely, this problem doesn’t exist with interactions between guys and girls. Because we were taught that those interactions always have a romantic undertone. Always, to the point where in popular culture there is no such thing as a friendship between male and female. That’s a problem all on its own (honestly I could do with a lot less romantic storyline between boy and girl and not because I hate straight relationships but because I want to see more boys and girls being genuinely friends without the obligatory romantic endgame), but for fandom a guy and a girl with a history like that of Shiro and Keith would ABSOLUTELY be understood as them being lovers, without the VLD crew having to confirm that one of them is X, because it would be understood by everyone. No doubt, no questions asked. People would fully expect them to kiss and get married and have 55 children and live happily ever after without it needing to happen on screen at all.

Of course, overt and explicit representation coming from the studios is the obvious solution, but how can we start thinking differently and stop dismissing each other’s visions of the nature of two characters’ interactions in the meanwhile? Like, of course, another obvious response would be “just ignore those who don’t want to think of it as romantic”, but the problem is there nonetheless. Same-sex pairs are always held to a higher standard, where they have to make out on camera and go on their knee and ask for the other character’s hand in marriage to be considered a real romantic pair, and... if we really wanted to start seeing these relationships differently, we should all be brave and start believing in them. Whether they end up being endgame is honestly irrelevant for this purpose. We should all decide to start believing these relationships can be real, all of them, that everything we ship can be there and isn’t just an illusion. I guess that’s what part of fandom always did, but a lot of fans (especially the younger ones) are really too dependent on what canon gives them, and will hold off on believing in the possibilities of a story until those possibilities become real in front of them. I’m not blaming young fans and saying they’re the problem. Society is. Homophobia is the problem. Far too many pieces of media using queerbaiting for profit are specifically the problem in a lot of cases. I’m just saying we should get rid of those feelings that we’re being used for sure whenever we consider f/f or m/m pairings, not because it doesn’t happen but because the dependence on part of a lot of us on canon is preventing us from seeing what’s right in front of us. If Keith was a girl, Shiro would be her boyfriend, and viceversa. And nobody would doubt it. Because given their dynamics, the things they did for each other, the kind of emotional intimacy they have, nobody would go “they’re very good friends”. Why then can’t Keith and Shiro, two men, be treated and seen the same way?

I’m not scolding anyone, by the way. I’m just saying, maybe we should stop doubting ourselves and our hunches so much, and we should stop doubting the fact that some characters’ interactions can vibe with us. We should make ourselves free to believe all our favorite relationships are exactly what we say they are, we should believe that if a relationship seems romantic, then it is. Regardless of what that tiny distrustful voice inside says. Fuck that voice. If you think your ship is real, then it is. Regardless of the characters’ genders. And if it’s baiting, then it’s going to hurt but that mustn’t stop anyone from giving another show another chance.

(Also, there’s the fact that there are so many pieces of media made by LGBT+ people, that have explicit, openly acknowledged LGBT+ characters in same-sex relationships that are absolutely the object of no doubts on their nature, and I also want to encourage everyone to support those pieces of media in order to have some kind of impact on these industries, as small as it might be.)